He looks creepy.
A little late, but revelations last week that begin casting doubt on the Mueller Report made it worth the wait. Plus, Mueller’s speech last week brought it back into the headlines anyway (I had considered running into gun control instead because of the Virginia Beach mass shooting, but the police didn’t release a motive yet so I’d like to wait, plus this story is older).
Kind of working from recent to earliest, I’ll start with what we learned Friday: Special Counsel Mueller edited a transcript in his report so that it would hint at obstruction of justice, instead of showing that it was merely a lawyer doing lawyer stuff with other lawyers who lawyer. Mueller seems to be of the “kill all the lawyers” school of thought, because he characterizes normal defense activity as “obstruction of justice”. Heaven forbid the legal system protect someone from the Left’s show trials and purges!
And Mueller certainly is all-in on the show trial thing. Remember- he told us that “If [he] had had confidence the President clearly did not commit a crime, [he] would have said so”. Which comes out to “guilty until proven innocent”, which is not the role of a prosecutor or special counsel or anyone in the DOJ. Democrats pounced on it as meaning “guilty”. Taking a look at the manifest of the Mueller Team, it’s no surprise he’d make such a political conclusion about what happened, nor is it a surprise that his report would edit the facts. Mueller loaded his team with Democrats, and found nothing, so this was the best he could say. Basically saying that if there is no evidence of a crime then it probably happened, a tactic employed by Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid against Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney. A tactic employed against Brett Kavanaugh. Democrats were very upset when the shoe was on the other foot re: Pizzagate, but they never did make the claim of being able to take what they dish out.
Not pictured- A Native American. Image from Vox
One of the rare occasions where I can say this, but Elizabeth Warren is absolutely right. If President Trump were the average citizen, did not have the protections that being President afforded him, then the Democrats’ witch hunt would’ve left him as being just another of Mueller’s falsely accused victims. This wasn’t Mueller’s first rodeo when it comes to burying exculpatory evidence (he even hired someone who withheld such evidence- for those who don’t know, you’re not supposed to do that, basically it means you’re withholding evidence that someone is innocent), and it should surprise no one if the Mueller Report is full of it.
But We Don’t Have The Full Report!
Pelosi is full of it, she can probably read the redacted parts if she wants to (she, Nadler mentioned below, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had access to a version of the Mueller Report where only the grand jury testimony- the stuff Attorney General Barr has no ability to disclose- was redacted. All the classified stuff was in it. None of these parties even bothered to view it, no Democrat on the approved list looked at it, but five of the six permitted Republicans did view it. All that was censored in this version was two full lines of text and parts of 7 other lines, that’s it, unless the lines read “this is all a lie, Trump is a Russian spy” then there’s no way there’s anything in it that Democrats would need to know to dispute Mueller’s conclusions outlined elsewhere in the report, and certainly not anything big on obstruction unless the lines read “Disregard our conclusion construction, because Trump is guilty of justice obstruction”). And by the way, Mueller wanted less of the report to be public! Attorney General Barr, accused of being just a Trump crony by concealing parts of the report, released MORE of it than Mueller himself had asked be released!
Rep. Adam Schiff left, Rep. Devin Nunes right, image from NY Post.
As for the redacted portions that everyone is complaining about, let me first make the point that Democrats used to be very serious about redacting things. Remember when House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) chided Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) because his memo showing how fake the Russian investigation’s origins were “risks public exposure of sensitive sources and methods for no legitimate purpose”? (Ironically, that same memo involved Schiff trying to expose sensitive sources and methods simply to counter Nunes, something that’s not as legitimate as Nunes exposing wrongdoing by the government.) Here we have the DOJ- NOT Attorney General Barr, but Justice Department lawyers- telling them that the redacted portions can’t be revealed because of ongoing cases. Democrats now care as much about security threats or threats to ongoing court cases as they did when Hillary was passing classified info through her unsecured server (that may have been hacked, if Mueller’s statement about not having evidence means collusion took place then the FBI’s response that they have “not found any evidence the servers were compromised” certainly MUST also mean that Hillary’s servers WERE compromised.). In other words- they don’t care at all.
