So the crux is, Mueller couldn’t confirm a conspiracy from non-intelligence sources because neither Manafort nor Stone would turn — thanks to Trump dangling pardons:
You remember Peter Smith, right? Found dead, allegedly a suicide? The guy who could connect Trump to Russian hacking… what a coinky-dink.
(Publishing hacked emails isn’t a crime as long as you didn’t assist in the hacking.
Which is why Assange will be found not guilty of committing any US crime as long as it can’t be proven that he helped CIA agent Manning hack the NSA databank.)
Trump.
Republicans will try to argue that Trump’s ‘intent’ is irrelevant.
They will claim that Trump never succeeded in breaking the law, and therefore he’s innocent of any crime.
The Mueller report clearly shows that Trump displayed both ‘specific intent’ and ‘general intent’ when he attempted to derail the Mueller investigation.
He tried repeatedly and cumulatively to violate the law and the Constitution with his words and his deeds.
Simply because Trump’s henchmen refused to carry out his unlawful orders doesn’t make him an innocent man.
Trumps intention was to violate the law and the Constitution by halting the Mueller investigation.
Trump can’t justify such attempted illegal action by claiming that he thought that the investigation was “fake,” and a “deep-state coup.”
Or that he was “frustrated” by a system that was “out to get him.”
And neither can his flunkies, although they will try.
High crimes may not have been committed by Trump, but plenty of misdemeanors were.
Trump is unfit for office.
We seem to have had a number of convenient suicides, murders, and disappearances in our recent history. But, of course, when the Russians do it, there is a powerful international investigation that nails the doer and the specific means and proves, without doubt, the malevolence of Russia in general and Vladdy personally. With full international media coverage.
Similarly, Dems and Repubs decry Russian meddling in our elections and the media are all over it like flies on, well, you know. But we (CIA, etc.) have been meddling in foreign countries’ elections for decades, sometimes to the level of supporting outright overthrow of democratically elected governments. From the media: crickets.
Ya gotta love that Bolton is touting the Monroe Doctrine.
When will they ever learn,…….when will they ever learn?