Robert Mueller, Former F.B.I. Director, Is Named Special Counsel for Russia Investigation

Mueller wisely found tons of illegal activity with Trump and his family not related to his mandate so he passed all that information to the state's attorney generals where it took place.

Great move on his part.

DD

 

As you say, jcf, it's Abramson's pulling together the threads for a status report. My guess at the answer to your question is that Mueller and team started off with what was known and pursued the information anywhere and everywhere it could go. Big net. As a law enforcement official, where he found evidence that lay outside what he seems to have narrowly defined as his lane, he referred it to the appropriate investigative agencies.

 

I saw a 10:36 clip of that segment, CW. I thought it was tight.

 

....

 

From Timothy Snyder: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1117433512863371267.html

0/50 Why we do think that Mr. Trump owes a debt to Mr. Putin? Here are fifty reasons. All of the facts are a matter of public record, and all of the sources can be found in my book The Road to Unfreedom. #RoadToUnfreedom
1/50 In 1984, Russian gangsters began to launder money by buying and selling apartment units in Trump Tower (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 220).
2/50 In 1986, Mr. Trump was courted by Soviet diplomats, who suggested that a bright future awaited him in Moscow (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 220).
3/50 In 1987, the Soviet state paid for Mr. Trump to visit Moscow, putting him up in a suite that was certainly bugged (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 220).
4/50 In 2006, Russians and other citizens of the former Soviet Union financed Trump SoHo, granting Mr. Trump 18% of the profits -- although he put up no money himself (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 221).
5/50 In 2008, the Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev in effect gave Mr. Trump $55 million in an unusual real estate deal. In 2016, Mr. Rybolovlev appeared in places where Mr. Trump campaigned (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 221).
6/50 In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. explained that the Trump Organization was dependent upon Russia. (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 221).
7/50 In 2010, the Russian propaganda server RT helped American white supremacists to spread the lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. In 2011, Mr. Trump became the most prominent backer of this lie. (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 223).
8/50 Mr. Trump was endorsed by the Russian political technologist Konstantin Rykov in 2012 (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 102).
9/50 In April 2013, the FBI busted two gambling rings inside Trump Tower, which according to authorities were run by a Russian citizen. The US attorney who ordered the raid was later fired by Mr. Trump (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 103).
10/50 Mr. Trump expressed the wish, on 18 June 2013, to be Mr. Putin's "best friend." (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 102).
11/50 Mr. Trump was paid $20 million by Russians to spectate at a beauty pageant in summer 2013. The man who did the work, Aras Agalarov, would later help to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russians. (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 102).
12/50 In summer 2014, a Russian advance team was sent to the United States to plan the cyber war of 2016 (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 194).
13/50 In 2014 Mr. Putin's advisor Sergey Glazyev anticipated the "termination" of the American elite (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 226).
14/50 In 2014 a Russian think tank, the Izborsk Club, outlined the principles of a new information war to be fought against the United States (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 226).
15/50 Steve Bannon met with Russian energy executives in 2014 and 2015, and tested messages about Putin on American voters. He would later run Mr. Trump's campaign (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 194).
16/50 In late 2014 Russia penetrated the email networks of the White House, the Department of State, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 194).
17/50 When Mr. Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015, Russia's Internet Research Agency created and staffed a new American Department. (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 227).
18/50 In October 2015, while running for president, Mr. Trump signed a letter of intent to have Russians build a tower in Moscow and put his name on it. The Trump Organization planned to give its penthouse to Mr. Putin as a present (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 222).
19/50 In October 2015, Mr. Trump tweeted that "Putin loves Donald Trump" (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 222).
20/50 Felix Sater, who had brokered deals between the Trump Organization and Russian investors, wrote in November 2015 that "Our boy can become president of the United States and we can engineer it" (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 222).
21/50 Mr. Trump was endorsed in late 2015 by the think tank of the pro-Kremlin oligarch Konstantin Malofeev (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 150).
22/50 In early 2016, the chair of the foreign relations committee of the Russian parliament said that Mr. Trump could "drive the Western locomotive right off the rails" (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 218).
23/50 In February 2016, Mr. Putin's cyber advisor boasted: "We are on the verge of having something in the information arena that will allow us to talk to the Americans as equals" (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 227).
24/50 Russian military intelligence penetrated the Democratic National Committee in March 2016 as well as personal accounts of leading Democrats. Stolen emails were then used to discredit Hillary Clinton and aid Mr. Trump. (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 232).
25/50 George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy advisor of the Trump campaign, is told by Russians in April 2016 that "dirt" on Hillary Clinton is available. He then met with Mr. Trump. He was later convicted of lying to the FBI (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 240).

