Review of 'The Mueller Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election Volume II of II' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
The report is split into "the Russia stuff" and "the obstruction of justice stuff", a.k.a., the crime & the cover-up. As is foretold in the legends of our ancestors, the cover-up is juicier and more substantial. Also, it's all about the Donald. The Russia stuff, not so much.
The Russia stuff turns out to be kind of a nothingburger after all. Don't get me wrong: if I were Putin I'd have the report translated into Russian, bound in gilt leather, and distributed as gifts to everyone at the KGB or whatever he's calling it these days with their holiday bonuses. Well done, guys. You cooked it. It just doesn't look like they needed any help from Team Trump to do it.
The investigators didn't get a lot of cooperation from some key people, and lots of documents conveniently went missing, so there may be more to it than this. But …
The report is split into "the Russia stuff" and "the obstruction of justice stuff", a.k.a., the crime & the cover-up. As is foretold in the legends of our ancestors, the cover-up is juicier and more substantial. Also, it's all about the Donald. The Russia stuff, not so much.
The Russia stuff turns out to be kind of a nothingburger after all. Don't get me wrong: if I were Putin I'd have the report translated into Russian, bound in gilt leather, and distributed as gifts to everyone at the KGB or whatever he's calling it these days with their holiday bonuses. Well done, guys. You cooked it. It just doesn't look like they needed any help from Team Trump to do it.
The investigators didn't get a lot of cooperation from some key people, and lots of documents conveniently went missing, so there may be more to it than this. But judging how much else leaked out from this not-particularly-careful group of nitwits... I wouldn't be surprised if we're getting most of the story here. And it's pretty much what we already know, minus the breathless insinuations of the [a:Rachel Maddow|4085286|Rachel Maddow|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1329885343p2/4085286.jpg] crowd.
Everybody at Team Trump lied about it anyway because that's how they roll. And because Trump told them to because His Ego. He hated the thought of people saying he didn't win because of his own strategic brilliance. Plus, nobody seemed to have a really good grasp of what was legal and what wasn't (who does?) so they figured lying to federal investigators was probably the wisest course of action (it wasn't).
So on to the cover-up. It's just page after page of Trump obstructing justice: lying, telling other people to lie, calling people into his office to tell them to tell other people to lie, threatening the people investigating him, dangling pardons, threatening the people testifying against him, trying to get various people at Justice fired for not stopping their investigation, and so forth.
There's this one part where, out of a clear blue sky, Chris Christie [!] parachutes in from out of nowhere. Christie, despite his best efforts, has thus far been mostly untainted by the Trump administration's activities. He pulls up next to Trump on his dream-mobile and says "hey, cowboy, yeah, those special prosecutors are the suck, but, you know, they only get worse if you pick at them. Just ignore them as much as you can, and govern as badly as you can, for as long as you can, is my advice to you, cupcake. Chances are it'll all blow over."
And you're reading the report and you think to yourself: "Finally! A voice of sanity!" But Trump doesn't even pause to catch his breath. He's like "F&#% that guy! MOAR LIES! BIGGER OBSTRUCTIONS!"
It's relentless. And crazy. His own team in the White House doesn't know what to do with him. Everybody's like "tell him to stop obstructing teh justice!" And they're like "I did, but he did it anyway as soon as I left his office!" The political people are trying to put the brakes on him, while the career people are trying to cover their asses and figure out how long they can pretend they didn't hear that latest illegal thing he ordered them to do.
And it all started because he was frustrated that his people weren't making it perfectly clear to the media that he was NOT being investigated for any of that Russia stuff. So he fired Comey. Which launched the obstruction-of-justice investigation. Which made it all about him. I can't tell if this was monumentally stupid, or insanely clever in the bizarro world of Trump's psychological motivators.
Meanwhile the White House is leaking like a thundercloud on a rainy day as everyone is trying to get their stories straight, Trump is going outside the White House entirely to try to find messengers who are willing to convey his commands of unethical behavior through back-channels, and aghast people at all levels are trying to make sure they're not the ones who are gonna take the fall.
The upshot of this is that we've heard most of this stuff before if we've been reading the papers. That and the fact that half of his witness-tampering was done via public tweets. There is something jaw-dropping about seeing it all collected together in one place, though.
But then the big cop out arrives. Mueller & co. basically say "However, he is The President, and so it would be very strange for his own justice department to try to hold him to account for this. That's what impeachment is for. So we're not going to give our opinions as to whether The President is guilty of obstruction of justice. But he's definitely not not guilty, if you know what we mean." Punt! Take it away, Congress (fat chance).
