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Five Things I Learned From the Mueller Report
A careful reading of the dense document delivers some urgent insights.
I spent the week after the release of Special Counsel Robert Muellers report going through it section by section and writing a kind of diary of the endeavor. My goal was less to summarize the report than to force myself to think about each factual, legal, and analytical portion of Muellers discussion, which covers a huge amount of ground.
Here are five conclusions I drew from the exercise:
The president committed crimes.
There is no way around it. Attorney General William Barrs efforts to clear President Donald Trump, both in his original letter and in his press conference the morning of the reports release, are wholly unconvincing when you actually spend time with the document itself.
Mueller does not accuse the president of crimes. He doesnt have to. But the facts he recounts describe criminal behavior. They describe criminal behavior even if we allow the presidentsand the attorney generalsargument that facially valid exercises of presidential authority cannot be obstructions of justice. They do this because they describe obstructive activity that does not involve facially valid exercises of presidential power at all.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/ben-wittes-five-conclusions-mueller-report/588259/
I spent the week after the release of Special Counsel Robert Muellers report going through it section by section and writing a kind of diary of the endeavor. My goal was less to summarize the report than to force myself to think about each factual, legal, and analytical portion of Muellers discussion, which covers a huge amount of ground.
Here are five conclusions I drew from the exercise:
The president committed crimes.
There is no way around it. Attorney General William Barrs efforts to clear President Donald Trump, both in his original letter and in his press conference the morning of the reports release, are wholly unconvincing when you actually spend time with the document itself.
Mueller does not accuse the president of crimes. He doesnt have to. But the facts he recounts describe criminal behavior. They describe criminal behavior even if we allow the presidentsand the attorney generalsargument that facially valid exercises of presidential authority cannot be obstructions of justice. They do this because they describe obstructive activity that does not involve facially valid exercises of presidential power at all.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/ben-wittes-five-conclusions-mueller-report/588259/
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Five Things I Learned From the Mueller Report (Original Post)
demmiblue
Apr 2019
OP
underpants
(182,866 posts)1. 👀 Keystone Kollusion
Long read. Ill get back to it later. Thanks.
empedocles
(15,751 posts)2. Strong article. Mueller did some great, important, very useful work.
By providing a kind of well documented 'certified evidence', of criminal activities; while not attacking trump directly, his impact may be more powerful. Much harder to dismiss as a partisan effort 'to get trump.'
[The way some thought Mueller should bring down trump; then be so dismissive of Mueller for not doing so, is not useful].
Big Blue Marble
(5,124 posts)3. Wittes also effectively points out the predicate for impeachment
and sooner rather than later. As I read it, Wittes is speaking directly to the House:
impeach now or regret it later. And I might add, Wittes is the opposite of a hair-on-fire
kind of guy!
empedocles
(15,751 posts)4. I like Wittes and Tribe a lot. However, as some seasoned, ol' pol once
said, [best as I remember], of JFK's 'best and brightest' appointees - I wish one of them, had successfully gotten elected to at least Sheriff.