Thursday-- Mueller Report Day (Probably)

Collusion 2: William Barr by Nancy Ohanian

Reports claim Barr is going to send Congress-- most of whose members will be out of town, or about to go out of town, for spring break-- a heavily redacted version of the Mueller Report on Thursday. In the past, Devin Nunes, the Trump/Putin stooge who leads the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, has always claimed that the Mueller report is just a "partisan document" that he has no interest in reading. And yet on March 27 he co-signed a letter from committee chairman Adam Schiff asking Barr allow Mueller to brief the committee and provide "all materials, regardless of form and classification, obtained or produced by the Special Counsel’s Office in the course of the investigation, including but not limited to any addenda or annexes to the full report, or separate intelligence or counterintelligence-related reports; scope-related materials regarding the investigation’s parameters, areas of inquiry, and subjects; investigative records and materials." That's kind of a big deal, since Nunes has done nothing for the last two years but attempt to sabotage the investigation.

Betsy Woodruff, reporting for the Daily Beast broke the story and noted that "The letter was a rare moment of bipartisan concord on the notoriously fractured committee, and suggests Schiff and Nunes will work together to extract as much information and detail as possible from Mueller’s team." I don't know about that and I'll believe Nunes is up to no good until I see evidence indicating I'm wrong. Do you want to read the letter they sent Barr, Rosenstein and Wray?

The investigation led by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller is of surpassing national importance and public interest. To discharge its distinct constitutional and statutory oversight responsibility, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence requires full visibility into the Special Counsel's Office's report, findings, and underlying evidence and information.

The Special Counsel's investigation originated within the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a counterintelligence probe, the existence of which then-Director James B. Comey confirmed publicly on March 20, 2017 in testimony before the Committee. Upon the appointment of Special Counsel Mueller, the Department of Justice authorized the Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the investigation.

Robert Mueller Into The Swamp by Nancy Ohanian

As the congressional committee of the House of Representatives charged with oversight of intelligence and counterintelligence matters, the Committee has an independent constitutional duty and express statutory right to examine the intelligence and counterintelligence information gathered by the Special Counsel's Office, assess the counterintelligence and national security implications, and formulate appropriate remedies in response.

Since the congressional intelligence committees' permanent establishment in 1976 and 1977, the Department, the Bureau, and other Intelligence Community elements, consistent with their statutory obligations, have routinely provided the committees with intelligence and counterintelligence briefings, information, and deeply sensitive investigative records, especially when profound public interest creates a need for congressional oversight.

Now that the Special Counsel has concluded his investigation and submitted his report to Attorney General Barr, the Department and the Bureau must keep the Committee "fully and currently informed" of that information and the Special Counsel's findings. The Committee therefore requests that the Department and Bureau provide to it all materials, regardless of form and classification, obtained or produced by the Special Counsel's Office in the course of the investigation, including but not limited to any addenda or annexes to the full report, or separate intelligence or counterintelligence-related reports; scope-related materials regarding the investigation's parameters, areas of inquiry, and subjects; investigative records and materials, including any documents such as FD-3025 and FD-1023s produced from January 2015 to the present date which relate to any US. government contacts with any person formally or informally associated with the Trump campaign; and raw reporting or finished analysis involving intelligence or counterintelligence-related information.

Special Counsel Mueller and senior members of his office-- as well as other relevant senior officials from the Department, Bureau, and Intelligence Community-- must also brief the full Committee on the investigation's scope and areas of inquiry, its findings, and the intelligence and counterintelligence information gathered in the course of and related to the investigation.

The Committee's request for testimony and documents is without prejudice to, and does not obviate the need for the Department to fulfill, the March 25, 2019 request for the full report-- in complete and unredacted form-- by April 2, 2019 from the Chairs of the Committees on the Judiciary, Intelligence, Oversight and Reform, Financial Services, Ways and Means, and Foreign Affairs.

Consistent with the Chairs' deadline, the Committee expects that production of the materials identified above begin on April 2, 2019. The Committee will also engage the Department and Bureau directly to secure testimony at the appropriate time.

We look forward to the Department and the Bureau's continued cooperation with the Committee on this matter of grave national importance.

That said, Dahlia Lithwick noted at Slate yesterday that the focus on the report has distracted us from the reality in plain sight." Examples go blatant lies and misdeeds she included:

• Trump encouraging the top border enforcement official to break the law and to expect a presidential pardon if he were tried and found guilty

• Trump denying any knowledge of Wikileaks



• His sister resigning from the federal bench because of an ethics investigation that has more to do with Trump breaking the law than her breaking the law

• possibly conspiring with Attorney General Barr to cover up Trump's criminal behavior and probably treason

And others. She pointed out that "Mueller was not charged with saving America from Donald Trump. Robert Mueller was not asked to define the scope of his own mandate in order to fit the precise contours of Donald Trump’s misdeeds. The persistent and perilous belief that whatever it is Robert Mueller has unearthed in secret is more relevant or compelling than what Donald Trump does openly every single day has produced a national myopia that has everyone so obsessed with the fruits of the Tree of Collusion and the Tree of Obstruction that we may have missed the forest altogether. We don’t get to outsource all the crime fighting and unfitness determinations to Robert Mueller and Adam Schiff. This is not the sharing economy; they aren’t Uber."

We have allowed Donald Trump’s narrow legal aperture—which allows only the noncrime of collusion to be the issue—to define the scope of wrongdoing for the rest of us. We have allowed the president to determine and define what we should consider illegal and improper and unfit, and we have allowed the confines of Mueller’s directive to define what we can hold Trump accountable for. But we should know what is wrong.

The issue before us is not just whether Barr eventually lets us know whether Mueller ultimately determined that the president unlawfully conspired with Russian agents to sway the 2016 election, or whether he attempted to obstruct inquiries into related investigations. The issue before us is (or at least, includes): whether Donald Trump has dangled pardons to obtain illegal outcomes, removed officials for their refusal to break the law, rewarded or pardoned others for breaking the law, threatened judges for legal conclusions they have made, violated campaign finance laws, violated tax laws, punished and threatened the free press, incited violence against Muslims, misused his charitable foundation, incited violence against political opponents, violated the Emoluments Clause, directed others to make illegal campaign payments, declined to seek redress for the brutal murder of a journalist by a foreign power, forced family separations at the border, attempted to change the asylum law at the border, banned trans service members, attempted to revoke Dreamers’ status, had conflicts of interest with Russia and other oligarchs worldwide, persistently lied about his conflicts of interest during the campaign and thereafter, used his twitter feed to incite retributive acts against critics … this list could go on and on. And on.

There will be a public reckoning about what the Mueller report contains and who can see it, possibly as soon as this Thursday, when the redacted version will be released. We can wait for that and have it, but we also need to acknowledge that it is not a substitute for a systematic public reckoning about everything else. Being so stunned by what’s happening every day that you put all hope in what someone else might uncover tomorrow is a rational way to cope in a time of numbing disintegration of government, rules, and trust. But it’s not enough. It’s not a substitute. It’s barely even a start.