Barr shut down the Mueller investigation - it hit me overnight

[malaise]

Barr shut down the Mueller investigation - what's more he told us so when he said that if a president thinks he has been falsely accused and cannot get his job done then he can shut down an investigation. He was responding to Pat Leahy.

Barr knows once Mueller goes to the House or once this is leaked, we will find out the truth.

https://www.vpr.org/post/watch-ag-barr-testifies-about-mueller-report-leahy-rest-senate-judiciary#stream/0

[BigmanPigman]

1. We will eventually get to the bottom of it and that is what bothers

every one of the pundits...he will go down in history for being a crook and an ass kisser. Why do any of these tRump fans do this To themselves? Are they masochists? No one gets it.

[Kurt V.]

6. it could be that he lives in the Fox bubble like many republicans his age.

[True Blue American]

15. Even Chris Wallace

Held up the Mueller letter yesterday and criticized the evening shows for what they are doing.

I am beginning to think Lachlan Murdock is sick of his station being a Trump mouthpiece.

[malaise]

42. Funny how he told Kamala that he didn't need to read the

evidence because he knew Mueller et al had laid it out but yet he ignored their findings and came up with his own summary- he will be impeached.

[handmade34]

2. I just assumed

that all along... figured as soon as he was confirmed he was told to "wrap it up"

[lillypaddle]

30. Yep. I actually thought it was general knowledge

but left "unsaid." Of course he shut it down.

[lindysalsagal]

3. Star Trek Cardassians: "Prosecuting the innocent is a waste of time."

[FailureToCommunicate]

36. Excellent reference! (Always thought Marc Alaimo, as "Dukat", played a terrific antagonist.)

[duforsure]

4. Thought the same thing

Barr isn't OUR AG, he's trump's new Micheal Cohen , his fixer , brought in to make his problems go away. HE may think he can do this and get away with it, but I think before its all over with Barr will go to prison, and with many other trump lackeys who have committed crimes for trump. Justice for these criminals will prevail , and they will not get away with this.

[Mc Mike]

5. Yeah, you can see he pulled the plug.

Why rush to end it and issue the report, with Stone's prominent hearing coming up? Barr ordered it ended.

[Baitball Blogger]

7. We are witnessing a huge cover-up in real time.

The fact that Barr is allowed to parse the law in such a way to normalize unethical behavior tells you everything about why we are where we are today.

[pnwmom]

8. Yup. It's too bad no one asked him that directly. Either he or Rosenstein,

or possibly even Whitaker, gave Mueller his marching orders.

[Ilsa]

9. TRMS is working on this story, to determine if

Barr shutdown the Mueller investigation before he had completed it. She had hoped to have breaking news on this last night.

[malaise]

10. Great

I notice Morning Joe Scum is hinting at it as well

[Jarqui]

11. It hit me when it happened last March

There were too many loose ends.
They had not worked their way up through the responsibility tree.
Corsi efforts died
Stone left to fight his case - no attempt to flip him.
Don Jr - never facing a charge and the potential to flip
Kushner - ditto Don Jr.
etc

It shut down too fast.

There does not seem to have been the discussion: did the obstruction prevent a conclusion a crime had been committed in conspiracy. To me, that is what Trump/Barr had to thwart and it appears they did.

What was going on with the NRA and Russian money - why wouldn't they go down that investigation road? "Follow the money" .... I do not understand why that was beyond his mandate because those assets could be part of the conspiracy.

I protested Nixon. Trump et al are way more corrupt - to me this is 100 times worse. Unless something happens, they're getting away with it. And might again in 2020 because little is being done to protect the country.

[duforsure]

12. Barr's claim is false

The president doesn't have the right to shut down investigations against him or others by claiming the accusations are false, or using excuses to stop all investigations by falsely claiming anything. Barr suggesting this is cover for his shutting down the Mueller investigation, and just another ploy to obstruct justice, and will face the judicial system for doing this with prosecution for crimes, with trump. Its just a matter of time, and the American people will not allow this to continue, and demand results against these criminals. They just made more people want to vote trump and all republicans out of office. Barr will prove very damaging to the gop with his contempt for the rule of law, and the truth. The GOP are in very deep trouble , and they know it now.

[johnnyfins]

13. A nagging suspicion

Why do I have this feeling that Trump and his crew have something up their sleeve? Valid or not, it IS about perception. It is about what they can make a certain percentage of the public believe. They certainly are acting in a way where they are not worried about consequence.

JMHO

[watoos]

14. Here's the scary thing,

if he shut down the Mueller investigation, and it looks like he did, he will shut down all of the other investigations that Mueller spun off to SDNY and other jurisdictions. Barr is a very evil person.

