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A Much-Needed Trip Down Memory Lane [1]
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Date: 2023-05-20
Robert Mueller (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – Philosopher George Santayana
This is a warning about the danger of collective amnesia.
It’s hopefully one small answer to the challenge of knowing what’s going on in this country when so much of what we hear – and I’m talking about from the Right – are either distortions or outright lies.
Another threat occurred recently with the release of Special Counsel John Durham’s final report on the government’s investigation into Russia’s efforts to help former President Donald Trump win the 2016 election.
As you may recall, Durham was recruited by historically corrupt former Attorney General William Barr to try to smear the Justice Department and the FBI over the investigation, which ended up with the appointment Robert Mueller as special counsel.
MSNBC columnist Michael A Cohen – no, not former Trump lackey and convicted criminal Michael Cohen, this guy is a political writer and a fellow with the Eurasia Group Foundation – has written a very important and timely piece titled, “Trump wants us to forget Robert Mueller’s findings – and it’s working.”
The subhead is equally revealing: “The real bombshell of John Durham’s report isn’t that Trump was investigated over Russian collusion. It’s that so few seem to care about Mueller’s findings”
Cohen writes that Durham’s final report – which took four years to complete, included 500 interviews and two acquittals, and cost at least $6.5 million – was a dud. Much of it was already in a 2019 report by Michael Horowitz, who at the time was the Justice Department’s inspector general.
He correctly characterizes Mueller’s work as “a singularly damning indictment of the former president.”
Cohen says it better than I could when he writes: “Of course, the real point of the Durham investigation was never about discovering truth, but rather about muddying the waters around Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. That is why Durham’s investigation amounted to so little – and his report so inconsequential: Mueller’s investigation was far from a hoax.”
He added that, “More than four years after the release of the Mueller report, its conclusions about the breadth of Donald Trump’s breathtakingly unethical and criminal behavior have largely been flushed down the national memory hole.”
You can read Cohen’s column here.
For the good of our country, we have to climb down that memory hole.
First on whether the Trump campaign “colluded” with Russia. According to his report, Mueller didn’t evaluate the evidence on the non-legal term of collusion, but on the special crime of “conspiracy” as defined in federal law.
Mueller said “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign were found; “the investigation established that the Russian Government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome;” and “the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”
However, “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
In other words, although Russia’s attack was designed to help Trump get elected, and his campaign welcomed, encouraged, and hoped to benefit from it, conspiracy changes couldn’t be filed because the legal standard wasn’t met.
Also, Mueller found multiple incidents where Trump committed obstruction of justice in an attempt to hinder or stop the investigation.
Multiple posts have appeared in this blog attempting to detail the results of Mueller’s investigation. This would be a good time to offer them again for your consumption or for sharing with your friends and family, especially the skeptical ones.
We can’t let the GOP whitewash the truth. Trump is running for president again, and the last thing the Republicans want is for us to remember what Mueller found and the evidence offered in his two impeachments.
We can't forget what Trump did and the unwavering support he received from a corrupt Republican Party. George Santayana’s warning at the beginning of this post is a clarion call for all of us.
***
Five posts outlining possible acts of obstruction by Trump found in the Mueller report:
This is What Obstruction Looks Like: Navigating the Maze
This is What Obstruction Looks Like: Trump and Comey
This is What Obstruction Looks Like: Trump and Sessions
This is What Obstruction Looks Like: Trump and McGahn
This is What Obstruction Looks Like: All the President’s Men
A three-post series on what the Mueller report tells us about Russia’s attack on our election
Lost in Obstruction: Trump’s Strategy Counts on Our Ignorance
Lost in Obstruction: Russia’s Active Measures on Social Media
Lost in Obstruction: Russia’s Hacking of the 2016 Election
The story of Trump's effort to have White House Counsel Don McGahn remove Mueller and the attempted cover-up:
Trump Doesn’t Want Us to Hear From McGahn; Here’s Why
A look at possible witness tampering involving Michael Flynn:
This is What Obstruction Looks Like: Witness Tampering
An overview of Trump’s possible acts of obstruction:
An Unobstructed View of a Criminal President
***
Thank you for reading my post. You can see more of my writing on my blog: Musings of a Nobody.
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