Tag: Donald Trump presidential campaign, 2016

Let’s try to boil this down. Some of his aides destroyed evidence, and Trump didn’t want his team to cooperate. Trump wanted his team to make up stories. There’s also no smoking gun, no iron-clad document or recording showing that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a plan, or money changed hands. “Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference efforts,” the Mueller report, released Thursday, said. What started as politics ends in politics. Unable to play video. HTML5 is not supported! Now it’s up to the House to decide whether it’s worth the effort of impeachment when there’s an election next year and Republicans control the Senate. If this conduct is unbecoming of a president, the House should initiate impeachment proceedings, at least to draw a line in the sand on future conduct.

Good Thursday morning. Here are some of the stories making news in Washington and politics today. _____________________ • After almost two years of subpoenas, indictments and search warrants, the results of Robert Mueller’s investigation will be made public today. Here’s a full guide to what to expect. • Some of the report’s findings will not be news to President Trump. Justice Department officials have had numerous conversations with White House lawyers about the special counsel’s conclusions, which has aided the president’s legal team in preparing a rebuttal. • Julián Castro, the former housing secretary and San Antonio mayor, brings youth and diversity to the Democratic presidential field. But, overshadowed by some peers, he has failed to get traction in early polls. A network known for conservative commentary and staunch loyalty to the president is drawing Democratic candidates eager for a big platform with access to Trump voters. • Former Gov.

On the eve of the long-anticipated release of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller on Russian tampering in the 2016 election and alleged Trump campaign involvement, Democrats accused the attorney general, William Barr, of trying to “cherry-pick” and “put his own spin” on the conclusions of the investigation. “Now it appears that the attorney general intends to once again put his own spin on the investigative work completed by the special counsel and his team,” Nadler said. “The fact that the attorney general is not releasing even the redacted report to Congress until after his press conference will again result in the report being presented in his own words, rather than in the words of special counsel Robert Mueller. “The central concern here is that Attorney General Barr is not allowing the facts of the Mueller report to speak for themselves, but is instead trying to bake in the narrative about the report to the benefit of the White House.” Mueller's Trump-Russia report to be released on Thursday Read more Nadler said he would subpoena the full report “in very short order” and said he assumed it would be useful to call Mueller and members of his team to testify before Congress. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, argued Americans deserved to see the truth, “not a sanitized version of the Mueller Report approved by the Trump Admin”. The Attorney General should cancel the press conference and provide the full report to Congress, as we have requested”, they added. The nearly 400-page report is expected to reveal what Mueller uncovered about ties between the Trump campaign and Russia that fell short of criminal conduct. It will also lay out the special counsel’s conclusions about formative episodes in Trump’s presidency, including his firing of the FBI director James Comey and his efforts to undermine the Russia investigation publicly and privately. Trump announced Barr’s press conference during a radio interview Wednesday before the justice department did. The letter said Mueller did not find a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government but he found evidence on “both sides” of the question of whether the president obstructed justice.

Suddenly, the term “spying” was declared as categorically exclusive of any intelligence surveillance. He explained that he did not just get the conclusions of Robert Mueller but that the basic findings had been disclosed weeks earlier. It did not matter that Rosenstein described the questioning of the intentions of Barr or the necessity for redactions as “completely bizarre” and that, in his view, Barr has been “as forthcoming as he can.” The narrative has continued unabated, and billionaire Tom Steyer has even funded a national commercial repeating how ridiculous it is that Barr could have determined the conclusions of the special counsel report in just two days. Senator Jeanne Shaheen asked why the attorney general was evidently looking into the basis for the secret investigation into the 2016 campaign. Barr explained that he was concerned about any kind of spying, foreign or domestic, on our political process. Indeed, Democrats and the media have used the terms interchangeably, until another language change was spontaneously declared this week. “Wiretapping” was previously often used as a generality for surveillance. The media discussed whether Trump was guilty of collusion, despite there being no such crime in the federal code. Speech codes are now common and the meaning of terms is based on how language is received rather than intended. In the same way, it does not matter that what Barr meant was reasonable or that he immediately clarified “wiretapping” as “improper surveillance.” It was important to portray as an absurdity any suggestion of the Obama administration spying on a Republican campaign, even though two key officials were targeted during the campaign.

But first tonight, attorney general William Barr has finally confirmed what has been obvious for months: The Obama administration spied on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Yes, I think spying did occur. There’s no disputing Barr’s first point: Spying on a presidential campaign is a big deal, especially when it was authorized by a rival administration. Imagine if, a year from now, the Trump administration allowed the FBI to surveil officials in the Kamala Harris for president campaign. She called Barr “Trump’s toad.” CNN, meanwhile, assured it’s viewers that there is “little evidence” that spying occurred. This is all spying. When Trump complained about it, Democrats and their employees in the media called him a liar: ADAM SCHIFF: there is no evidence to support any allegation that the FBI or any intelligence agency placed a spy in the trump campaign DON LEMON: His baseless claims of spies. Jim Clapper was: JOY BEHAR: Was the FBI spying on Trump's campaign? The Obama administration wasn’t spying. There’s got to be a limit to how much lying a country can take from its leaders.