The House needs to seriously consider the advise from Neal Katyal, defund the office of AG, take away the fuckers money, going through the court system will not get results before the election.

Once Mueller testifies, if he does, defund the bastard.

[maddiemom]

27. Barr doesn't have jurisdiction in the other investigations, does he?

[Chin music]

32. Yes. And he said yesterday he wont recuse himself.."Why should I?"

I think, were his exact words.

[SallyHemmings]

16. Barr crashed the plane

[manor321]

17. The AG cant do that to a SC without Congress being notified

[triron]

46. The Trump criminal enterprise doesn't abide by the rules.

[delisen]

18. The money investigations would eventually reach

the Republican Party and big contributors doing business with Russia or trying to do business with Russia, and those receiving campaign dollars from oligarchs.

I think Barr is working to protect that branch of the Republican Party-protecting the presidency of D. Trump is secondary.

I think Barr is like Tillerson. The Tillerson appointment to the state department was backed by Condolezza Rice and oil interests. She comes from that branch of the Republican party.

Most Americans had no clue about the extent of Republicans business interests in Russia and in getting sanctions removed.

[watoos]

24. It also all ties in with Ukraine,

Russia ships natural gas through Ukraine to Europe and the contract is up next year. Hillary was working to get Ukraine to develop its own gas through fracking and cutting out Russia. Ukraine can use its own gas and supply excess to Europe. Hence the invasion of Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea.

Also, the reason that the US was for ousting Assad in Syria had to do with 2 pipelines. Assad wouldn't allow a Qatari pipeline to cross through Syria, a pipeline that was backed by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. Russia intervened in Syria to keep Assad in power because Russia backed an Iran/Iraq gas pipeline that will go through Syria and on to Europe.

This is why Putin hated Hillary and wanted to get Trump installed into office. Follow the money.

[Raven123]

19. I thought if that too

Hope Congress is smart enough to ask how his investigation was limited, whether he was denied access to evidence, and if so who informed him of those decisions and was that individual asking on his or her own authority. If not, who was the ultimate authority.

With a few exceptions, I have been very disappointed in the quality of exchanges between Dems and Barr. If Barr had suggested to me that Mueller didn’t disagree with him, I would have at least asked him if Mueller investigated collusion. That was one of Barr’s conclusions. Make him own that fact that he cleared Trump of an accusation not investigated.

Just mystifying.

[watoos]

25. Yeah, I miss Al Franken too.

[RVN VET71]

20. If true -- and it looks to be so -- we're hanging by a frayed thread

It will be difficult, maybe even impossible, for the House of Representatives to launch a successful campaign against this criminal administration. What Democrat could defeat a man whose "Attorney General" and "Supreme Court" will allow him to sue for libel -- even imprison -- his political rivals if they accuse him of the crimes he commits so publicly?

[watoos]

28. Defund his office as Neal katyal suggests.

[RVN VET71]

38. Defund the Attorney General's Office? If that's possible, do it!

The Dems need to pull out all the stops in this fight, do everything they can to stop Barr, to expose Trump and, if it looks like a winnable path, impeach Barr and Trump.

Also, are indictments for Junior, Eric, Jared, and others still possible or has Barr effectively stopped them? If he hasn't, let's go forward. If he has, well, the lady in New York (State Attorney General Letitia James) may have some tools.

But this fight has gotten ugly thanks to Barr, and the Dems will have to get uglier to win it.

[Soxfan58]

21. Bingo!

[sop]

22. I suspect Barr is already preparing the pardons

for everyone still being investigated and in jeopardy, just like he did for G. H.W. Bush. He's also probably launching a new investigation into the old investigation, to rip the lid off the Clinton Collusion and FBI Spying scandals, just in time for the 2020 campaign. I'll bet Biden will be implicated somehow.

[watoos]

29. Barr already started investigating the FBI and Democrats.

[rzemanfl]

31. Gotta wash socks. BBL. n/t

[lunatica]

47. What does this mean?

I’ve seen it repeated before so I assume it’s a reference to something I missed.

[.99center]

49. "to rip the lid off the Clinton Collusion and FBI Spying scandals"

[Botany]

23. Fait accompli

Barr stopped the Mueller investigation before Mueller and company could issue any
charging statements. Barr then stated that anybody who was not charged by Mr.
Mueller was going to be redacted from the Mueller report. Fait accompli!


