By Hans von Spakovsky

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s full report has not yet been released, but according to a letter submitted to Congress by U.S. Attorney General William Barr, the special counsel uncovered no evidence that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it coordinated or colluded with any Russian officials to influence the 2016 presidential election.

President Trump’s political opponents cannot argue that Mueller failed to conduct a wide-ranging, comprehensive, and thorough investigation. As Barr’s March 24 letter to Congress noted, the special counsel issued “more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records, issued almost 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers, made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses.”

The failure to turn up proof of coordination or collusion should surprise no one. The Intelligence Committees of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate conducted their own, separate investigations, and came to similar conclusions in reports issued in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

Democrats can no longer use the Russian collusion hoax as an excuse for losing the 2016 election.

[related]From a political standpoint, this means that Democrats can no longer threaten to impeach the president over alleged misbehavior – that never occurred – during the 2016 election, and they can no longer use the Russian collusion hoax as an excuse for losing that election. If they continue to push this unfounded narrative, the public may well see them as engaging in an unfair, overtly-partisan persecution – so a perception that may well hurt them in the next election.

The second half of Mueller’s report addressed possible obstruction of justice by Trump.  Because of the difficult legal and constitutional issues involved, Mueller did not present his own conclusion, leaving that up to his boss, the attorney general. Instead, Mueller presented the facts he uncovered without either exonerating the president or accusing him of violating the law.

After reviewing those facts and consulting with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (who appointed the special counsel) and other senior Justice Department officials, Barr told Congress that the evidence “is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.” This conclusion was bolstered by the fact that it is difficult to charge someone with the requisite “corrupt intent” to obstruct an investigation when there is no underlying crime.

Former FBI Director James Comey made derogatory remarks about Hillary Clinton.

In other words, it is almost always (but not invariably) the case that someone will try to obstruct an investigation only when he knows that the investigation is likely to conclude that he did, in fact, commit a crime. That is a concept the public – as well as lawyers – can easily understand.

One of the matters that Mueller and his team likely reviewed in this regard was the President’s decision to fire former FBI Director James Comey. Comey was dismissed, based on the recommendation of Rosenstein, because of his mishandling of the Hillary Clinton email scandal.  Comey had called a press conference to announce there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute Clinton for mishandling classified material in her emails and home computer, but then made derogatory remarks about Clinton.

As Rosenstein stated in a May 9, 2017, memorandum to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Comey’s misbehavior violated long-standing Justice Department protocols about releasing “derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation.”  It was, according to Rosenstein, “a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do.”

No Justice Department official interfered with Mueller’s investigation.

In any event, Comey’s termination had no effect whatsoever on, and did not obstruct, Mueller’s investigation. In fact, General Barr told Congress that no Justice Department official interfered with Mueller’s investigation.

Trump’s political opponents who continue trying to make something out of the obstruction-of-justice claim may be making a political mistake, if members of the public see it as unfair and unjust.

The Mueller Report has three implications for the 2020 presidential campaign. First, the president’s political opponents will not be able to credibly use any collusion/obstruction claims to criticize him. Second, if they do so, they are likely to suffer political harm from a public that believes they are attacking the president unfairly, even as they avoid addressing the myriad of legitimate, pressing problems that we face. Those issues range from a growing immigration crisis to an expanding budget deficit that endangers our economic health.

Third, however, and most importantly, Mueller found that the Russian government did try to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. They did so through a disinformation campaign using social media platforms intended to “sow social discord” and by hacking into the computer networks of both the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. They then used WikiLeaks and other “intermediaries” to distribute the internal communications they stole.

Again, we should not be surprised by this. The Soviets ran these types of disinformation campaigns against America and Western Europe throughout the entire Cold War. The only change is their use of new technology: social media and the Internet. It is something that the U.S., Germany and other democracies need to guard against in future elections.

Hans A. von Spakovsky is a Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a former Justice Department attorney.  He is the coauthor of “Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk”and “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department.”

Der Beitrag Democrats can no longer threaten to impeach erschien zuerst auf Atlantik-Brücke e.V..

