Donald Trump is incapable of expressing empathy does not heed Scripture "Vengence is mine, says the Lord"

"Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, says the Lord" is a Biblical phrase appearing in Romans 12:19, citing Deuteronomy 32:35. It commands believers not to seek personal revenge, but to trust in God’s perfect timing and justice to handle wrongs.

Spiteful Donald Trump: Cannot even keep his mouth shut our of respect for the dead. Echo opinion letter published in the Virginian Pilot newspaper.

Robert Mueller (b. 1944 - d. 2026): A graduate of Princeton University and New York University, Mueller served as a U.S. Marine Corps officer during the Vietnam War, receiving a Bronze Star for heroism and a Purple Heart. He later attended the University of Virginia School of Law. Mueller was a registered Republican in Washington, D.C., and was appointed or reappointed to Senate-confirmed positions by presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

When decorated war veteran and former FBI Director Robert Mueller died earlier this month, President Donald Trump responded on social media within hours by saying, “Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people.”

This declaration was made by the same man who said that people who he claimed celebrated the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk should be under federal investigation for using hate speech and be designated as domestic terrorists.

I would think that a person as narcissistic as Trump would be more concerned about his own legacy and what people will be saying about him after he is gone. The spiteful, inappropriate language he constantly uses to attack anyone who gets in his way won’t be the worst of what there will be to say about him and his presidency postmortem — not by a long shot. 

From Paul Kotarides, in Norfolk, Virginia

Domestic terrorists are in a dangerous frenzy in support the looser!

Echo opinion letters published in the the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and published in Arkansasonline.com

Better off without Trump and his domestic terrorism brand!

Americans are trying to understand how to survive in strange and uncertain times.

#DomesticTerrorist #Rioters referred to as *patriots* (#StupidIvanka!) stormed the U.S. Capitol and somehow became the deranged heroes of a narcissistic person who, by some (Russian infused!) fluke, was elected to the presidency.  He is a person who cannot accept defeat and, instead, incites insurrection.

Craziness! The call for these "Ivanka patriots" to come to Washington D.C., armed and ready for "protest" is also repugnant and contrary to any concept of a democratic republic.

Donald Trump is a loser in any sense of the word, whether by vote or by intrinsic lack of moral center. He needs to fade away as the worst president in our history and face the consequences of his actions, whether felonious as POTUS or in his personal business dealings.

Our nation will be better without Trump than it ever was with him as--and I use the term cynically and loosely--our failed leader.

From Chris Baker, in Little Rock, Arkansas

Roger Stone lied to protect the guilty Donald Trump in the Russian investigation; they are both criminals

Editorial echo published in the Minneaplis Star Tribune and the Buffalo News in New York: 

Trump's shameful Roger Stone clemency.  

Roger Stone is guilty!

Roger Stone has proven how guilty Donald Trump was during the Russian investigation. This pardon just confirms Trump's guilt because Stone has knowingly complied in a cover up. #obstructionoofjustice

This irresponsible and unethical clemency granted to the guilty Roger Stone is more evidence to validate how the Trump administration has been flagrantly involved in obstruction of justice in response to the Russian election interference.  #Russiagate

Roger Stone has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back. But it's the current president, Donald Trump, who had Stone's back when on Friday he granted a commutation of the 40-month sentence his friend was facing for lying during the Russian investigation.

In doing so Trump turned his back on the justice system and, ultimately, the American people by shamelessly shielding Stone, a felon convicted of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress and for intimidating a witness.

Even Attorney General William Barr, who often wrongly acts more like Trump's personal attorney rather than the nation's chief law enforcement officer, called Stone's prosecution "righteous" and the final sentence "fair" (after working toreduce the length of it, that is).

Other, more principled Republicans were blunt about what can only be seen as a presidential protection racket. "Unprecedented, historic corruption: An American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president," Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, tweeted on Saturday.

That description wasn't far from what Stone said himself on Friday. "(Trump) knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him," Stone told journalist Howard Fineman. "It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn't."

Another resolute Republican, Robert Mueller, who hearkens back to an era when "law and order" was a governing guidepost, not a Nixon or Trump campaign slogan, broke his long silence in a Washington Post commentary. The investigation, Mueller wrote, was of "paramount importance" because "Russia's actions were a threat to America's democracy." Regarding Stone's prosecution in particular, Mueller wrote that, "Stone became a central figure in our investigation for two key reasons: He communicated in 2016 with individuals known to us to be Russian intelligence officers, and he claimed advance knowledge of WikiLeaks' release of (Clinton campaign) e-mails stolen by those Russian intelligence officers."
So Stone's crimes - and in fact, they remain crimes of which he is not absolved - were a direct threat to the electoral process, the DNA of our democracy. Criminals like Stone endanger justice itself. It was "critical," Mueller wrote, for Congress and the Justice Department to obtain accurate information. "When a subject lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of government's efforts to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable."Mueller's patient, painstaking explanation contrasts starkly with Trump's claim that Stone was treated "very unfairly." On the contrary, it's Americans who were treated unfairly by Stone, and by a president buying his silence.

