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67/ The question is, how did Mueller define "conspiracy" in Volume 1, pt. 3 of the Report? That's the part dealing with nongovernmental Russian nationals. Did Mueller consider any potential offenses involving Trumpworld and nongovernmental Russian nationals, or just "conspiracy"?
68/ Did Mueller look at bribery, money laundering, RICO, illegal solicitation of foreign campaign donations, aiding and abetting, conspiracy to defraud the United States (which might well be seen *not* as a conspiracy "with" Russian nationals) or just one strand of "conspiracy"?
69/ Remember that "collusion" is *not* a legal term: but it *is* an umbrella term for a series of federal criminal statutes the violation of which would, in a speaking indictment, be undergirded by (broadly speaking) "collusive" conduct in the commonsensical sense of that word.
70/ I believe what we will discover in two hours is: (a) all the counterintelligence information about whether Trump is compromised will be *erased* from the Mueller Report, and (b) the *only* conspiracies really discussed in the Report will be those that no one accused Trump of.
71/ Barr trumpeted Trump's cooperation with investigators. *Wow*. He fought responding to questions for over a year—and when he did he'd only accept written questions on narrow topics with no follow-up. Not to mention he fired Comey, tried to fire Mueller twice, fired Sessions...
72/ AG Barr also confirmed that the White House had early access to the Report, i.e. while it was preparing its counter-response. NBC has already called this "actual collusion." MSNBC (Melber) notes Barr said Mueller looked at ten events in the obstruction timeline in particular.
73/ Trump is on a full PR *offensive* on Twitter. But even on Fox News, Chris Wallace is saying that Barr's press conference just now did not seem like a press conference by an Attorney General, but an advocate for the president. No one is buying this massive Trump/Barr PR blitz.
74/ Katyal notes—rightly—that Barr praised Trump wherever possible but never noted that Trump was (among much else) proved *wrong* on who interfered with the '16 election and how serious the interference was. All those tweets about this being a "witch hunt" investigation? Wrong.
75/ MSNBC notes, too, what I've been writing about here on Twitter for a year—we're talking about obstruction (was Trump "angry" when he obstructed? was he "frustrated" when he obstructed? was he in an "unprecedented" situation?) in a way we *never* would with an average citizen.
76/ Any attorney listening to Barr heard euphemistic, careful language in his presentation. In other words, Barr was putting a gloss on the case in the way a defense lawyer would—but not even the way a lawyer would *in-court*, but the way an attorney might *outside a courthouse*.
77/ Too few people are noting the following key (and overarching) fact: William Barr no longer has credibility, as the Attorney General, on *any* matters relating to Donald Trump. It is impossible to imagine any journalist crediting Barr on any Trump-related issue going forward.
78/ Neal Katyal, who helped write the DOJ's Special Counsel regulations, notes that Barr offering up Mueller's testimony to Congress was—well—worth nothing at all, as Mueller will shortly be outside the authority of the DOJ and, really, Barr can't stop him from testifying anyway.
79/ People misconstrue the problem with Barr using the term "collusion." It's not that it's not a legal term—though it's not—it's that it's a hard term to use accurately in this context—though you can—and it can easily be used as *political rhetoric*. And that's how Barr used it.
81/ Long ago, we were told by many media outlets that Rod Rosenstein was a "survivor." We were told that meant that he did what he had to do to survive professionally—that he was flexible. Well, here's what having no core principles looks like in practice:https://twitter.com/Adrienne_DNC/status/1118872403994607617 …
82/ This will be the one time during this live thread I repeat something I've often said on my feed: never ever ask why men and women will throw away their good name for Trump—the GOP has made it clear they think Trump could tear the party in two and destroy it if they cross him.
83/ The GOP has long been about winning elections despite being a minority party whose views most of America disagrees with. Since 1994, it's rarely been about principles—but rather, multifaceted voter suppression. So no, *nothing* is more important than keeping the party alive.
85/ I *do* differ from @AshaRangappa_ in distinguishing between *four* scenarios:
(1) Collusion by conspiracy (a crime)*
(2) Collusion by other crimes (a crime)*
(3) Noncriminal collusion (a national security threat)*
(4) Noncriminal collusion (an ethical offense)
*Impeachable.
86/ Barr's use of "collusion" *at most* referred to "Scenario 1 [of 4]"—collusion by criminal conspiracy. (I'd argue that he was only referring to conspiracy with certain people at certain times, however.) His *political trick* was to pretend he was referring to *all four types*.
87/ If you were, uh, *alive in America* from 2017 through the present, you know that "ten" is a *very* small number compared to the public behavior we saw from Trump and the private behavior we read about in major media:https://twitter.com/politico/status/1118890147020460033 …
88/ BREAKING: Papadopoulos Appears to Have Lied in Saying He Never Told an Australian Diplomat in April '16 About the Kremlin Having Stolen Clinton Emails (Intel Trump Adviser John Mashburn Says Papadopoulos Then Passed to the Campaign—Meaning, Trump Knew)https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/downer-papadopolous-trump-mueller-russia?utm_source=dynamic&utm_campaign=bfsharetwitter …
89/ Congress gets the redacted Mueller Report in two minutes.
90/ This is incorrect. We were waiting on *Mueller* to tell us if there was a provable criminal conspiracy in the collusion we know about, and *are* waiting on *20 other investigations* to tell us if there were *other* impeachable crimes in that collusion.https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/1118891268929617921 …
91/ And the way Barr has framed the Mueller Report, it's *certain* we won't even get a *complete* answer on whether there was a criminal conspiracy in the collusion we know about—as Trump's collusion with Russia was part of a *multinational* conspiracy Mueller didn't investigate.
92/ The reports we've had from the NYT, Washington Post, ProPublica, and others have established that Trump's collusion with Russia was part of a broader "grand bargain" involving at least 6 countries—yet we heard *none* of those countries but Russia named by Barr in his presser.
93/ So in speaking carefully today, we must say that, *at most*, what we will learn in an hour is how much evidence there is that Trump or his circle engaged in *one* type of conspiracy with *one* type of co-conspirator (Russian government officials, and *perhaps* their cutouts).
94/ MAJOR BREAKING NEWS: Mueller Report Released Link: https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf … More coming very soon...
95/ NOTE: I am only going to focus on *new* information in the Report that readers of this feed do not already know. More coming very soon...
96/ The Executive Summary to the Conspiracy Section (Volume I) seems to suggest that Mueller believes the first report to U.S. intelligence about Russia came from the Australians in July, regarding Papadopoulos' May 2016 meeting with Downer (in an earlier typo, I said "April").
97/ To be clear, though, I don't want to draw conclusions from the Executive Summary—especially as counterintelligence information from our Western allies may have been redacted. So let's proceed with caution, and simply put a pin in the Papadopoulos-Downer meeting in May 2016.
98/ "The investigation also identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign." Barr didn't note *that*.
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