Robert Mueller May Not Have Found Evidence of Collusion, But His Report Proves the System Worked

James Risen

Brian Frosh is no Robert Mueller.

The little-known Maryland state attorney general lacks Mueller’s resume and gravitas. But Frosh is one of a legion of government officials, both in Washington and around the country, who are prepared to continue the fight against Donald Trump as Mueller’s special counsel probe comes to an end.
On Sunday, William Barr, Trump’s new attorney general, issued a summary of the findings of Mueller’s investigation, saying that the special counsel ultimately found no evidence that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election.

While Trump predictably declared himself exonerated, the most important fact was that Mueller was able to complete his investigation. That the special counsel conducted a comprehensive inquiry and followed it through to its natural end is an important sign that the U.S. system of checks and balances is bouncing back, and that the slide into a Trump autocracy has been halted.
That was not always a sure thing. Early in his presidency, Trump appeared eager to bulldoze the traditions, norms, and checks and balances that regulate the U.S. government and limit presidential power. And it looked like he might just get away with it. Trump fired FBI director James Comey to try to get rid of the Trump-Russia investigation, and then considered firing Mueller after he was named special counsel.

Eventually, Trump realized that would cause a firestorm of protest, and he backed down.

In hindsight, that seems to have been a watershed moment in the Trump presidency. Mueller was able to hang on by his fingernails and went on to investigate some of the most troubling questions ever raised about a president, including whether Trump had conspired with a foreign power to gain the White House.

While he ultimately concluded that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, Mueller’s investigation still led to a series of guilty pleas and convictions of a number of high-profile people in Trump’s orbit.
Yet Mueller’s most important legacy may be that he helped keep the system of checks and balances from dying just long enough for others to take up the mantle.

That leaves plenty of room for officials like Frosh, who, along with the attorney general of the District of Columbia, has filed a lawsuit against Trump, arguing that the president’s continued business dealings – specifically, the operation of Trump’s hotel in Washington – violate the Constitution by enabling the president to receive “emoluments,” or payments, from foreign governments and states. Frosh and DC Attorney General Karl Racine argue that even as president, Trump has continued to have a financial interest in the hotel, which has become a cesspool of lobbyists and other favor seekers, including foreign officials who stay there when they are visiting Trump.

“I got a quick education in emoluments after Trump got elected,” Frosh told The Intercept. “It is very clear. The framers of the Constitution were very concerned that the president would be for sale, both to foreign governments and to others. These are bright lines, and no other President has tested these lines. Trump just blew through them.”

Frosh’s lawsuit has received a mixed reception in the courts, but it is just one of a growing number of signs that Trump is being curbed.

Mueller’s full report has not been made public, but in his letter to congressional leaders summarizing the special counsel’s findings, Barr wrote that Mueller found that the Russians did try to intervene in the 2016 election through two main avenues. The Internet Research Agency, a Russian organization, conducted a social media disinformation campaign to interfere in the election, while the Russian government conducted computer hacking operations against the Democrats and then leaked Democratic emails through intermediaries, including WikiLeaks.

However, Barr wrote, “the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.”

Barr also said that Mueller didn’t decide whether Trump should be prosecuted for obstruction of justice as part of the inquiry. He said that Mueller laid out the evidence but “did not draw a conclusion – one way or the other – as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction.” Mueller didn’t conclude that Trump had committed a crime, but also did not exonerate him, Barr wrote. Since Mueller didn’t make a decision, Barr noted, he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that there is not enough evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice.

One factor in their decision was Mueller’s conclusion that the evidence didn’t show that Trump was guilty of an underlying crime related to Russian meddling in the election, Barr wrote. His letter provided very few other details about Mueller’s findings.

Trump supporters will see the special counsel’s report as a vindication of the president, but its completion can also be read another way. Trump now faces a whole series of other inquiries, some of which stemmed from Mueller’s original investigation. Those other investigations likely include inquiries resulting from the case against Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, as well as a probe of Trump’s inaugural committee.

Even as federal prosecutors have continued those inquiries, state officials have also joined the fray. In addition to Frosh from Maryland and Racine from the District of Columbia, other Democratic law enforcement officials, including Letitia James, New York’s newly-elected attorney general, have vowed to aggressively confront Trump. Earlier this month, meanwhile, the Manhattan District Attorney indicted former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort on charges related to mortgage fraud, after Manafort had already been convicted in Mueller’s investigation.

Of course, one critical reason that the system of checks and balances is recovering is that the Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 mid-term election. Democratic control of the House means there can be aggressive congressional investigations into Trump for the first time. For the first two years of Trump’s presidency, the Republican-controlled Congress enabled Trump, and Republican leaders allowed themselves to become Trump’s lackeys. But now the House Intelligence Committee, Oversight, and Judiciary committees are all ready to pick up where Mueller left off.

“I think Congress is roaring back to life,” observed Kim Wehle, a law professor at the University of Baltimore.

Of course, Trump still has lots of advantages as he faces the next round of prosecutorial investigations and congressional inquiries. The Justice Department’s longstanding legal opinion is that a sitting president cannot be indicted in a federal criminal case, and any federal prosecutor who seeks to charge Trump will have to overcome that legal advice. (State prosecutors, however, would not face the same obstacle.) In addition, the Republicans still control the Senate, which makes impeachment virtually impossible, even if prosecutors find evidence of serious wrongdoing by Trump.

