William Barr has never made that claim. And he went on to say, right after that quote, that the Justice Department is conducting an investigation into this. That's very big news! Trump tweeting about how Obama spied on him is very different than the Justice Department dedicating resources to investigating the FBI, Obama, and Hillary Clinton.
"Attorney General William P. Barr, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, has played an unusually active role in the investigation. He pushed career Justice Department attorneys to bring the case by the end of September, prompting pushback from lawyers who wanted more time and complained of political influence. Mr. Barr has spoken publicly about the inquiry for months and set tight deadlines for the prosecutors leading the effort."
> Plus the russian collusion investigation, which is highly problematic (spying on your political opponents in the middle of an election campaign, based on some implausible allegations).
Obama might be a political opponent of Trump’s (despite not being on the ballot that year); but is the FBI not supposed to investigate these things? The Russian interference / collusion was real and lead to multiple charges and convictions
> his report said it for him. "[The report] did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple efforts from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign."
This sentence is not from the Mueller report, but is from Bill Barr's summary of the Mueller report, which a federal judge characterized as "misleading" and "substantively at odds with the redacted version of the Mueller Report". https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6796353-barr-ruling....
As myself and others have noted, you need to read the actual Mueller report and the Senate Intel Committee report before engaging on this topic further.
For example, the idea that no one in the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russians flies in the face of the finding in the (Republican lead) Senate Intel report which shows that Trump's campaign chair was transmitting internal campaign data to a Russian intelligence officer.
If what you say is true, then didn't Trump appointed judges and Republican judges not evaluate the evidence and sworn affidavits? Why didn't Barr, a heavily partisan and biased Trump sycophant who meddled with prior investigations, not investigate all that being the head of the DoJ? If he somehow turned rogue, why didn't Trump fire him and replace him with someone who would investigate?
Do you have any reasonable explanation for the above? Mine is that all the evidence was hearsay and even Trump and Republicans knew it wasn't credible, he just did that to get this campaign to make even more money by fooling people, and for political gain.
Mr. Barr is working for a President who's son in law was discussing to establish an encrypted and covert back-channel through the Russian embassy. He himself is accused of suppression and obfuscation of critical information that should have gone to Congress ages ago. He has less than zero standing in this area.
>Remember: it's not just about Russians, but the original allegation was that the Trump campaign was involved. That has been very quietly walked back.
Well considering that Trump's attorney general William Barr shut down the investigation and is reversing Mueller's charges that is not surprising. So not only was there never a full investigation done but the mediocre investigation we had is being undone. We will never know the truth of Trump's and Putin's secret relationship until a proper investigation is done. Including Trump's finances.
No one walked back on anything. It was simply not investigated since Republicans (especially people like Mitch McConnell) are putting party over country and not holding the president accountable.
DNC has many problems including mediocre security and treating candidates differently and picking favorites but that is not the topic of the discussion.
>Every single American should demand that evidence even if they despise Trump.
The problem with your entire premise of demanding evidence is that it's a red herring. This is not about producing evidence because any evidence produced you can label as fake or made up or false flag. Once evidence is provided the goal post is moved to evidence being made up or not credible. There is absolutely no benefit in the US government revealing evidence except for making Putin's team of hackers smarter. The people who believed that Russia did it --- will continue to believe it and that people who didn't --- well they will find new excuses for themselves.
It's really not. Mueller went as far as he felt his remit allowed, and turned it over to the Justice Department, where Barr was determined not to follow up on it. Expect this to change in January.
Let's not remove the end of that quote so quickly:
"Special counsel Robert Mueller did not find evidence that President Trump's campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election, according to a summary of findings submitted to Congress by Attorney General William Barr."
I think Attorney General William Barr did not correctly summarize the findings of the Mueller report, and was acting to drive an incorrect narrative.
Given that, I think it's entirely appropriate to also look at the Republican-controlled Senate report that the OP linked, which says it did.
> At the same time, 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.
So if it looks like he didn't commit obstruction of justice, they would have said that. They can't prove a negative, but if there hadn't been any evidence, they would have been willing to make a judgement that Trump was innocent. But they did find evidence, so they're unwilling to say he's not guilty of obstruction.
This is the writing of a partisan hack. The Trump campaign was and is so obviously dirty up to its eyeballs that it’s absurd on the face of it to claim that illegal spying is the genesis of those investigations, especially given that the administration has gone to great lengths to muddy the waters in all these matters, pushing the exact talking points you now repeat. It makes me sick.
> Barr is a longtime proponent of the unitary executive theory of nearly unfettered presidential authority over the executive branch of the U.S. government.
> Barr as attorney general in 1992 authored the report The Case for More Incarceration, where he argued for an increase in the United States incarceration rate
> Having criticized the Mueller investigation before taking office, Barr did not recuse himself from overseeing the investigation as attorney general. After receiving Mueller's report he issued a four-page letter to Congress, describing what he said were its principal conclusions, and adding his opinion that the evidence presented did not establish obstruction of justice by Trump. Special counsel Mueller privately responded that Barr's letter had misrepresented the report.
> Barr intervened in the criminal case against convicted Trump associate Roger Stone, recommending a lighter sentence for Stone than the career prosecutors who had worked on the case. In May 2020, the Justice Department under Barr announced the dropping of charges against ex-Trump adviser Michael Flynn despite an earlier guilty plea by Flynn, which he later filed to withdraw.
So yeah, he's a hatchet man for the president, through and through. This is just revenge for tech's left leaning donations and stance, at the bidding of Trump of course. Big tech has long been in the sights of conservatives and this is just another shot in what's been a growing conflict.
You might want to ask yourself why Bill Barr, with the powers and visibility he had as AG/head of DOJ, looked at the pile of fraud allegations and told his boss it was a big box of nothing.
I'm sure he's just part of the conspiracy, or something...
Yeah it seems that's true/I was wrong. I was reading george conway's twitter and I saw this tweet thread by a washingtonpost journalist `If this is the only subject to which the charges relate (& there are none on election interference or other topics), that’s notable. It also raises the question of what changed from when the Obama administration decided it couldn’t make a case, aside from political/DoJ leadership'
"I saw not one of them was calling for impeachment for what would absolutely be a crime if it is true."
That isn't accurate. Trump committing this wouldn't be a crime, but Hillary doing it would be. Presidents have the ability to un-classify classified info on the fly. That's why no one called for his impeachment on that event, and just questioned his competency.
On the other hand, note that when it came to his possible obstruction of justice (i.e. the Comey memo), the discussion of impeachment did come up.
reply