You might think it’s okay that the Russians offered dirt on the Democratic candidate for president as part of what’s described as the Russian government’s effort to help the Trump campaign. You might think it was okay that he took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that the president’s son-in-law also took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that, when it was discovered a year later that they had lied about that meeting and said it was about adoptions, you might think it’s okay that the president is reported to have helped dictate that lie. You might think it’s okay that the campaign chairman of a presidential campaign would offer information about that campaign to a Russian oligarch in exchange for money or debt forgiveness. You might think it’s okay if the president himself called on Russia to hack his opponent’s emails, if they were listening. You might say that’s just what you need to do to win. I don’t think it’s okay that during a presidential campaign Mr. Trump sought the Kremin’s help to consummate a real estate deal in Moscow that would make him a fortune. I don’t think it’s okay that he concealed it from the public. There is a different word for that than collusion and it's called compromised.

"It is unacceptable that, after Special Counsel Mueller spent 22 months meticulously uncovering this evidence, Attorney General Barr made a decision not to charge the President in under 48 hours. The Attorney General did so without even interviewing the President. His unsolicited, open memorandum to the Department of Justice, suggesting that the obstruction investigation was ‘fatally misconceived,’ calls into question his objectivity on this point in particular. "Although we have confidence that Special Counsel Mueller made the right prosecutorial judgement in these two specific areas—notwithstanding the very public evidence of Trump campaign contact with and willingness to receive support from Russian agents—it will be vital for the country and the Congress to evaluate the full body of evidence collected by the Special Counsel, including all information gathered of a counterintelligence nature. "The only information the Congress and the American people have received regarding this investigation is the Attorney General’s own work product. The Special Counsel’s Report should be allowed to speak for itself, and Congress must have the opportunity to evaluate the underlying evidence. "These shortcomings in today’s letter are the very reason our nation has a system of separation of powers. We cannot simply rely on what may be a partisan interpretation of facts uncovered during the course of a 22-month review of possible wrongdoing by the President. "The American people deserve to see the facts and judge the President’s actions for themselves. "Earlier this month, the House passed a resolution calling for the release of the Special Counsel’s report by a vote of 420-0.

Trump and his allies are already seizing on that line of the summary released Sunday, and it's undoubtedly a major headline pushing back on two years of Democrats claiming they had evidence of collusion. Barr's summary includes a footnote that explains how Mueller defined coordination: an "agreement -- tacit or express -- between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference." The Justice Department decided not to prosecute the President for obstructing justice with his behavior -- both public and in private -- but Trump isn't fully cleared. Mueller said he thoroughly investigated the obstruction question, though he didn't interview Trump. CNN reported Sunday that Mueller had deliberated at length about subpoenaing Trump before deciding not to make a formal request within the Justice Department. "In light of the very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department following the Special Counsel report, where Mueller did not exonerate the President, we will be calling Attorney General Barr in to testify before ?@HouseJudiciary? in the near future," the New York Democrat tweeted Sunday. The four-page summary Barr released on Sunday is written in a lawyerly way in many cases, especially when it comes to the decisions made over the probe into obstruction of justice. Of course, Republicans have also said they want Mueller's report to be released and several have said the report should be out so that Democrats cannot claim the Justice Department is hiding anything. There are still many pages of documentation of Mueller's work -- plus discussions of his and the attorney general's decisions and findings -- that aren't yet public. (The ongoing investigations are "several" and other prosecutorial offices will be considering "further action," Barr wrote.)

Those who spent the last two years pushing the narrative that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential election need to be held accountable, the Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway argued Friday. Earlier in the day, the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller handed in its report on the Russia investigation to the Department of Justice and it was announced that no new indictments would be forthcoming. During Friday's All-Star panel segment on Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier," Hemingway -- along with Washington Free Beacon editor-in-chief Matthew Continetti and Reuters White House correspondent Jeff Mason -- weighed in on the breaking news that reverberated throughout Washington. Hemingway began by noting that the “Russia narrative” predates the Mueller probe, having begun circulating during the 2016 election after the creation of the infamous Clinton campaign-funded Steele dossier, which pushed the theory that then-Republican candidate Donald Trump was a “Russian agent.” “We have, for the last three years ... frequently [witnessed] hysteria about treasonous collusion with Russia to steal the 2016 election,” Hemingway told the panel. “The fact [is] that there are no more indictments coming and the fact [is] that all of the indictments that we’ve seen thus far have been for process crimes or things unrelated to what we were told by so many people in the media was ‘treasonous collusion’ to steal the 2016 election.” “If there is nothing there that matches what we’ve heard from the media for many years, there needs to be a reckoning and the people who spread this theory both inside and outside the government who were not critical and who did not behave appropriately need to be held accountable,” she added. "The people who spread this theory both inside and outside the government ... and who did not behave appropriately need to be held accountable." — Mollie Hemingway, senior editor, the Federalist Mason told the panel that there’s likely “some relief” in the White House, particularly from Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and top adviser. And while he insisted it was “too early” to draw major conclusions, he later added that those who attacked Mueller’s credibility throughout his investigation will have to walk back their hostility if he concludes that there was no collusion, including President Trump. Meanwhile, Continetti suggested that the Mueller report could be the “greatest anticlimax in American history,” and that the entire investigation could be “for nothing” because it was “an investigation without a crime.” He did, however, insist that the “battle will continue” as the White House will fight Congress on transparency of the Mueller findings.