Thoughts upon the release of the Muller Report, and Barr's Response

My friend Lois J. wrote this upon the release of the Muller report, March 2019. I think she's spot on.

After a chat with my dear friends Epke and Pat, here is the summary of where I am now after the Barr letter:

There are three boxes and after those boxes, two concerns and one observation.

In the first box is conspiracy, which Barr tells us Mueller didn't find enough evidence to prove. I need to understand, then, the Trump, Jr. email that he released that showed that the Russian government wanted to help Trump get elected and was offering something to that end, and to which Trump, Jr. said, "if it's what you say it is, I love it." I need to understand the bit about Manafort giving internal polling data to Kilimnik, a GRU connected guy, which was in a Mueller indictment. I need to know why Flynn lied to the FBI about working with the Russian ambassador to end Russian sanctions over the annexing of Crimea. I need to know who changed the GOP platform to a pro-Russia position instead of a pro-Ukraine position and why they did it and why that was and still is a mystery (Trump aide J. D. Gordon said it was Trump himself, but that's not established). In short, these and other questions exist, and I want answers.

The second box is about Trump being compromised. This is the box I've always been worried about. Conspiracy, as I understand it, would mean that Trump said, "Yes, I will help you if you help me," or something to that effect, but being compromised is, as my friend Pat put it, a conflict of interest. I have always believed Trump has serious conflicts of interest, or to say it as I have said, I have believed the president is compromised. For example, his own ego, but beyond that and more specific to what we've learned, Trump Tower Moscow. Again, this is public record, we know Trump was working on Trump Tower Moscow and lying to the American people during the campaign. This means that Russia could have put pressure on him at any moment by threatening to expose his lies and Trump would have had to decide how much he wanted the Moscow skyscraper and how much he loved his own ego over against whatever thing he was being pressured to do. I'm not saying this happened! (Although, I will point you back to questions about the change in the GOP's platform.) Clearly, Mueller couldn't find enough evidence to convict on this sort of thing, but the fact that Trump was *in this position* - doesn't this make him compromised? I mean, isn't that the definition of compromised? And that's only one thing - we could talk about Helsinki and withdrawing from military exercises with South Korea and on and on. Barr's letter doesn't speak to this, at least as far as I understand the words "conspire or collude" and this is, to my mind, the heart of the matter. Is the president compromised so that he puts other interest ahead of American interests?

The third box is obstruction of justice, and this is just weird. Mueller didn't make a decision, but left it to Barr, who wrote a memo about how a president couldn't obstruct justice (or at least couldn't hardly obstruct justice) and circulated it in the Trump Administration, which led to him getting the job of Attorney General. I mean, we all watched day after day as Trump tried to intimidate witnesses (Michael Cohen and his wife and father-in-law), bully Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein, smear the integrity of Mueller, fire Comey and say it was because of Russia, etc., etc... Perhaps the question is whether Trump is capable of not intimidating and bullying and smearing - and if he isn't capable of better behavior, then...is it really obstruction? Still, it's worrisome that Bill Clinton was grilled about this, but Trump wasn't interviewed. I wonder if Bill is wondering why he didn't take Trump's approach? Anyway, I just have a big question mark over this one, specifically because Mueller didn't make a determination.

The two future concerns are this. First, I am worried that Barr's letter will make *any* attempt by the Democrats to exercise oversight in the next two years appear as sour grapes by sore losers, and yet there are real questions about oversight - Kushner's security clearance, general grift in the Cabinet, emoluments, and on and on. We need oversight. I'm worried about not having it. Second, and this is worse that all the immediate angst, the Barr letter appears, at this moment, to give Trump and Co. a pass on all the bad behavior they've engaged in over the last three years - from lying to Americans on the campaign trail to publicly doubting our Intelligence Community and siding with Putin as he so visibly did in Helsinki - and by giving them a pass (which is neither guilt nor innocence), the bad behavior and its underlying ethic becomes incorporating into the American presidency. It allows this dishonorable behavior to be infused into the meaning of the presidency. And that...if it stands...will be with us for generations or even, I suppose, until the end of the American presidency.

The observation, coming last, may appear to be the cherry on top, but that's not how I mean it. I just want to point out that Barr was the man who advised George H.W. Bush to pardon all the peeps associated with the Iran-Contra Scandal, and that is why no one really thinks of it as the incredible scandal that it was. It was swept under the rug. And this is to Epke's point. Is this a matter of being darker than we thought instead of lighter? That's a confusing thing to say, I suppose, and I have nothing more to say about this now except that my hope is that Barr is a good actor here...that's my hope.

Ok, we still need to see the report, and in the mean time, we work to defeat Trump in 2020. Not being convicted of crimes is far too low a bar to have for the American presidency. We can and I pray will do much better soon.