Tag: Mueller Report

Trump exults in his Mueller revenge play

The president’s appointees have done more to unwind the Russia probe in a few months than years of complaints from the Oval Office ever achieved.

“Hope you had fun investigating me,” reads a meme that has been reposted by President Donald Trump, his family and his allies several times over the last week on social media. “Now it’s my turn.”

More than one year after the Russia investigation ended and six months before he faces re-election, Trump is getting his revenge—and his most trusted advisers, some newly installed throughout the Justice Department and intelligence community since his impeachment acquittal three months ago, are helping him do it.

In the last week, Attorney General William Barr and acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell have arguably gone further in aiding Trump’s campaign against the so-called “deep state” than anyone in the last three years. Continue reading.

Judge demands unredacted Mueller report, questions Barr’s ‘credibility’

The Hill logoA federal judge on Thursday ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to hand over to him a copy of the unredacted Mueller report and accused Attorney General William Barr of misrepresenting its findings in the days before it was submitted to Congress last year.

Judge Reggie B. Walton, a federal district court judge in Washington, said that he could not reconcile Barr’s public comments in April 2019 about the report with the actual findings that former special counsel Robert Muelleroutlined.

“The inconsistencies between Attorney General Barr’s statements, made at a time when the public did not have access to the redacted version of the Mueller Report to assess the veracity of his statements, and portions of the redacted version of the Mueller Report that conflict with those statements cause the Court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary,” Walton wrote in his decision. Continue reading.

Trump continues to mislead Americans about Mueller’s report — the ‘most damning document ever produced’ about a sitting president

AlterNet logoEleven months have passed since former special counsel Robert Mueller completed his final report for the Russia investigation: Mueller submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019, and it was subsequently released publicly in redacted form. Many other Trump-related scandals have captured the headlines since then — most notably, the Ukraine scandal and the president’s impeachment. And the Moscow Project, in a February 18 article, discusses the steps that President Donald Trump has taken to make the public forget what is in the Mueller Report.

That isn’t to say that Trump doesn’t bring up Mueller’s investigation, but when he does, he typically dismisses it as a “witch hunt” that turned up nothing of importance — which, as the Moscow Project points out, is a huge mischaracterization.

“As with the rest of the Trump team’s arguments, their attacks on the Mueller investigation continue to be both irrelevant to the charges at hand and outright false,” the Moscow Project asserts in its article. “The Mueller investigation not only resulted in 37 indictments, including eight convictions — seven of which came via guilty pleas. It also uncovered both collusion and obstruction of justice. It is vital that the public understand the truth.” Continue reading.

Democrats tell court they need Mueller grand jury documents for impeachment trial

The Hill logoLawyers for the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee told a federal appeals court on Monday that secret grand jury materials from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe are needed for President Trump’s impeachment inquiry and likely Senate trial.

House Democrats, who have repeatedly pushed the Justice Department for the urgent release of the redacted materials, made the case for the documents’ continued relevance, even as the impeachment scope has narrowed. The Justice Department is arguing that the House should not have access to the documents.

“The Department of Justice (DOJ) takes extraordinary positions in this case,” the House Judiciary Committee told the D.C. Circuit Court in a court filing on Monday. “It does so to avoid disclosing grand-jury material needed for the House’s impeachment of President Trump and the Senate’s trial to remove him from office.”

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Trump’s Ukraine extortion scheme began as a plot to undermine special counsel Mueller: report

AlterNet logoA new report from the Washington Post claims that President Donald Trump’s efforts to shake down the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden actually began as an effort to undermine the work of special counsel Robert Mueller.

As the Post reports, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani has admitted publicly that he started traveling to Ukraine in late 2018 because he’d received a “tip” about the Ukrainian government conspiring against Trump.

While it’s not known for certain who gave Giuliani this “tip,” the Post notes that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has for years been pushing the theory that Ukraine framed the Russian government for the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee.

Continue reading here.

