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l33tminion) wrote2019-05-30 09:34 am
l33tminion) wrote2019-05-30 09:34 am
On the Muller Report
I used to write about politics here a lot more. Lately, I haven't written much, which sure stands out in this age.
Anything I would write about is instantly old news. I can barely keep up my own life, how can I keep up with this? It's a cavalcade of horrors and embarrassments. Which other president would be so gauche as to join a murderous dictator in bad-mouthing an American Vice President? What other president would be so petty that they were unable to tolerate honors paid to a late Senator and former prisoner of war due to a personal or political dispute? Those are mild examples, and that's just this week!
For all that President Trump is unjustifiably lauded by supporters as a great businessman, he's pretty clearly a terrible manager. He doesn't read and doesn't take preparation seriously. He undermines his subordinates and turns on former employees. Tillerson is a recent and dramatic example, but there are a lot of Trump administration picks with broad support from Republicans who, after working for President Trump, end up with a much lower opinion of him. Do Republicans notice this? This sort of thing can be about idiosyncratic personal conflicts or disgruntled former employees, but here it's a pattern.
Overall, the personal misconduct, overt corruption, general incompetence, and criminality of this administration has been staggering. The usual game of "what if a Democrat?" has been head-exploding for the past years. Surely, Obama would have been impeached had he just cheated on his wife, covered it up during a presidential campaign, and paid a corrupt lawyer to create a shell company to launder the hush-money payments. Are Republicans seriously unable to imagine this? I mean, I know some people who were well aware of how bad Trump was as recently as "during the 2016 primary" are already on to no-standards gleeful nihilism, but the rest in that category must be experiencing some cognitive dissonance. 1998 wasn't that long ago.
The Muller report lays out some significant things: There was a broad and deep criminal effort to influence and undermine the US electoral system. That effort included deceptive propaganda campaigns and crimes committed to facilitate and conceal those campaigns, but also direct attacks on election infrastructure. The Trump campaign was aware of these crimes, and acted to conceal them and benefit from them. The unclear elements are to what extent Trump personally was involved, and whether there was any explicit quid pro quo. It's not clear that they were selling US foreign policy per se, as opposed to just generally acting to the advantage of a group they knew was involved in a criminal effort to benefit them.
(It's not so unusual that foreign governments would attempt to sow strife or push American politics to their advantage, or that they would commit crimes to do so. What is unusual is that one political party was and is intentionally trying to sabotage efforts to investigate and prevent those attacks.)
The evidence of obstruction of justice is much clearer. Muller views himself as bound by DOJ regulations to not say that the President should be indicted, and he's clearly not going to view those regulations as having the dumbest of loopholes where he can say the same thing as long as it's suffixed with some number of but fors.
Muller construed his mandate narrowly, and thus a number of related criminal investigations are still being pursued elsewhere. It would be foolish to conclude that Trump's troubles are over (especially if you're a person who as recently as 2016 would have inferred that Trump and Co were probably waist deep in all sorts of crime). Trump is already an unindicted co-conspirator in at least one criminal case which already led to a conviction. But on the matters involving the conduct of the President, the oversight responsibility ultimately falls to Congress. They need to do that job.
Anything I would write about is instantly old news. I can barely keep up my own life, how can I keep up with this? It's a cavalcade of horrors and embarrassments. Which other president would be so gauche as to join a murderous dictator in bad-mouthing an American Vice President? What other president would be so petty that they were unable to tolerate honors paid to a late Senator and former prisoner of war due to a personal or political dispute? Those are mild examples, and that's just this week!
For all that President Trump is unjustifiably lauded by supporters as a great businessman, he's pretty clearly a terrible manager. He doesn't read and doesn't take preparation seriously. He undermines his subordinates and turns on former employees. Tillerson is a recent and dramatic example, but there are a lot of Trump administration picks with broad support from Republicans who, after working for President Trump, end up with a much lower opinion of him. Do Republicans notice this? This sort of thing can be about idiosyncratic personal conflicts or disgruntled former employees, but here it's a pattern.
Overall, the personal misconduct, overt corruption, general incompetence, and criminality of this administration has been staggering. The usual game of "what if a Democrat?" has been head-exploding for the past years. Surely, Obama would have been impeached had he just cheated on his wife, covered it up during a presidential campaign, and paid a corrupt lawyer to create a shell company to launder the hush-money payments. Are Republicans seriously unable to imagine this? I mean, I know some people who were well aware of how bad Trump was as recently as "during the 2016 primary" are already on to no-standards gleeful nihilism, but the rest in that category must be experiencing some cognitive dissonance. 1998 wasn't that long ago.
The Muller report lays out some significant things: There was a broad and deep criminal effort to influence and undermine the US electoral system. That effort included deceptive propaganda campaigns and crimes committed to facilitate and conceal those campaigns, but also direct attacks on election infrastructure. The Trump campaign was aware of these crimes, and acted to conceal them and benefit from them. The unclear elements are to what extent Trump personally was involved, and whether there was any explicit quid pro quo. It's not clear that they were selling US foreign policy per se, as opposed to just generally acting to the advantage of a group they knew was involved in a criminal effort to benefit them.
(It's not so unusual that foreign governments would attempt to sow strife or push American politics to their advantage, or that they would commit crimes to do so. What is unusual is that one political party was and is intentionally trying to sabotage efforts to investigate and prevent those attacks.)
The evidence of obstruction of justice is much clearer. Muller views himself as bound by DOJ regulations to not say that the President should be indicted, and he's clearly not going to view those regulations as having the dumbest of loopholes where he can say the same thing as long as it's suffixed with some number of but fors.
Muller construed his mandate narrowly, and thus a number of related criminal investigations are still being pursued elsewhere. It would be foolish to conclude that Trump's troubles are over (especially if you're a person who as recently as 2016 would have inferred that Trump and Co were probably waist deep in all sorts of crime). Trump is already an unindicted co-conspirator in at least one criminal case which already led to a conviction. But on the matters involving the conduct of the President, the oversight responsibility ultimately falls to Congress. They need to do that job.