Speaking of things that Democrats don’t care about- as had been made apparent by Kavanaugh and even the attempt to use the “Do Not Fly” list to determine who gets to own a gun- we come to rule of law. Laws only matter if they help Democrats. It’s only the “law of the land” if it comes from a Democrat Administration. Remember all the times we heard how Obamacare was now “law of the land”? If they don’t like a “law of the land”, this suddenly unbreakable moral absolute is smeared and fought rabidly in court, usually the 9th Circuit where they’re guaranteed a favorable ruling, and still disobey when they lose as we see with anything immigration. And in some cases, they work to deprive others of its protections. I mentioned their efforts to destroy due process, now we have Democrats ordering AG Barr to break the law.
AG Barr does not have the authority to unredact the parts of the Mueller Report that Democrats want him to, as you saw in an earlier USA Today link. If he did unredact the items as requested (the grand jury items), he’d be breaking the law. Democrats legally cannot subpoena AG Barr to force him to break the law by handing over this material. So since AG Barr won’t break the law, Democrats will hold him in contempt of Congress. They’ve even talked of fining him, or imprisoning him. Why? Because he won’t break the law. Like Elizabeth Warren said- if Trump weren’t President, thanks to Democrats like her he’d be in jail. Probably for refusing to break the law, or for daring to have a lawyer since as mentioned before a lawyer doing legal lawyer stuff is now criminal and obstruction of justice.
It’s not the first time that Democrats tried to criminalize abiding by the law. Remember the Stormy Daniels thing, how Democrats said Trump should be impeached or arrested or whatever because he did not report the payoff as a campaign expense? Well, legally it WASN’T a campaign expense, it’s against the law to report hush money as a campaign expense, so Trump would’ve committed a crime if he had done what Democrats say he’s a criminal for NOT doing. Again, as Warren said, thanks to Democrats if Trump weren’t President he’d be in jail, for obeying the law.
Where The Title Comes From
_I was tempted to illustrate the idea of a naked man with a sexy image of Cloud given a joint appreciation the venerable originator of this blog and I have of his form, but that would be crossing the line so instead have a picture of Nikita Khrushchev from the back cover of Khrushchev Remembers.
“The Emperor’s New Cloak”- a fable about how some despot told a garment maker that he must sew the most beautiful cloak ever, so he faked it and said only the enlightened could see it, which led to the despot walking around naked and all the “wise” people claiming that they could see the beautiful non-existent cloak.
This cloak has been around for some time with Democrats- their “nuanced” arguments. Whenever a politician says it’s a nuanced argument (aside from some cases where they’re right, like when saying that their position is too nuanced to cover in 240 characters on Twitter or in a 30sec clip) they mean that they’re right and you’re too stupid to understand. Like when the Left tells us that the reason for ISIS is that not enough people in the Middle East have jobs (fun fact- medical workers and many others who had jobs in England and other parts of the world joined ISIS, hardly fitting for that “they have no jobs in the Middle East” explanation). If you don’t think unemployment and slight reduction in crop output is enough to cause folks to ground up children and feed them to their starving parents or behead people or set people on fire then you’re just an idiot and should surrender all control of your life to your elitist liberal betters! So goes the Left’s argument anyway, their “nuanced” argument about the origins of Islamic terrorism.