Every president has broad prerogative on clemency and pardons, and the congressional calls for reform must pass constitutional muster. Trump is not the first to make controversial calls on these matters.

But few, if any, uses of presidential powers have been as egregious as this.  (Maine Writer- Roger Stone is now above the law because he protected Donald Trump's obstruction of justice during the Russian investigation.  But, in this horrible pardon, Trump has ripped the scab off of his own guilt. Moreover, the Stone pardon underscored how Donald Trump only wants the law to protect him and he doesn't care about justice.)

All the evidence the Republicans need is written in the reconstructed White House transcript

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-transcript-read-ukraine-president-phone-call-transcript-pdf-released-today-joe-biden-crowdstrike-2019-09-25/

"...the Trump call with Zelensky took place a day after Robert Mueller testified before Congress about the Russia investigation and about whether Mr. Trump had obstructed justice..."

Speaker of the House Nancy D'Alesandro Pelosi

Read the White House transcript:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-transcript-read-ukraine-president-phone-call-transcript-pdf-released-today-joe-biden-crowdstrike-2019-09-25/

Trump left Speaker Pelosi no option but impeachment inquiry
Revelations about the president pressuring a foreign government to investigate a political rival crossed a line.

An editorial echo published in The Mercury News, a California newspaper:

Donald Trump’s behavior left House Speaker Nancy Pelosi no choice but to open the fourth impeachment inquiry in the nation’s history.

Congress and the country cannot ignore actions by Trump that have come to light in the past two weeks. They cannot ignore White House stonewalling that eased only after Pelosi on Tuesday announced the formal investigation.

Pelosi had for months resisted calls for an impeachment inquiry. But for Pelosi, and for us, the latest revelations about Trump’s pressuring of a foreign government to investigate his political rival crossed a line, making it essential that the House launch a formal impeachment inquiry.

As Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky requested U.S. assistance to help fend off Russian aggression, Trump replied by pressing for a foreign investigation of unsubstantiated allegations about former Vice President Joe Biden. It’s all there in the reconstructed transcript, released Wednesday, of the July 25 conversation between the two men.

Trump and his allies claim that the president never expressed a clear quid pro quo in his conversation with Zelensky. But Trump didn’t need to explicitly say what was obvious — that Ukraine needs our nation’s support and protection if it has any hope of survival.

What Trump didn’t tell Zelensky was that he was blocking $391 million of security assistance for the country. But, according to the intelligence officer who blew the whistle on Trump’s action, Ukrainian leaders understood that they needed to show willingness to “play ball” before Trump would even talk to Zelensky.

Has Trump gone too far? Has he committed an impeachable offense? Do his actions constitute “high crimes and misdemeanors”? Ultimately that’s a question the House of Representatives must decide as it determines whether to impeach him – and for the Senate to determine if it tries him.

Before they and the nation try to answer that question, the president’s actions must be thoroughly investigated.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration has repeatedly resisted attempts by members of Congress to carry out their oversight responsibilities. In this case, until the impeachment inquiry was formally launched, the White House had balked at releasing the reconstructed transcript and the whistle-blower letter.

The president’s behavior is, as U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, put it, “deeply troubling.” It must be investigated.

After more than two years of national discussion about protecting our elections from foreign influence, the president – personally – solicited outside interference.

Donald Trump is not qualified - Hypocritical Evangelicals must face the facts!

Two echo letters published in the Fresno Bee newspaper, California, on September 1, 2019.

A Trump Impeachment Inquiry is Needed

Robert Mueller served as director of the FBI from 2001 to 2013. In 2017, he was named special counsel to investigate Russian interference into the 2016, presidential election.

Hearing Robert Mueller describe the extent of Trump’s crimes and corruption in his own words on national television convinced me to support an impeachment inquiry. Now, I’m urging my representative to do the same.

Mueller did not exonerate Donald Trump — not by a long shot. His investigation found extensive criminal activity and resulted in 37 indictments and at least seven convictions or guilty pleas, including Trump’s national security adviser, personal lawyer and campaign chairman.

From Philip Traynor, Fresno, California

Evangelical alert!

This letter is directed at evangelicals who claim to be Christian but who support Donald Trump.

Do you think Donald Trump ever asks: “What would Jesus do?”

As it relates to our treatment of folks seeking asylum at our borders — cramped quarters, often a lack of food, water and proper facilities, separation of children from their parents — that question obviously is not being asked by pro-life Evangelicals.

But, it should. For that important issue, as well as the environment, treating those with whom you disagree, even your enemies, with respect, and more.

As one of the most important political bases for the current president, you Evangelicals should insist on it! 

Otherwise, are you being true to what you profess as a core paramount belief? Have you redirected your allegiance to him and not Him, the true Almighty?

Those are the important questions in all this besides the one that seems to be ignored: “What would Jesus do?”

