Why weren’t crimes charged as a result of the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower Meeting? We’ll begin with the “facts.” By “facts” I mean what the prosecutors have enough evidence to prove. The meeting was proposed to Jr. in an email from Goldstone, at the request of his then-client Emin Agalarov (son of Russian real …
Reading the Mueller Report, Part IV: The June 9, 2016 Trump Tower Meeting Read More »
Q: Why weren’t more crimes charged from the behavior described in Vol. I? First reason: Special Counsel (SC) was not able to collect all the evidence for a variety of reasons (Mueller Report, page 10) Some individuals evoked their 5th Amendment rights and SC determined that they were not appropriate candidates for grants of immunity. …
Reading the Mueller Report, Part III: Why More Crimes Weren’t Charged Read More »
While the Russian government was busy interfering in the presidential election in “sweeping and systematic fashion,” what were members of the Trump Campaign doing? They were busy establishing Russian links and contacts, eagerly anticipating profiting and benefiting from all that Russia love—and lying through their teeth about these links to the American people and investigators. …
Reading the Mueller Report Part II: Links Galore Read More »
The scope and scale of the Russian cyber attack on the U.S. was breath-taking and horrifying. From Special Counsel: “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” Special Counsel established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election through two operations: A Russian entity, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), …
Reading the Mueller Report Part I: “A Sweeping and Systematic” Attack on America Read More »
K asks if we will see the full Mueller report. Yes, I do think we will see the full report. It may not happen as soon as people would like, but we will see it. There are too many legal means available for securing the report, and too many people know the contents. I wrote …
I’ve been getting lots of questions like this one: So I consulted Prof. Karen Stenner (formerly Princeton and Duke), this paper, and her work on the Authoritarian Dynamic. Many of the quotations are from a private conversation. She’s on Twitter. By MAGA I mean the part of the Fox-Trump-GOP who have what psychologists call an …
Staying sane—and saving democracy— under a Firehose of Outrageousness. The Rand Corp. describes the extremely effective Firehose of Falsehoods propaganda method: a rapid, continuous barrage of outrageous falsehoods. Trump, who adopted the method from Putin, is a natural at this. From the researchers: “Don’t expect to counter the firehose of falsehood with a squirt gun …
After Barr testified today that he will not give Congress an unredacted report to Congress, it seems we’re in the same place we were when Barr published his “summary” of Mueller’s report. The constitutional issue is this: Who gets to decide whether a president is guilty? Congress, or the Attorney General appointed by the president? …
Libertarian Peter Thiel said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” I’m surprised it took Thiel—an intelligent Stanford Law grad—so long to figure out that freedom (as defined by libertarians) isn’t compatible with democracy. When I say democracy, I mean liberal democracy in the classic sense: Libertarianism, according to David Boaz, means …
We know from the Barr summary that “Special counsel referred several matters to other offices for further action.” Question 1: What matters were referred to other prosecution offices? And which offices? I understand we can’t see the evidence, but we should be told something about all these other investigations. Nobody kept secret the fact that …
17 unanswered questions from the Mueller investigation Read More »