Regardless of if ISIS says they are Islamic or regardless of if ISIS says they’re at war with the U.S., they aren’t simply because our State Department under Obama decreed that they weren’t (as you see at this link– I was advised against using Breitbart because some of you all don’t like it, but this is a direct quote and I couldn’t find it anywhere else on a Google search and it is 4:41am and I have to work in 4 hours and I don’t have time to scour CSPAN for this!). As the Obama Administration said, it doesn’t matter what ISIS says or does, it just matters what they tell you about it. Afterall, the media overhypes terrorist attacks, said Obama, and a year later he decided to attend a baseball game with notorious butcher Raul Castro in the wake of an Islamic terror attack on an American ally. Imagine if Trump attended the Bolshoi Ballet with Putin after Brussels got bombed? It’s ok when Obama does such a thing, he’s a hero, but Trump is evil. Period.
But it’s fine. Terror is a-ok! Just ask AOC who defended Ilhan Omar. Omar is on the record about terrorism- she believes it’s a joke and laughs at how Americans are concerned about it after the attempted and successful attacks on us. She thinks it’s maybe xenophobia because we don’t like strange words, or maybe Islamophobia, or just racism. Certainly nothing to do with the many people killed by the terrorists that she joked about- afterall, she was recorded as saying that her worldview is that the American military is equal to terrorists who kill 200 civilians in a shopping mall. Omar believes al Qaeda has just as much a right to violence as any other country and we shouldn’t be criticizing them. I’m not spinning anything, that’s WHAT SHE SAID! And Democrats backed her 100%.
The people in her district that voted for her, her friends in Congress, her leaders in Congress and the Democratic Party who fight every effort opposed to her, and liberals like Stephen Colbert who invited Omar onto his program, all of them are obviously smarter than us by virtue of being Democrats, so surely they are aware of Omar’s views, and by trying to downplay or hide them they clearly A: believe in these views and B: KNOW they are wrong otherwise they’d be just like her and telling anyone within earshot what they really think, instead of burying it as best as they can.
Also, they spy on YOU.
Now, isn’t it fair to say that a political party that knowingly is aiding terrorism (supporting pro-terrorist Omar, refusing to combat Islamic extremism while attacking people who do, giving Iran billions of dollars and a pathway to a nuclear bomb to send to its terrorist allies) while obstructing the functions of the elected President of the United States and the Judicial Branch is a party of traitors? Or is there a nuanced argument to make in support of them? Because even if their is, murderers are still profiting by Democrats’ actions that Democrats MUST KNOW are aiding murderers (afterall, the Left is smarter!) so we still have thousands of cases of manslaughter against them.
“Nuanced” Report
That was a bit of a digression, but the nuances that Democrats see around the report all amount to one thing- they don’t believe the Mueller Report says what it says.
It’s interesting that folks like House Intelligence Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY), who can see almost all of the report, refuse to even look at the lightly redacted version and then say that there was collusion with Russia. The Mueller Report states:
- “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government”
- “The investigation did not identify evidence that any U.S. persons knowingly or intentionally coordinated with the IRA’s interference operation”- the IRA being Russia’s Internet Research Agency
- At various other points Mueller’s report confirms that there was no link, to the point that some items parroted as fact by the media was entirely fake (such as claims that George Papadopolous and Carter Page were indicted for their ties to Russia and claims about meetings that didn’t happen).
Yet Nadler insists the report DID show there was collusion, in total contrast to what MUELLER said as you can read in the first bullet point above! Nadler outright says that no collusion is impeachable if proven true, or maybe he’s saying it’s impeachable if it’s proven true that Mueller had nothing for obstruction of justice. It’s hard to tell, Democrats think law-abiding behavior is impeachable, based on what we saw with AG Barr.
This is where the “nuanced” arguments come in. You have to be smart in order to understand that “did not establish” means “soooo much evidence for it happening that Trump should be shot”. Just ask Blumenthal who very clearly read the report and has high reading comprehension. Mueller said they could not establish that it took place, he doesn’t say that it DIDN’T take place, and the Left was clinging to lifelines like that, clinging desperately to the Left’s cherished idea of “a person is guilty if we say so”, until Mueller threw them a life vest last week.