You must agree that if we were to faithfully follow the answer to that question in virtually all we do, the world would be a better place.

As would America's leader.

From Malcolm Gibson, Clovis, in Fresno County, California

Florida echo for impeachment of Donald Trump

https://www.bradenton.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article233106265.html

Echo opinion letter published in the Florida Brandenton Herald newspaper:

After the Mueller hearings, it is time for Congress to impeach Donald Trump | Letter to the editor

The Congressional hearings examining what Special Counsel Robert Mueller found revealed that:

• Donald Trump engaged in obstruction of justice many times, lying about it and trying to coerce others to also lie about it.
• Trump engaged in witness tampering many times, also lying about that.
• Trump lied to the FBI in his written answers to their questions.

In the news reports after the hearings, it appears that many people expected Mueller to do the job of Congress in judging the President regarding his crimes. They called on him to charge the president with a crime, even though he was specifically prevented from doing so, and had made this clear from the start. They expected him to take a partisan position against the president, even though Mueller is a Republican, like Trump, and his role was to investigate, not judge.

Congress and the American people cannot expect Mueller to do Congress’s job for them, to charge Trump with crimes, and serious, impeachable crimes at that. We learned that Trump can be charged with these crimes when he has ended his time in office, but that is not good enough.

Donald Trump must answer for these crimes now. No one is above the law. Congress must act to impeach Trump immediately.

From William Anderson, Brandenton Florida

Mueller report 101- Russia made ongoing attempts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election

An echo Idahoan point of view by Columnist Jim Jones.

Opinion published in the Idaho Press

Russia was listening! Debate about what the Special Counsel Robert Mueller Report concluded, with regard to Russian interference in the 2016 election, has only intensified since May 29, when Mueller spoke to the nation. In his sphinx-like manner, the special counsel summarized what he had found, declining to go beyond the confines of his written report.

Mueller was unequivocal on one point--the Russians engaged in “multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election.” He began and ended his presentation with that stark warning, apparently confounded by the fact that the U.S. has not seriously mobilized to stop it from happening again in 2020. Normally, there would be an all-hands-on-deck effort to warn off the Russians, prepare strong counter measures, and harden our election systems, among other things, but these are not normal times.

Because Mueller declined to give his personal views on the report findings, all sides have stepped forward to give their particular slant. The Attorney General has repeatedly claimed that the report found no “collusion” between the Russians and the Trump campaign. That is absolutely correct but beside the point. On pages 2 and 180 of Volume One of his report, Mueller clearly states that he did not look into the question of whether there was collusion.

Mueller’s inquiry was concerned with whether the Trump campaign committed the crime of conspiracy, which he describes at page 181 as “an agreement to commit any substantive violation of federal criminal law — including foreign-influence and campaign-finance laws.”

The report details over 140 Russian contacts with the Trump campaign in pages 66-173 of Volume One, concluding that Russia made offers of assistance to the campaign and that the campaign was receptive to some of those offers. However, Mueller said on May 29, that “there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy.” At page 2 of the report he clarifies: “A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.” In other words, there was evidence of conspiracy, but not enough to support a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.

Proving criminal conspiracy is no easy task because of the reasonable doubt standard. During my tenure as Idaho Attorney General in the 1980s, I spent many hours trying to pinpoint price-fixing among gasoline dealers. It generally requires either court-approved electronic surveillance or a credible inside source to make a try-able conspiracy case. A phone tap won’t help if the conduct is not on-going, and credible inside sources are hard to come by, as Paul Manafort clearly demonstrated.

I often explained to the public that it was not a price-fixing conspiracy for gas retailers to charge the same price all over town. It was only an unlawful conspiracy when there was an agreement to set prices. In the case of the 2016, election, there would have had to be strong proof of an agreement between Russian actors and the campaign in order to establish a conspiracy. Mueller implies that such evidence existed, but he apparently was unable to obtain enough documents or credible inside witnesses to prove it.

A preponderance of evidence exists to support the Trump campaign's 2016 collusion with the Russians. Nevertheless, we may never know whether the Russian interference helped Trump win the presidency. The President hinted in that direction when he tweeted on May 30 that, “I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.” He later denied that Russia helped him get elected.

What we do know is that Russia gave the President substantial help in the 2016 election. Putin admitted in Helsinki that he wanted Trump to win. All honorable and patriotic presidential candidates should loudly and clearly tell the Russians and every other foreign country that the United States will not tolerate interference in our elections in 2020 or ever. Indeed, Idaho's Congressional delegation should demand severe consequences for those who try to pervert our democracy.

Jim Jones’ previous columns can be found at https://JJCommonTater.com.

Donald Trump cheating- The more things change, the more they remain the same

"To find a man's true character, play golf with him," 

P.G. Wodehouse

An echo opinion letter published in the Portland Maine newspaper:

Donald Trump’s (IMO stupid!) protestations of innocence remind me of a family story. Thirty-six years ago, my Uncle Dan was invited to play golf with Trump and some young real estate executives. Halfway through the game some of the executives called Trump out for cheating. Trump went ballistic and before long was accusing them of cheating.

