I’ve spent the last 90 minutes “reading” (i.e., skimming through summaries of) the just-released Mueller Report, and I can’t do this all day. Not if I want to bang out my usual quota. But the special counsel’s carefully qualified conclusion that President Trump didn’t precisely or definitively collude or conspire with Russian operatives, or at least that there’s insufficient evidence to prove same, appears to be valid, if you want to be super-careful and extra-tippy-toe about it.
But Trump sure as hell obstructed justice here and there (what do you call firing James Comey over “this Russia thing“? serving justice?) and throw the fog and flim-flam around. He refused to be interviewed by Mueller’s team — what does that tell you?
The report certainly portrays Trump as peripherally dirty as hell in these myriad matters, and, if you ask me, as the same unruly, sociopathic, somewhat desperate conniver and opportunist whom we’ve all come to know a little better over the last three-plus years.
It certainly doesn’t gloss over the fact that his already-indicted or convicted minions aren’t literally covered in raw sewage or that Trump isn’t an extremely brutish, id-propelled, temperamentally undisciplined, craven, under-informed, financially unstable boss of a New York crime family. In the eyes of God, history and likely 2020 voters he’s almost certainly, in fact, royally fucked. Not to mention what Southern District of New York prosecutors will do after he leaves office.
I’m puzzled by a reported possibility that the report doesn’t look all that deeply or comprehensively at Trump empire finances, as most of what has happened over the last four, five or six years, Russia-wise, has been about money. Trump ran for the Presidency to boost his brand, after all — that was the basic plan all along. Defeating Hillary was an “uh-oh, what do we do now?” moment.
Here’s the report. It’s going to take a while to sift through everything. Please post any comments, conclusions, curious insights or special uncoverings.