Legally Bound
Mueller’s statements last week raised another question. He claimed that the DOJ rules would not allow him to prosecute Trump (fun fact- the attorney general says Mueller could’ve at least reached a conclusion on whether there was a crime if there was evidence for one) so he didn’t really try to find any crimes. If that is the case, didn’t he just waste a lot of time and money? If the conclusion Democrats took from this is accurate, that Mueller didn’t find evidence and didn’t bother investigating because he couldn’t charge, then that means Mueller’s investigation shouldn’t have even started unless Democrats like the idea of wasting $20 million just to keep a few ex-Clintonites employed.
Moreover, we were told in February of 2018 by lawyers who worked with Mueller’s team that Mueller could indict Trump. Other legal scholars said Mueller could indict. Pelosi said Trump could be indicted. MSNBC said that Mueller might ask the attorney general to indict Trump. That sure is a lot of people who thought Mueller had the power to indict, quite a few of whom would KNOW if Mueller could. Did they lie? Or did Mueller?
And, didn’t CNN already declare that Mueller’s Report cleared Trump so much that it was a “gift to the government of Russia”?
Impeachment
Anyone remember when Dems said Rod Rosenstein was a patriotic hero? Yet here he is saying there was no collusion and no obstruction while Dems ignore their hero’s words.
Democrats never stopped saying they have obvious indictable evidence that Trump colluded with Russia. Even though Mueller- with $25 million, 40 FBI agents, 18 Democrat attorneys, and 2 years- couldn’t show anything happened despite how thoroughly they examined everything right down to who tweeted what, Democrats have always been saying there was enough evidence of crimes taking place. The best they can do is say there’s a nuanced argument. Nixon was out on his ass. Clinton was impeached by the House. But the best Democrats these days have is a nuanced argument that only pundits can see, despite all of this evidence that should have indicted Trump cleanly.
And even though Mueller didn’t say in his remarks last week that he wanted impeachment, the media looked for more of these “nuanced” messages. To be fair we’ve established that Mueller probably does hate Trump and want him impeached so perhaps the Left’s attempts to parse his words have some basis in reality. Mueller, who likes hiding evidence so that innocent people are convicted, who was friend to anti–Trump scoundrel Comey, and hired many partisan hacks to his team of investigators, certainly would be someone who’d want Trump out of office. Especially if Trump were to hurt his corrupt DOJ cronies, or any sweet deals Mueller has from his tenure.
Rep. Nadler, image from wikimedia commons
Of course, as mentioned with Nadler, Democrat politicians don’t even bother making a “nuanced” argument. They just outright lie about what the Mueller Report or speak like it doesn’t exist.. The narrative is so vital that they’re at the point of just saying that it happened and hoping you believe it. Between the press and Democrat politicians, billionaires, activists, etc. the Left has had a thousand times what Mueller brought to bear and still in two years found nothing, or are hiding their findings from Mueller. I mean, if they’re so confident it happened and say they have irrefutable evidence despite Mueller saying otherwise, they MUST be hiding evidence from the Mueller Probe, which ironically means that Democrats MUST be the ones obstructing justice. If we are to believe them, we must conclude they have evidence Mueller doesn’t have, thus we must conclude that they are obstructing justice by hiding it.
Of course, maybe sensing this argument, Mueller and Democrats came up with the previously mentioned “Mueller didn’t have the power to prosecute” line. Except he at least had the power to declare that crimes happened, and he wouldn’t have said he had no evidence of a crime if he had evidence of it, if he had the same evidence Adam Schiff must be hiding. To Mueller’s point about lacking the power to prosecute you definitely can’t prosecute someone if there is no evidence of a crime, unless you’re a Democrat. And Mueller said he had zero evidence to act on.
Mueller had no evidence of collusion, and only hints at obstruction of justice, at least as Mueller describes it. There can be no obstruction of justice if there is no crime. Mueller found no evidence of a crime thus justice could not have been obstructed. And for those of you saying that Trump’s obstruction succeeded in stopping Mueller from finding a crime- read the damn report. He says nothing of the kind. He does not link obstruction with not finding a crime. Or is that one of those nuanced argument bread crumb things we’re supposed to read into?