Ancient history? Recent events reminiscent of that saying: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Twenty-eight months into his presidency and 10,000 verifiable lies later, we are enduring a president whose moral compass is oriented around his insatiable ego and its need to acquire power and money. The record will show he has zero ability to craft public policy or to implement it. 

We have learned from Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel report that Team Trump was interested in colluding with the Russians. 

Trump’s own lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has even proclaimed it was OK (?!) for Trump to receive support from a foreign adversary.

(IDTS!)

Furthermore, Trump was not actually found innocent of obstruction. Because of Justice Department practice, Mueller could not indict Trump – big difference.

Back to the golf game. Uncle Dan listened to the squabble for a few minutes, then excused himself to the clubhouse on the pretext of making a phone call. He never returned. He said, “Why listen to a man lie about cheating in a game whose purpose is to have fun?”

I submit to you that today Americans are not having fun or accomplishing anything.  Instead, we are mired in an endless argument about cheating with a man who has been cheating all his life – just ask his business associates, and his employees and not to mention his wives.

The more things change, the more they stay the same … unless you decide to walk away.

Richard McWilliams, Yarmouth Maine

A Maine Writer reference for this opinion is:

Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, by Rick Reilly

Obstruction of Justice by Donald Trump are "thousandfold" more than anything in the past

"Trump is a compulsive liar"....

Donald Trump is guilty of serial documented occasions when he has deliberately obstructed justice.

This echo opinion letter was published in the Bismark Tribune, a North Dakota newspaper. 

Does obstruction of justice sound familiar? “The thing that's so appalling to me is that the president, when this whole idea was suggested to him, didn't, in righteous indignation, rise up and say, get out of here, you're in the office of the president of the United States. How can you talk about blackmail and bribery and keeping witnesses silent? 

This is the presidency of the United States. But my president didn't do that. He sat there and he worked and worked to try to cover this thing up so it wouldn't come to light.”

Evidence of Donald Trump directing obstruction of justice is enough to begin impeachment.

Actually, it’s Republican Rep. Lawrence Hogan who said it in 1974, in the House Judiciary Committee.

He was the only high-minded Republican representative to vote to impeach President Richard Nixon.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler has subpoenaed former White House counsel Don McGahn, seeking testimony and documents related to the committee’s investigation into obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump. 

In fact, Nadler also subpoenaed the Justice Department for the uncensored copy of the Robert Mueller report, and requested that Mueller testify before the committee.
Paul Rosenzweig, who served as counsel to Ken Starr, (who recommended the impeachment of President Bill Clinton), said Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice are a “thousandfold” more than anything Clinton did.
Trump is a compulsive liar. The Washington Post has documented evidence, that as president, he has made more then 10,000 false or misleading claims.

At a political rally in Wisconsin, as his crowd booed and screamed; Trump described a hideous scenario that he insists Democrats approve of:

Evil tRump falsely claimed.....

(Lies!) Ugh.....

“The baby is born, the mother meets with the doctor, they take care of the baby, they wrap the baby beautifully and then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby.” He then made a chopping motion with his hand.

Larry Larsen, Mandan, North Dakota, an echo opinion letter to the editor.

William Barr is a fake Attorney General because he lied to Congress

This is an echo opinion published in Bloomberg.

Fake Attorney General William Barr is cornered by Robert Mueller- an echo opinion published in The Spokesman-Review by Timothy L. O'Brien, editor for Bloomberg.

Fake Attorney General Barr lied to Congress and doing so was a crime.  

During a congressional hearing on April 9, Rep. Charlie Crist, a Florida Democrat, asked Attorney General William Barr if he knew why Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators were reportedly upset about a recent letter released by Barr. The missive summarized the Mueller team’s still unpublished findings from its conspiracy and obstruction probe involving Donald Trump, with his advisers and Russia.

“Reports have emerged recently, general, that members of the special counsel’s team are frustrated at some level with the limited information included in your March 24th letter. That it does not adequately or accurately, necessarily, portray the report’s findings,” Crist said. “Do you know what they are referencing with that?

“No, I don’t,” Barr responded. “I suspect that they probably wanted more put out.”

A day later, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, pursued a similar line of questioning and noted that Barr’s summary went well beyond the Mueller report’s findings by unilaterally absolving Trump of obstruction. 

“Did Bob Mueller support your conclusion?” Van Hollen asked.

“I don’t know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion,” Barr replied.

Just how honest and candid Barr was with Congress is now in play. 

As it turns out, Mueller himself wasn’t comfortable with Barr’s take on his work and he wrote to the Justice Department on March 27 to complain about it in detail – almost exactly two weeks before Barr began testifying otherwise to Crist and Van Hollen.