Lewandowski hearing descends into chaos

The Hill logoCorey Lewandowski jumped to President Trump‘s defense on Tuesday during his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, blasting “Trump haters” and making it clear he will not answer questions the White House wants him to avoid. 

Lewandowski, a former campaign aide to Trump who is close to the White House, took aim at Democrats and former special counsel Robert Mueller‘s investigation in his opening statement, describing the probes as “harassment” while alleging that some critics sought to bring down the president.

“Sadly, the country spent over three years and 40 million taxpayer dollars on these investigations. It is now clear the investigation was populated by many Trump haters who had their own agenda — to try and take down a duly elected president of the United States,” Lewandowski said in his opening statement.

View the complete September 17 article by Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

House panel seeks grand jury material underlying Mueller report

The Hill logoHouse Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) announced Friday that his committee is filing an application in court to obtain the grand jury material underlying former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference and possible obstruction of justice by President Trump.

Nadler said that the panel is seeking the material in order to decide whether to recommend articles of impeachment against Trump — perhaps the Democratic chairman’s most significant and public acknowledgement that his committee is considering impeachment as a possibility.

“Because Department of Justice policies will not allow prosecution of the sitting president, the United States House of Representatives is the only institution of the federal government that can now vote President Trump accountable for these actions,” Nadler said at a press conference Friday afternoon, quoting from the application his committee was about to file in court.

View the complete July 26 article by Morgan Chalfant, Jacqueline Thomsen and Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

Mueller sounds alarm on Russian meddling. So what has Congress done about it?

Russian interference is ‘among the most serious’ challenges to American democracy, ex-special counsel says

Former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s testimony before two House committees Wednesday brought a new focus on foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election, and highlighted what has — and has not — been done to prevent a recurrence in the next election less than 16 months away.

Mueller, who led the FBI in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, told both the House Judiciary and Intelligence panels that among the challenges to democracy he’s seen in his career, “the Russian government’s effort to interfere in our election is among the most serious.”

“Much more needs to be done in order to protect against this,” he told House Intelligence members.

View the complete July 25 article by Bridget Bowman on The Roll Call website here.

Yale psychiatrist: Donald Trump is driven by ‘insecurity and emptiness’ ⁠— and will continue to spiral out of control

AlterNet logoOn Wednesday, former Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller will finally testifying before Congress about his findings regarding Donald Trump and his campaign’s apparent collusion with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign, his extensive obstruction of justice and other alleged crimes.

Democrats in Congress may be hoping for some type of revelation that will further undermine Trump’s credibility with the American people and make it easier — or at least conceivable — to impeach Trump and remove him from office.

Republicans are hoping, on the other hand, that Mueller’s testimony is anticlimactic and adds no new information about the panoply of horrible things that are already publicly known about Trump and his authoritarian regime.

Regardless of today’s hearings the fact remains that Robert Mueller’s official report, even in redacted form, is damning.

Beyond clear and repeated examples of Trump’s obstruction justice and de facto collusion with Russia to undermine the 2016 presidential election, the Mueller report shows a president who is paranoid, a chronic liar, seriously detached from reality and in total mentally unwell.

View the complete July 24 article by Chauncey DeVega from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Mueller shuns spotlight, but says probe didn’t ‘exonerate’ Trump

President has claimed investigation cleared him of obstruction of justice

On a day House Democrats hoped Robert S. Mueller III’s televised testimony Wednesday would animate the special counsel’s 448-page report for the nation, the star witness eschewed the leading role with a muted performance with few soundbites during the first of two back-to-back hearings.

Mueller’s answers were concise. He often said simply, “True,” or “I rely on the language of the report.” The 74-year-old gray-haired Marine veteran and former FBI director frequently didn’t speak into the mic.

His voice didn’t carry well through the committee room and he asked for questions to be repeated. The famously tight-lipped former prosecutor, who didn’t comment for the duration of the nearly 22-month investigation, often declined to engage with leading questions, telling members “he wouldn’t get into that.”

View the complete July 24 article by Todd Ruger on The Roll Call website here.