Misc. Annoyances
- Nadler saying that asking AG Barr to break the law to give them the unredacted Mueller Report was a “good-faith” effort by Democrats to get the report.
- Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D) is a twit, or he just proved that the FBI had a partisan grudge. Blumenthal said that the investigation into Trump began with “credible” accusations about Russia spying on behalf of Trump. The FBI warned the DNC in 2015 that Russia was going to hack them, and Russia did hack them in March of 2016. Trump wasn’t even a certainty for the nomination until April of 2016 when Sen. Cruz dropped out. So, according to Blumenthal, the first thing the FBI did when they learned their warning from 2015 came to pass was to investigate Trump who wasn’t even a certainty to be the candidate during all of this? Or is Blumenthal saying that Russia was helping Trump all along, as far back as 2015 when we didn’t even know he’d be a contender?
- Also, Blumenthal claims in the above link that investigating the origins of the probe that faked evidence (Comey himself said the evidence, the fake dossier, was unverified but told the FISA court judge it was verified, and that’s the least damning problem about it) to get a warrant and was full of biased operators is a distraction from the findings of the probe… that Trump colluded and obstructed (which is a total lie, it said no such thing, at best the Mueller Report left it open-ended on obstruction but was definite on collusion).
- Let’s do some reading of our own. According to the logic of CNN’s Chris Cilliza, he admits freely that President Obama is to blame for Hillary Clinton not facing charges and for the fabrication of evidence against Trump to start an investigation. Or does the Left believe that “setting the tone” only works when a Republican does it? If so, the Left is admitting its leaders are very weak.
- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) stated that Trump engaged in a cover-up, totally contrary to the Mueller Report’s conclusions, and then was offended that Trump didn’t want to meet with her immediately after she lied about him. And while lying about the report, Pelosi accused Attorney General Barr of lying because he just said what Mueller said, rather than the lie Pelosi wants to hear. That’s right- Pelosi, in addition to holding Barr in contempt for NOT breaking the law, wants to punish Barr because he told the truth. This from the party of science and truth and justice… maybe this is what “social justice” looks like, what it looks like when everyone has their own truth. Also, does anyone else remember Pelosi demanding Hillary be punished for lying to Congress? Because if you remember that, you’re as much a liar as Pelosi.
- I also want to point something else out. For all those talking of collusion (who were quiet when Bill Clinton repaid Chinese investors in his campaign by giving them ICBMs) as if it were fact and for those who say “well even if Trump is innocent, based on Mueller’s indictments he surrounded himself with bad people”, I’d like to point out that this is the closest look we’ve had at a Presidential campaign. If anyone else’s campaign were investigated, its members held to scrutiny, we’d find some pretty horrible things. Heck, even at the Congressional level we have Democrats hiding sexual assault by their staffers, so imagine what a Mueller-type investigation of them would show.
Lots of gripes here, but the long and short is Democrats are lying. They started the narrative, when nothing came of it they decided to keep it going. Why? Look at the massive Democratic field. Their front-runner has to hide himself, and the rest are only electable in the “glass of water” districts Pelosi spoke of. To paraphrase Obama when he was attacking Republicans- if you can’t paint yourself as someone to run towards, paint your enemy as someone to run from. So despite Mueller’s report, collusion still happened. Obstruction must have happened. The only bright light is that a few people seem not to be buying into this, based on the ratings plummeting for various liberal programs who dealt in this farce.
And despite giving away ICBMs, I still kinda like 90s Bill Clinton. Shows what a good personality can do I guess, or maybe I’m just a battered husband at heart. Image taken from FAS.org, but I assume it’s originally from whatever that writing in the lower right-hand corner says.
C-Gaymer 