Mueller told the Justice Department (and Barr in a subsequent phone call) that the attorney general’s four-page memo outlining the report’s primary conclusions “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the investigation, according to a copy of Mueller’s letter that the Washington Post disclosed on Tuesday.

“There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation,” Mueller wrote. “This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

During his call with Barr, Mueller also told the attorney general that “he was concerned that media coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and creating public misunderstandings” about the special counsel’s report, the Post reported. The newspaper also noted that some of Mueller’s investigators felt that “the evidence they had gathered – especially on obstruction – was far more alarming and significant than how Barr had described it.”

Barr testified again on Wednesday before Congress, for the first time since the 448-page Mueller report was released publicly on April 18. The report offered a portrait of Trump and his team acting in much more sinister and purposefully illicit ways than Barr suggested in his summary, and in the odd little bit of media spinning and political theater he engaged in during a press conference ahead of the report’s release.

In prepared remarks he issued hours prior to Wednesday’s testimony, Barr defended the decisions he’s made at the Justice Department and presented himself as guardian of the rule of law. 

“It would not have been appropriate for me simply to release,” the Mueller report’s own inconclusive take on whether Trump obstructed justice “without making a prosecutorial judgment,” Barr allows.

Still, what we have in Barr is a subtler and more emotionally disciplined version of Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s most prominent pit-bull attorneys. Barr often seems content to placate the president’s legal adversaries to keep them off balance or to lay down verbal smokescreens that confuse the media.

At first blush, it’s strange that Barr didn’t seem to see a rebuke from Mueller coming and prepare for that. On the other hand, Barr has moved in and out of Washington’s power circles for years and one of his fortes involves developing ways for presidents to avoid scrutiny or culpability. 

Maybe he doesn’t care too much about what Mueller thinks.

Trump has a long history of co-opting those who spend a lot of time around him, but Barr arrived in the White House ready to rumble and with an expansive view of executive authority. He and his boss were a perfect fit.

Timothy L. O’Brien is the executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion.

No exoneration - echo opinion from Florida

Impeach of not to impeach?  That is the question. 

Palm Beach Post Editorial echoes published in the Daily Commercial newspaper, covering Lake and Sumter Counties in Florida:  

EDITORIAL OPINION- No matter how many times Donald Trump and his (brainwashed cult) allies declare the opposite, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report is not “complete and total exoneration.” Mueller says this plainly: “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

On the contrary, the 448-page report Russian meddling in U.S. elections lays out in exhaustive detail how Trump possibly obstructed justice while failing to protect this nation against a grave attack on our election system by a foreign adversary.

Mueller writes that, despite many contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians in 2016, he could not establish a conspiracy between them. And he writes that he did not believe it was his job to bring criminal charges on obstruction of justice.

For that, it’s up to Congress, whose members, all 535 of them, swore to uphold and defend the Constitution. When a president allegedly violates his own oath to do the same, Congress has a duty to act.

Nancy Pelosi, the shrewd House speaker, is right to be leery of jumping into impeachment proceedings for the perfectly sound reason that, such a perceived rush to judgment would surely be seen as a purely partisan attack that would only further divide an already fractured nation.

(MaineWriter- Perhaps the impeachment of Trump might be perceived as political over reach, because he is already so unpopular. Nevertheless, Speaker Nancy Pelosi could legitimately call for the impeachment of the fake Attorney General William Barr, who lied to Congress.)

William Barr should be impeached because he lied to Congress - echo opinion

Donald Trump obstructed justice during the Russia and Mueller investigation. 

Bob Mueller’s Extraordinary Letter to Bill Barr

The special counsel Robert Mueller publicly upbraided the attorney general for his sketchy summary of the Trump investigation.

By The Editorial Board

William Barr's shameful testimony- extends the lies spewing out of the White House is irresponsible!  

This echo is The New York Times editorial supported by the newspaper's editorial board.

Robert Mueller is a stickler for the rules. The special counsel team he led was a leak proof box, his spokesman seldom spoke and his only public statements came in the form of indictments and court filings.

But on March 27, three days after Attorney General William Barr cleared President Trump of criminal wrongdoing in a misleading and incomplete summary of Mr. Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation, the special counsel felt compelled to protest. 

In a letter made public on Wednesday, just as Mr. Barr was preparing to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the American public got its first glimpse of how the special counsel thinks and speaks about his work. 

William Barr lied about the content reported by Robert Mueller.  Instead of accurately supporting the information in Mueller's report, Barr, instead, created a spin cycle to mislead Congress and the American people.

Mr. Mueller’s tone and tenor are remarkable — and a sharp rebuke to Mr. Barr.

“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions,” Mr. Mueller wrote in a letter addressed to Mr. Barr, whose characterizations of Mr. Mueller’s investigation have also come under fire by members of the special counsel’s team.

The special counsel notes in his letter that just a day after Mr. Barr’s effort to spin the findings of the investigation (which Mr. Trump crowed was a “Complete and Total EXONERATION”), Mr. Mueller raised “concern” about all the confusion and misreporting that the attorney general had caused.