 

From Timothy Snyder (part 2)

26/50 A Russian military intelligence officer bragged in May 2016 that his organization would take revenge on Hillary Clinton on behalf of Mr. Putin (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 227).


27/50 Carter Page, an advisor of the Trump campaign, traveled to Moscow in July 2016. He then worked with success to make the Republican platform friendlier to Russia at the Republican National Convention (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 214).


28/50 General Michael Flynn, an advisor of the Trump campaign and then Mr. Trump's national security advisor, called himself "General Misha" and followed and retweeted Russian material from five Russian accounts. He later confessed to a federal crime (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 241).


29/50 Mr. Trump requested, on 17 June 2016, that Russia search for Hillary Clinton's emails. That same day Russian military intelligence began a phishing campaign to do just that (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 232).


30/50 Some 22,000 emails stolen by Russia were released right before the Democratic National Convention, on 22 July 2016. (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 232).


31/50 Thanks to Russia's Internet Research Agency, 126 million Americans saw Russian propaganda designed to aid Mr. Trump in 2016. Almost none of them were aware that this was happening (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 230).


32/50 Over the course of 2016 some fifty thousand Russian bots and some four thousand human accounts exploited Twitter to influence American public opinion on behalf of Mr. Trump. Almost no Americans were aware of this (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 230).


33/50 In 2016, Russia sought to break into the electoral websites of at least thirty-nine American states (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 231).


34/50 Throughout 2016, Russian elites referred to Mr. Trump as "our president" (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 218).


35/50 Throughout 2016, Russian journalists were instructed to portray Mr. Trump positively and Hillary Clinton negatively (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 218).


36/50 In June 2016 the leaders of the Trump campaign, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump, Jr., and Paul Manafort met with Russians in Trump Tower as part of, as the broker of the meeting called it, "the Russian government's support for Trump" (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 261).


37/50 Mr. Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort resigned in August 2016 after news broke that he had received $12.7 million in cash from a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician. Mr. Manafort was later convicted of crimes (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 236).


38/50 When Mr. Trump seemed to be in trouble when a tape of his advocacy of sexual assault was published on 7 October 2016, emails stolen by Russia were released to change the subject (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 233).


39/50 Mr. Trump personally encouraged his followers to explore the emails that Russia had stolen in tweets of 31 October and 4 November 2016 (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 232).


40/50 In the months between Mr. Trump's nomination as the Republican candidate and the election, anonymous limited liability ("offshore") companies furiously purchased his properties (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 222).


41/50 After Mr. Trump was accorded the victory in the presidential election in November 2016, he was given a standing ovation in the Russian parliament (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 218).


42/50 After Trump was accorded the victory in the presidential election, he called Mr. Putin to be congratulated (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 218).


43/50 In December 2016, before the inauguration, Michael Flynn illegally met with Russian officials to discuss Russia-friendly policy. One of his aides explained: "Russia has just thrown the U.S.A. elections to" Mr. Trump (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 242).


44/50 After Mr. Trump's victory, the leading man of the Russian media, Dmitry Kiselev, celebrated the end of human rights and democracy as US policy (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 218).


45/50 In May 2017, Mr. Trump fired James Comey for taking part in an investigation of Russia's cyberwar against the United States, and then bragged about doing so to Russian officials in the Oval Office (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 245).


46/50 In June 2017, Mr. Putin essentially admitted that Russia had intervened in the election, saying that he had never denied that "Russian volunteers" had carried out a cyberwar on behalf of Mr. Trump (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 227).


47/50 In June 2017, Mr. Trump ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, who had been tasked to carry out an investigation of Russian interference. The White House Counsel refused to carry out the order. Russia then began a campaign to slander Mr. Mueller (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 246).


48/50 In September 2017, a Russian parliamentarian said on national television that the American security services "slept through" as Russia chose the US president (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 225).


49/50 2017-2018 Mr. Mueller's investigation led to the indictment of Russia's Internet Research Agency, several Russian military intelligence officers, and multiple associates and campaign officials of Mr. Trump. It also produced a report that we have not yet been allowed to read


50/50 In June 2018, Mr. Putin confirmed before the international press that he had wanted Mr. Trump to win. At that same summit, in Helsinki, Mr. Trump said that he trusted Mr. Putin more than his own advisors. (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 227).

 

starr attempting to prepare excuses for the Mueller report's findings? And using both fox news' marketing term and trump's "angry Democrat" talking points... could he be more obvious?