And hanging over everything is the 2020 presidential election. If Trump wins, he may be emboldened once again to try to destroy the nation’s system of checks and balances.

Why does Trump lie? Just ask Billy Bush.

by Erik Wemple

The tireless mendacity of President Trump has roared back into the top of the news. “How to know when Trump is lying,” notes the headline on a CNN piece. Slate: “Trump’s Saturday of Lies: 

President Says Official Who Briefed Reporters ‘Doesn’t Exist.’ ” The New York Times has an article on how Trump’s repeated allegations about an FBI informant who cultivated sources on his 2016 presidential campaign squares with his history: “With ‘Spygate,’ Trump Shows How He Uses Conspiracy Theories to Erode Trust.”

Bring up Trump’s frequent lies, and White House officials will seek to change the topic. They’ll talk about the robust economy; they’ll talk about the move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; they’ll talk about the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord; they’ll talk about the blameworthiness of Trump’s Democratic critics. All of the programs of the Trump administration, however, are built to some degree of deception; lying, after all, was the central plank of Trump’s presidential election campaign.

In their look at Trump’s hyping of “Spygate,” Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times summed up the latest in presidential misinformation:

Last week, President Trump promoted new, unconfirmed accusations to suit his political narrative: that a “criminal deep state” element within Mr. Obama’s government planted a spy deep inside his presidential campaign to help his rival, Hillary Clinton, win — a scheme he branded “Spygate.” It was the latest indication that a president who has for decades trafficked in conspiracy theories has brought them from the fringes of public discourse to the Oval Office.

Citing two former Trump officials, the New York Times reports that Trump resisted deploying the term “deep state” in his rhetoric, “partly because he believed it made him look too much like a crank.” So the guy who gripes incessantly and with no evidence about the “fake news” media is worried about appearing like a crank.

 Notes the New York Times: “Students of Mr. Trump’s life and communication style argue that the idea of conspiracies is a vital part of his strategy to avoid accountability and punch back at detractors, real or perceived, including the news media.”

True, no doubt. Yet the most clarifying point on this matter comes from Billy Bush, who is, if nothing else, a student of Mr. Trump’s life and communication style. Bush was the fellow chatting with Trump on the infamous 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which the mogul bragged about grabbing women by their genitals. Bush was fired from the “Today” show over the incident. It just so happened, however, that Bush had spent a lot of time with Trump back in his years as an entertainment correspondent, and he discussed his experiences on an episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher” in March. Maher noted that Trump had exaggerated the ratings of his program “The Apprentice,” prompting Bush:

Well, he’s been saying No. 1 forever, right. Finally I’d had enough. I said, “Wait, Donald. Hold it. Wait a minute. You haven’t been No. 1 for five years, four years — whatever it is. Not in any category, not in any demo.” He goes, “Well, did you see last Thursday? Last Thursday, 18-49 … last five minutes.” I said, “No. I don’t know that stat.” So he was like, “I told you.” And then later, when the cameras were off … he says, “Billy, look, look, you just tell them and they believe it. That’s it, you just tell them and they believe it. They just do.” And I said, “Ah, okay.”

That’s called telling the truth about lies.

Being a blabbermouth, Trump apparently cannot stop himself from confiding about his malicious tactics — to media types, of all people. Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” recently revealed that Trump had told her about the thinking behind his media-bashing ways. “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe it,” Trump told Stahl shortly after his election, as she recalls it.

On Tuesday morning, Trump tweeted:

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

The 13 Angry Democrats (plus people who worked 8 years for Obama) working on the rigged Russia Witch Hunt, will be MEDDLING with the mid-term elections, especially now that Republicans (stay tough!) are taking the lead in Polls. There was no Collusion, except by the Democrats!

News outlets scrambled to characterize the allegation. CNN: “Trump says, without proof, that Mueller team will meddle in midterm elections.” Associated Press via New York Times: “Trump: Mueller’s Team Is ‘Meddling’ in Midterm Elections.” Politico: “Trump says Mueller probe will meddle in midterms.”

“Without proof,” huh? CNN cannot call this particular tweet a lie because it doesn’t know 100 percent for certain that Mueller won’t meddle; and it doesn’t know 100 percent for certain that Trump doesn’t believe this allegation. Which is to say, the media has standards in covering a president who doesn’t. It has been a mismatch from Day 1.

Mueller's Trump-Russia investigation engulfs Deutsche

Deutsche Bank has received a subpoena from the US special counsel investigating possible collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia. It's actually welcome news for the bank.

By Handelsblatt Staff

Deutsche Bank has been served. US investigators are demanding that it provide information on dealings linked to the Trumps, sources familiar with the matter told Handelsblatt. The subpoena is part of a probe by special counsel Robert Mueller and his team to determine whether the president’s campaign was involved in Russian efforts to influence the US election.

Donald Trump and his family have long-standing ties to Germany’s largest bank. The former real-estate baron has done billions of dollars’ worth of business with Deutsche Bank over the past two decades, and First Lady Melania, daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner are also clients.
According to media reports, Mr. Trump owed Deutsche Bank as much as $340 million (€286.5 million) at one point, though considerable restructuring appears to have brought down that amount. The president’s financial disclosure of June 16 reported $130 million in debt, a figure the bank has not publicly confirmed.