“There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation,” Mr. Mueller wrote. “This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

(Mr. Barr referred in his testimony to Mr. Mueller’s letter as “a bit snitty,” and suggested it had been written by an underling.)

For an institutionalist like Mr. Mueller, who never once spoke up to defend himself or his work from relentless attacks from the president and his Republican allies, the letter is an unusual (and welcome) breach of protocol. It is rare for a senior Department of Justice official to so sharply criticize the attorney general in a written communication that would soon be made public.

Clearly, Mr. Mueller deemed it necessary. Beginning in early March, he and Mr. Barr were in close contact and seemed to have reached a gentlemen’s agreement about the timely public release of the special counsel’s findings without compromising grand jury material, intelligence sources and methods or current criminal investigations.

Mr. Mueller noted that he had prepared detailed and accurate summaries of the two volumes of the report, one on contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, the second on potential obstruction of justice.

“Accordingly, the enclosed documents are in a form that can be released to the public consistent with legal requirements and Department policies,” Mr. Mueller wrote. “I am requesting that you provide these materials to Congress and authorize their public release at this time.”

At this time. In late March, the special counsel wanted the crux of his findings delivered to the American public immediately, to clear up the misconceptions Mr. Barr had left with his four-page summary letter to Congress. Instead, Mr. Barr took another three weeks to release the summaries and the full report, saying he needed to go through it line by line to redact any privileged material.
Bob Mueller’s Extraordinary Letter to Bill Barr
The special counsel publicly upbraided the attorney general for his sketchy summary of the Trump investigation.

In congressional testimony on Wednesday, Mr. Barr justified the delay by saying he didn’t want to release the report “piecemeal,” and said that Mr. Mueller’s summaries were “underinclusive.” 

He asserted that the report became his responsibility after the special counsel submitted it, which is true in a formalistic sense: The regulations governing Mr. Mueller’s work call for a “confidential” report to the attorney general at the conclusion of the inquiry, which the attorney general may then release if he determined it “would be in the public interest.”

That Mr. Mueller quoted from this regulatory language in his letter to Mr. Barr shows that he cares about rules, perhaps to a fault. 

But it also shows that Mr. Mueller sensed the urgency of his conclusions — and that he couldn’t sit idly by as the chief legal officer of the United States actively undermined them. 

Donald Trump - evidence of collusion with Russia: echo from California

Yes, there was collusion

Sonoma County California, The Press Democrat echo opinion letter

Dear Editor: Your April 20, editorial (“No conspiracy, but no exoneration of Trump either”) began and ended with the claim that Robert Mueller and his team concluded that Donald Trump didn’t collude with the Russians. This is simply not true. 

Here is what the Mueller report said about collusion:

“In evaluating whether evidence about collective action of multiple individuals constituted a crime, we applied the framework of conspiracy law, not the concept of ‘collusion.’ Collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law. For those reasons, the Office’s focus in analyzing questions of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law.”

The Mueller report did cite that, on multiple occasions, the Trump campaign did meet with Russian officials, the Trump campaign sought and welcomed Russian assistance as evidenced by the Trump Tower meeting, and its chairman shared sensitive campaign polling data with an individual associated with Russian intelligence. Collusion did take place, and the report also cited numerous examples of obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump.

From Richard Neffson, Rohnert Park, CA

Donald Trump and obstruction of justice - Missouri opinion

Robert Mueller documented repeated occasions when Donald Trump obstructed justice. #no_exoneration

Mueller report gives evidence about how Trump obstructed justice. The obstruction is ongoing. Echo editorial from Missouri, published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

Contrary to the White House spin, the report by special counsel Robert Mueller doesn’t exonerate Donald Trump of obstruction of justice. Far from it. The report makes a strong case that the president did, in fact, misuse the powers of his office in repeated attempts to hinder the investigation into Russian election meddling.

Mueller made clear he didn’t charge Trump with obstruction because the Department of Justice prohibits indicting a sitting president. He instead put it in the hands of Congress, which has the constitutional responsibility of presidential oversight. Congress has every right and duty to take up the inquiry where Mueller left off.

This is how it’s supposed to work. It is, in fact, exactly how it did work during the investigations of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, who both faced scrutiny first by appointed investigators and then by Congress. Yet Trump’s reaction to the House queries has been to stonewall, to order witnesses to ignore subpoenas, and to rail, cajole and threaten on Twitter. In essence, his strategy to end the obstruction probe is to … obstruct.

The Mueller report meticulously details Trump’s various actions that could well qualify as obstruction:

• firing former FBI Director James Comey for the admitted purpose of thwarting the investigation,
• ordering White House Counsel Donald McGahn to fire Mueller,
• trying to get McGahn to create a phony record about that order,
• trying to interfere in the cases against his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

King Trumpzi! Abuse of power.

