He took no questions because there was a key question he didn’t want to answer.
I don’t want to hear one more word about what a “Boy Scout” Bob Mueller is.
And a reminder that the Clintons were not “exonerated” by the Whitewater report, either. There was abundant evidence of crimes, including obstruction of justice, but not sufficient to provide high confidence of a conviction, in which it would take just a single juror to hang the jury (as happened with Susan McDougal when Starr prosecuted her).
[Update at noon]
“Not exonerated” isn’t, and shouldn’t be the legal standard for this country:
That’s not how it works in America. Investigators are supposed to look for evidence that a crime was committed, and, if they don’t find enough to contend that a crime was a committed, they are supposed to say “We didn’t find enough to contend that a crime was committed.” They are not supposed to look for evidence that a crime was not committed and then say, “We couldn’t find evidence of innocence.”
I’m confident that Mark Levin will be incandescent in his rant about this on the radio later.
[Update a few minutes later]
Mueller inadvertently confirms that Barr didn’t misrepresent his report.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Mueller’s presser proves that this was nothing but a political hit job.
[Thursday-morning update]
Mueller’s damage-control concert:
If you do not understand that the Justice Department is a filthy cesspool of corrupt garbage bureaucrats, you should understand now. Before I get into the Mueller circus yesterday, I want to point out that Mueller and his ilk are running the criminal justice system in this country. Currently, they are going after high-profile targets like Trump and the Trump operation, so there is public interest and press coverage. But imagine what kinds of things they do sotto voce to regular Joes and Janes. I just read Sidney Powell’s book, Licensed to Lie about the corruption at the DoJ and it is horrifying. I highly recommend reading it because you will see that the Trump treatment was just business as usual. Here’s the real story, in my opinion, with Mueller’s press conference: Mueller doesn’t want to be called by Nadler to testify before the House Judiciary because he doesn’t want to answer tough questions under oath. Nadler doesn’t want to call Mueller because he doesn’t want Mueller answering questions that undermine the Democrats’ plan to keep a cloud of suspicion floating over Trump until 2020. Mueller and Nadler are communicating because Nadler was pretending to negotiate a Mueller appearance before his committee. Basically, Nadler was like, “I need you to give me something if you don’t want to be called to testify.” And of course, Mueller was more than happy to hold a press conference where he could recapture his rightful status on all those prayer candles after failing to seal the deal against Trump with his report. I should mention that the Senate Republicans can call Mueller to testify, but I have little faith they will do that because they are sad, weak little men.
I wish that Liz would tell us what she really thinks.
Democrats are making it clear that it is not just the 2nd Amendment they don’t like. They also don’t like the 1st Amendment (hate speech limitation and religious separation). Now the 4th Amendment (illegal surveillance) along with ther presumption of innocence implied by the 5th and 6th Amendment. They long since shown their disdain for ther 9th and 10th Amendment.
More and more people are picking up on this and the result still not go well for many.
Law enforcement by press conference. Why worry about Russia when there are card-carrying Comeyists in the US government?
Mueller is trying to lay low and get out of town because if he agrees to testify, the Republicans will ask him a whole lot more questions than the simple ones about when he first knew there was no collusion, and why he kept everyone in the dark about it until after the 2018 mid-terms, which is the basic “What did you know and when did you know it?”
They might also ask him whether his extensive investigation looked into the origins of the allegations that Trump colluded with Russia. Since these allegations stemmed, in many cases, from FBI spies sent under the Obama Administration, why didn’t he look into who was planting the stories? Isn’t knowing who is making an accusation and why a key part of any investigation?
We know he hired and then fired officials who had been part of the FBI’s effort to undermine Trump. Did he know of their activities before he hired them? Did he have any communications with his friend Jim Comey during the investigation, and if so, how often and what about? Was he contacted by or did he contact, directly or indirectly, former AG Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, James Clapper, or John Brennan? Why did he investigate possible obstruction of justice if he already knew the Russian collusion story was false? Did anyone in the former administration urge him to do that?
He might find himself echoing James Comey and saying “I don’t recall” over and over again, and that would be the end of his reputation.
This ^^
Democrats will be fine with him not testifying because the objective would be for him to do what he did with his speech today, to imply that Trump might have obstructed because they couldn’t prove he didn’t obstruct. This keeps the coup effort alive.
The questions he doesn’t want to answer include “When did you finally realize there was no evidence of Trump colluding with the Russians? Was it before or after the 2018 elections?”