BTW What we are seeing in real time is that Trump and the Republicans are all but
saying, "Yes it was a dirty election and we worked with the Russian to fix the outcome.
And yes we are gonna cover it up and spit in the eye of American people and break
any law or rule of ethical behavior in doing so."

[GoCubsGo]

26. It started becoming obvious with that teasing about the report dropping a few weeks before it did.

One could tell that something fishy was going on there. I don't believe Mueller was anywhere near finished with his investigation.

[watoos]

33. I'm sorry but Democrats will carry more clout

if they start impeachment hearings. Barr stated that he would release grand jury testimony for impeachment proceedings, call him on it. The juicy shit is in the grand jury testimony that is hidden. Congress under impeachment hearings can demand that the courts expedite their decisions over contempt charges. Going through regular committee meetings will not get answers until after the election.

People who say we must let this play out are saying, let's wait until after the elections where we have no guarantee that trump will lose. We also have no guarantee that even if Trump loses in 2020 that he will leave office.

I'm sorry but the arguments for the wait and see crowd are growing weaker and weaker.

[The Wizard]

39. "Barr stated

that he would release grand jury testimony for impeachment proceedings."
This assumes Barr has the capacity to be honest. William Barr and the word honest should never be in the same sentence. He proves that whenever he speaks. Subverting the judicial system is anti American and just so Republican.

[Raster]

34. Of course he did. Barr* is a rethuglican* fixer...

...plain and simple.

[Danascot]

35. Seth Abramson had a couple of twitter threads that spell out

a number of issues that didn't make sense when it was announced that Mueller had wrapped up his investigation. They do make sense if Barr shut it down.

1/ In January we learned Mueller needed to delay Rick Gates' sentencing hearing because Gates is cooperating with MULTIPLE ongoing investigations. With Manafort clamming up, Gates is Mueller's Manafort proxy—with Flynn, his top witness. So where are the Gates-enabled indictments?

2/ We learned over a year ago that George Nader has been granted IMMUNITY from criminal prosecution by Mueller so that he can describe his secret meetings with Prince, Kushner, Bannon, Flynn, the Emirati Crown Prince, Joel Zamel, and more. Where are the Nader-enabled indictments?

3/ Mueller told the federal court hearing Flynn's case that Flynn has given Mueller's team SIGNIFICANT cooperation in its criminal investigation—yet we can identify no indictments at all that Mueller would've been referring to in discussing Flynn's cooperation. So where are they?

4/ The House and Senate have now referred NUMEROUS WITNESSES to Mueller for prosecution for lying under oath—including witnesses with key information on the foci of Mueller's investigation that he can't get elsewhere. The cases for perjury are strong—so where are the indictments?

https://threader.app/thread/1106278712838897669

Does this sound like Mueller to anyone? Not to me.

(1) Mueller told Corsi he'd indict him if he didn't cut a deal.
(2) Mueller explained to Corsi both the indictment and the deal.
(3) Corsi gave Mueller the middle finger—and he did it on YouTube.
(4) Mueller didn't indict Corsi.

Does this sound like Mueller to anyone? Not to me.

(1) Mueller had Flynn on lobbying and conspiracy to kidnap charges.
(2) Mueller cut a deal with Flynn—presumably to get his superiors.
(3) Flynn cooperated fully—per Mueller.
(3) Mueller indicted no one who was Flynn's superior.

Does this sound like Mueller to anyone? Not to me.

(1) Mueller fought months to get testimony from a grand jury witness (Miller).
(2) Mueller fought months to get documents from a state-owned foreign corp.
(3) Mueller gave up without getting either the witness or the documents.

Does this sound like Mueller to anyone? Not to me.

(1) Mueller is prosecuting Roger Stone in November.
(2) The facts underlying Stone's charges suggest he's a Trump-Russia link.
(3) Mueller is reporting in now—though Stone may cooperate and give him critical info for his report.

Does this sound like Mueller to anyone? Not to me.

https://threader.app/thread/1109316440933494784

[Laura PourMeADrink]

41. Flynn hasn't been sentenced yet, has he?

[spanone]

37. Obvious.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

40. Dems should come up with a couple simple, biting

memes about this whole charade and repeat over and over up to election. But move focus to protecting vote and protecting ACA

Too early to be clever with example, but nothing too in the weeds.

[kentuck]

43. I think you are right.

I have thought so since I heard Barr and Rosenstein were working so closely. They landed the plane.

[malaise]

45. I think they crashed it

This won't end well

[lunatica]

48. Or they landed it in the swamp, in quicksand

Never count your eggs....

[wiggs]

44. I believe he can influence the spin-off investigations as well. If he can, he will. nt