Ken Starr: Mueller Report Might Not Be ‘Written In A Fair And Balanced Way’

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...ght-not-be-written-in-a-fair-and-balanced-way

 

From Seth Abramson:

"When American media was, en masse, furiously predicting the exact date of the Mueller Report’s release—getting its prediction wrong on at least eight occasions dating back to the fall of 2017—it told its readers and viewers that Mueller was “farming out” a high percentage of his investigative leads to other jurisdictions. In 2017 and 2018, media took that fact merely as a sign that Mueller was almost done with his work, and not, as we must see it in 2019, as a sign that Mueller was, well, farming out a high percentage of his investigative leads to other jurisdictions. In other words, what we read on Thursday, April 18—when a heavily redacted version of the Mueller Report will be released to Congress and the public—will be nothing more than (a) a brutally edited version, of (b) a summary, of (c) a massive case file that has itself (d) been largely sent elsewhere for investigation by other federal prosecutors. Anyone who thinks the Trump-Russia investigation can be in any sense summarized by a two-topic 300- or 400-page report that is missing a quarter of its pages in has not been following the Trump-Russia story from the start."

https://www.newsweek.com/william-barr-robert-mueller-report-only-beginning-1399317

"I’ve written two books on Trump-Russia collusion—Proof of Collusion, released at the end of 2018, and Proof of Conspiracy, forthcoming in August—and even in avoiding much discussion of Trump’s obstruction and witness tampering in these books (as these actions were already known by most, by virtue of having occurred publicly) my research swelled to nearly 1,000 pages. Because the books were written in a “government-report” style—with most sentences containing a discrete block of evidence and footnoted to one or more major-media citations—those 1,000 pages were the most condensed version of the Trump-Russia story I could tell. So the notion that Mueller was going to tell in full the tale of Trump-Russia collusion in the half of a heavily redacted 300- or 400-page summary not focused on obstruction of justice was always fanciful."

 

Ken Starr should just be ignored at this point.

 

Continuing from my preceding post...

"...the Trump-Russia timeline reveals that the president is susceptible to criminal liability for bribery, money laundering, illegal solicitation of foreign campaign donations, aiding and abetting computer crimes, RICO offenses, and involvement in any of several crimes of fraud, including wire fraud, bank fraud, identity fraud, or the defrauding of the United States. All these offenses could be construed as “collusive” if they were committed, as the facts now in evidence suggest some of them may have been, in order to jointly benefit the Trumps (and their allies) and foreign nationals from any of the countries listed above.

The offenses I’ve just enumerated are now being investigated—often using euphemistic language, such as being described as “an investigation into the Trump inauguration”—by some combination of the following entities: the Southern District of New York; the Eastern District of New York; the Eastern District of Virginia; the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C.; the Central District of California; the offices of the Attorneys General for New York, Maryland, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia; the FBI; the CIA; the District Attorney for New York City; various House committees, including Ways and Means, Financial Services, Judiciary, Oversight, and Intelligence; the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; the Special Counsel’s Office (which still has a grand jury seated that it says continues to work “robustly,” and whose former staffers have been sent elsewhere to prosecute cases like the one again Roger Stone set for trial this fall); and at least one unnamed jurisdiction in which Trump’s former deputy campaign manager, Rick Gates, will be testifying.

We also know that evidence Mueller compiled is being used in several completed investigations about to go to trial, including the case against Bijan Kian that Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, will be testifying in this summer. Any or all of these investigations could lead to new indictments, and/or new revelations—perhaps through the emergence of new cooperating witnesses—that in time could lead to further new investigations and indictments. And of course the fact that the Southern District of New York has already named Trump an unindicted co-conspirator in felony campaign crimes—meaning that he would be under indictment and on bail or in pre-trial detention this very moment were he not the president—cannot be forgotten.

All of the crimes being investigated by the entities above are potentially impeachable offenses, with at least one—bribery—being specifically enumerated in the United States Constitution as an impeachable offense. Virtually all of the offenses, including the felony campaign crimes we already know Trump has been accused of by federal prosecutors, are more serious than the offenses the Republicans impeached President Bill Clinton for not long ago."

 

Never-Trumpers will not accept the Mueller Report’s conclusion the same way they did not accept the 2016 election results.

For many of them, they never accepted the 2000 or 2004 election results.

These people are DANGEROUS. There may come a time in the future when we are forced to take serious action against such an unruly hoard.

 

Are you off your meds today?

 

so, where can we read this?

 

The usual suspects are all stirred up. Entertaining.

Eyes on the prize:

https://www.justice.gov/sco

 

It's sad and amazing how many people have decided everything about the report, the redactions, and seemingly-iron-clad conclusions without reading a page of it. And I don't just mean on this BBS.

If we want to move into a time period where we make our own realities and insist on them, that has a really obvious historical precedent: the appropriately named "Dark Ages." Some people are literally choosing this path, whether they admit it to themselves or not.