By Max Bergmann

The first round went to Trump. Instead of just releasing the Mueller report, Attorney General William Barr released a four-page summary, highlighting the Special Counsel’s “top findings.” In the letter, Barr quoted a part of a sentence which showed that Mueller did not find grounds to bring a conspiracy charge against Trump or his campaign for coordinating activities with the Russian interference campaign. And so American newspaper headlines led with “no collusion” while Trump and his associates vigorously attacked their opponents.

However, in round 2, the momentum of the fight is against the President. Barr’s continued refusal to release Mueller’s report, which was recently revealed to be around 400 pages long, underscores the urgency of transparency. If the report was as exonerating as Barr implied, why hasn’t he released it? And that’s likely because the report is quite damaging to the president.

After Watergate, the Special Counsel produced a full report to Congress.

[related]The Attorney General says he needs to vet the report for classified material, redact information from the grand jury, and even cut information that might be embarrassing. This sort of aggressive redaction stands in stark contrast to previous investigations of this type. In 1998, Ken Starr published his 500+ page report with lurid details of an affair, and after Watergate, the Special Counsel produced a full report to Congress.

As a result, Democrats are describing Barr’s actions as a cover-up. This isn’t the first time Barr’s motivations have come into question. At his confirmation hearing in January, Democrats in the Senate raised concerns about his impartiality, as he had written an unsolicited 19-page memo to the Justice Department the year prior attacking the Mueller investigation.

Overall, the fight over the release of the Mueller report will be long and drawn out. But given Barr’s summation, what can we expect in the report? There’s a lot that we already know.

Mueller has proven that there were two campaigns to elect Donald Trump.

From a transatlantic perspective the most important (and also most overlooked) are the revelations related to Russia’s interference campaign. Mueller has in effect proven that there were two campaigns to elect Donald Trump – one run out of Trump Tower and one run out of the Kremlin. The charges Mueller brought against the GRU intelligence officers and employees of the Internet Research Agency for running what amounted to a digital influence campaign exposed the breadth and depth of the Russian campaign to elect Donald Trump. The IRA had roughly same number of employees as the Clinton campaign. The hack and release of emails dominated news cycles with negative stories about Clinton, resulted in the resignation of the leader of the Democratic Party before the convention, and provided the “October surprise” that significantly impacted the election. In other words, Mueller has proven that Russian interference was real, significant, and designed to help Trump.

The next question for Mueller was whether these two campaigns conspired. Although Mueller ultimately decided not to bring a criminal charge of conspiracy, the report itself is still likely to be highly damaging.

Barr’s summary left a lot of unanswered questions about the investigation.

Charging a criminal conspiracy against the President and his campaign would have required Mueller to have evidence of an “agreement – tacit or express,” which is an extremely high legal standard. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t “collusion” between Trump and the Russians. There were more than 100 contacts and at least 28 meetings between Trump associates and Russia-linked figures. The Trump campaign provided internal polling data to a suspected Russian agent. There was a suspected Russian asset on the campaign as a foreign policy advisor. And the Trump campaign was informed of the hacking and theft of emails months before the information was released. That is collusion.

Despite all we already know, Barr’s summary left a lot of unanswered questions about the investigation. These include whether Trump obstructed justice by firing James Comey, the results of an unprecedented counterintelligence investigation into the President of the United States, what witnesses like National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and UAE lobbyist George Nader were cooperating about, and so much more.

With all these outstanding questions, Barr’s summary increasingly looks like a whitewash of the report. At first, this seemed like a public relations master stroke designed to harden Congressional Republicans’ support of Trump and win the opening battle over public opinion. However, a week later, opinion polls showed the public unmoved in their views of Trump’s criminality and almost unanimous support for fully releasing the report.

The fight over Trump’s involvement with Russia is just beginning. The Mueller report will likely contain explosive and damaging information. But the question now is: Will we ever see it? That will likely be decided in court.

Max Bergman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Co-Founder and Director of The Moscow Project.

Der Beitrag The fight over the Mueller investigation in Washington has just begun erschien zuerst auf Atlantik-Brücke e.V..