With House Democrats just beginning to probe these issues, Trump declared that “there is no reason to go any further” — as if he has the power to end it by fiat. This startling statement of constitutional ignorance betrays Trump’s authoritarian instincts. 

The administration is digging in with blanket announcements that it will ignore all subpoenas and order all past and present White House officials not to testify.

Consider this: If, as Trump claims, it’s “fake news” that he ordered McGahn to fire Mueller and to lie about that, wouldn’t it be in Trump’s interest for McGahn to testify under oath and deliver some clarity on the subject? Yet McGahn is among the officials Trump has ordered to defy the subpoenas and not speak to Congress.

Certainly, other presidents have argued about what Congress is entitled to have during inquiries — but always on a case-by-case basis. Trump’s approach is different: effectively proclaiming himself to be beyond any congressional oversight whatsoever, period.

This qualifies as a constitutional crisis. The House should seek contempt-of-Congress rulings against anyone who ignores subpoenas and do whatever it legally can to force cooperation.

Trump is testing how far he can abuse his power; the answer must be unequivocal and resounding.

Donald Trump impeded justice - no exoneration: echo opinion

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/sally-yates-if-trump-werent-president-he-would-likely-be-indicted-on-obstruction

Sally Yates: If Trump Weren’t President, ‘He Would Likely Be Indicted On Obstruction’

Eugene Robinson echo opinion published in The Mercury News, a California newspaper

WASHINGTON, DC— There is a mountain of evidence that Donald Trump obstructed justice. There is considerable evidence that the Trump campaign embraced and encouraged Russia’s attempt to meddle in the 2016 election. Special counsel Robert Mueller laid out the facts — and now Congress has a solemn duty to confront them.

Contrary to what Trump says, the long-awaited Mueller report is not an exoneration. The report makes that clear more than once, verbatim, including this passage in Part II: “Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

Nor does the report indict Trump for obstruction. But that is because Mueller took as his starting point the Justice Department opinion that a sitting president should not be made to face criminal charges. “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state,” Mueller wrote. “[W]e are unable to reach that judgment.”

Trump and his apologists will try to paint the report as equivocal, but the evidence it cites strikes me as definitive. One representative passage from Part II, page 157:

“Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations. The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels. These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General ‘s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.”

Mueller does not explicitly say that Congress must now judge the president’s conduct. But he draws a detailed road map for such an exercise, including not just the voluminous evidence he gathered but also the legal reasoning for viewing some of Trump’s actions — including his firing of then-FBI Director James Comey and his attempt to get then-

White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller — as patently illegal.

Mueller's report was released by Attorney General William Barr, who, in the process, destroyed what was left of his own credibility. 

William Barr's Mueller pre-report "spin conference"

Pre-spinning (at the "spin conference"), he skewed the document before anyone had a chance to read it. In his spin, Barr parroted Trump’s favorite talking point and said Mueller found no “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Russians. The report, however, says no such thing. It notes that “collusion” is not a federal offense and seeks instead to determine whether there is evidence of conspiracy, which is a statutory crime. Mueller did find such evidence, but not enough to bring criminal charges.

Barr flat-out lied when he said that Mueller’s decision not to charge Trump had nothing to do with the Justice Department opinion that effectively gives immunity to a sitting president. The report states clearly that this opinion has everything to do with Mueller’s choice to lay out the evidence without reaching a conclusion.

Barr said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein decided to declare the matter of obstruction closed because Trump was understandably “frustrated and angered” at the very existence of the investigation, and thus may not have had the requisite intent to commit a crime. But Barr was confusing two different concepts, motive and intent. Trump’s motive for trying to fire Mueller, for example, may well have been anger and frustration. But his legal intent may have been to obstruct justice.

Barr so embarrassed himself that Fox News anchor Chris Wallace seemed appalled. “The attorney general seemed almost to be acting as the counselor for the defense, the counselor for the president, rather than the attorney general, talking about his motives, his emotions,” Wallace said. “Really, as I say, making a case for the president.”

The report notes that Trump “lambasted” former Attorney General Jeff Sessions when Sessions recused himself from involvement in the Mueller probe, telling him “‘you were supposed to protect me’ or words to that effect.” Barr obviously is determined not to make the same mistake.

Now responsibility shifts to Congress, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a decision to make.

The Mueller report establishes that the Russians massively interfered with our election and that the Trump campaign cheered and encouraged that hostile act. It lays out ample evidence that Trump obstructed justice. Only Congress can hold the president accountable.

Thus far, Pelosi has resisted any move toward impeachment. Politically convenient or not, that’s where Mueller’s road map leads.

Florida echo about Russian 2016 election interference

Efforts led by the Russians to assist the Trump campaign via foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, initiated the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) surveillance of Trump in July 2016 and subsequent FISA approved surveillance of Carter Page.

"Russia if you are listening!," said Donald Trump.From left, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, U.S. President Donald Trump, and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak, in the White House.

Fact-check it!