I agree with Wodun’s “this”.
I also think that if the investigation is into Russian meddling in the election, then the investigation must be about the crime. While Trump Jr. was investigated for supposedly having a meeting with Russians with dirt on Hillary; Hillary’s campaign was ignored when they worked with Brits and Russians to get dirt on Trump.
They didn’t just work with Russians. They paid them, a lot, via Steele – and then laundered the campaign money for it by listing it as “legal fees”.
Can you just imagine if Trump had done that?
I sure can imagine what would happen if Trump did it; he would be impeached and much of the country would be chanting lock him up.
John Edwards was mostly right about there being two Americas.
Trump Jr met with Russians working for the Hillary campaign by proxy. Funny that Mueller didn’t mention that. He also didn’t ding Trump Jr for it because it would have pulled the mask off much like Avenatti hiring women to make claims so crazy that it broke the rule of carefully crafted deceits, the narrative has to be plausible enough to sustain disbelief.
I noticed that Mueller changed his language on Russian collusion a little bit from the report.
The report was very explicit that there was no collusion, not that there was “insufficient evidence”. This is a weaseling way to keep the Russian Illusion alive because Democrats will say there was evidence of collusion. There was zero evidence of collusion. No one was charged with anything related to collusion.
The only realistic reason for Mueller to change his phrasing to match Democrat talking points is that he is working with the Democrats to do as much damage as possible to Trump after the coup failed. It’s part of a next best strategy of setting up alternatives if the main goal fails.
There is… “insufficient evidence to charge” that Robert Mueller is a member of the Bavarian Illuminati.
That isn’t how the criminal justice system is supposed to work.
It’s a trap.
If Mueller is smart, he leading the Dems to slaughter.
But I would guess Mueller is not smart and he imagines that he is helping Dems or is going to appear to be helping the Dems.
The coup is over. And the death star, now, has full power.
I don’t know if Mueller has made it worse for the Dems. But I believe that he will be blamed for coming Dem slaughter.
I think main thing is that Mueller just wanted to be very famous- and I think it’s a mission that has already been accomplished.
The question is how blindingly spectacular will it become in next year or so.
If Mueller cannot conclude Trump is guilty then Trump is innocent.
Everything else is red meat and false predicates for impeachment for the dems.
Also, it’s not law, but the DOJ handbook says that if you cannot charge someone with a crime then you say nothing that besmirches that person.
Mueller threw that out the window as well.
Given impeachment has only ever been used politically, and has never been followed through, unless you count Nixon resigning under threat, I wonder if the Founders didn’t think it through quite enough.
Giving Congress the power of impeachment (and removal) is tantamount to giving the President power to dissolve Congress and call for new elections. And what does it mean that the Chief Justice “presides” over the Senate “trial?” Does he have the power to declare the impeachment proceedings unconstitutional?
Get rid of impeachment and beef up the checks and balances? I don’t know what, though. I do know the sovereign remedy for malfeasance in office is the next election. I also know the dive to create no-information voters in certain quarters is undermining that.
Good points. Every check and balance has one weakness, people. Our system relies on people behaving with a minimum level of good faith. As our societal norms are being torn down and replaced with Marxist eschatology, unthinkable behavior becomes thinkable.
The “damage-control concert” link points to Bill Whittle’s Youtube video. I believe you wanted https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-morning-briefing-muellers-farewell-damage-control-concert/
I’m a little wishy washy on this but I do think that the stories we tell each other do influence how we think but I also don’t think video games, books, or movies cause people to snap. There is also the NWA theory that lyrics are a manifestation of life experienced.
Ever notice how so many of these cop and lawyer shows are all about corrupt cops and lawyers? Sometimes they just break little rules but the audience is encouraged to like it.
Mueller walks his OLC comments back:
“Attorney General William Barr revealed during a hearing on Wednesday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had repeatedly told Barr that he was not indicating that he would have charged President Donald Trump if Trump were not a sitting president.
“Special counsel Mueller stated three times to us in that meeting in response to our questioning that he emphatically was not saying that but for the OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion, he would have found obstruction,” Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “He said that in the future, the facts of the case against a president might be such that a special counsel would recommend abandoning the OLC opinion, but this is not such a case.”
Besides Ken Starr said Clinton was Guilty i11 times, in his report.
No…Mueller said that in order to keep the impeachment bandwagon rolling even though he knows full well there was no collusion and no obstruction.
Sigh. I guess we wait for the IG report, or Barr’s investigation after that.