A special counsel was appointed to determine if the Russians impacted our 2016 election. 

In my opinion, the 2016, Russian interference was trial tested in prior elections. Frankly, it's impossible for me to believe that 2016, was the first time the Russians just happened to show up.

This echo opinion letter was published in Daily Commercial News a Florida newspaper.  

In fact, the Special Counsel Mueller Report, with a focus on how Russia interfered int he US 2016 election, was well-worth the Americans' time and cost. 

Why?

Because it proved that a foreign government with numerous liaisons with the Trump campaign attempted to influence an American election. It resulted in several indictments, guilty pleas, jail time and the spin-off of several other crimes and wrong-doings to other law enforcement jurisdictions.

Mueller, a Republican, appointed by a Republican U.S. Assistant Attorney General, could not exonerate Trump because the evidence uncovered potential crimes and obstruction of justice. However, Mueller could not declare Trump guilty because Mueller believes that a sitting president is immune from prosecution which has to be adjudicated.

Frankly, that is a problem; no citizen should be above the rule of law.

Any traffic cop witnessing a bank robbery cannot turn an eye to the bank robbery playing out before them,  just because they are directing traffic. Indeed, the cop must arrest the bank robber or call for back-up.

Indeed, the time the special counsel’s report took to investigate Donald Trump is less time than it has taken for Trump to let his fellow citizens see his income tax returns. Actually, Trump may owe his fellow citizens more in back taxes than the cost of the Mueller inquiry.

The best, or worst, is yet to come. (MaineWriter says Vote Blue!)

Choice Edwards, Clermont Florida

Countless questions raised by the #fakeBarr spin - a legal echo

William Barr threw his credibility in the gutter
By Elie Honig reported on CNN
Mueller report is quite the page-turner

When it finally came to light this week, special counsel Robert Mueller's report seemed to animate everyone -- and satisfy no one.

This is an echo opinion published on CNN.com

#fakeBarr gave a "spin" summary with misleading information about the Robert Mueller Special Counsel report about Donald Trump

In this weekly column "Cross-exam," Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor and CNN legal analyst, gives his take on the latest legal news and answers questions from readers. Post your questions below. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Honig answers reader questions on "CNN Newsroom" at 5:40 p.m. ET Sundays.

(CNN) Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report is here. 

In fact, the report is more than 400 pages long, and raises countless new questions -- so many, in fact, that we decided to run a special installment of "Cross-exam" to answer them. Let's dig in.

Stan in Montana: Mueller spent two years investigating. Why did we need a meaningless summary filtered by Attorney General William Barr?  "Meaningless" would have been an improvement. 

Now that we've seen the report itself, we know that Barr's four-page summary -- which he later claimed was not actually a summary -- was misleading and manipulative.
Two main things jump out about how Barr used his letter to preemptively distort perceptions of Mueller's report. First, Barr told us that Mueller could not decide the obstruction issue, which "leaves it to the Attorney General." 

Predictably, and true to his previously stated hostility to Mueller's obstruction inquiry, Barr gave a thumbs-down -- declaring that obstruction charges do not apply to Donald Trump as potus.
However, Mueller likely had no intention for Barr to jump in. 

Nowhere in the report does Mueller call on the Attorney General to decide the obstruction issue. Rather, Mueller notes that he specifically "determined not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the President committed crimes" (Volume 2, Page 2) because Department of Justice policy prevents indictment of a sitting president.

Given that Justice Department policy ties Mueller's hands on charging Trump criminally, Mueller appears to refer the obstruction matter to Congress: "[w]ith respect to whether the President can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under Article II of the Constitution, we concluded that Congress has the authority to prohibit a President's corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice." (Volume 2, Page 8).

This line is somewhat ambiguous. Mueller appears to refer the obstruction inquiry to Congress to consider impeachment proceedings, (Just MaineWriter opinion, I don't believe any incidental language wass intended in the Mueller report.), though he might simply be mentioning that Congress has the power to take legislative action (see MaineWriter parentheses!). 

Either way, it is notable that Mueller invoked Congress in his analysis of the obstruction issue. Yet in his four-page summary, Barr made no mention of Mueller's call to Congress on obstruction -- which might be the single most significant line of the entire report.

Second, Barr quoted the Mueller report selectively and strategically to protect Trump. For example, Barr told us the good news for Trump on Russia: Mueller found that "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

Yet that quote from Barr turns out to be only the second half of a complete sentence. In the first half of that same sentence -- which Barr clipped off -- Mueller tells us, "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..." (Volume I, Page 1-2). This kind of intentional, selective quotation would get an ordinary lawyer torn apart by a judge.

For nearly a month since he first received Mueller's report, Barr gave Congress and the American people an inaccurate and disingenuous account of Mueller's findings. Now that the report has been released, we can clearly see how Barr issued a selective summary of Mueller's findings that benefited Trump. Through his handling of the Mueller report, Barr has thrown his credibility and independence in the gutter.