Mueller finds no conspiracy, but extensive Trump-Russia contacts

[webfact]

Mueller finds no conspiracy, but extensive Trump-Russia contacts

By Nathan Layne and Mark Hosenball

 

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump walks to board Air Force One as they travel to Florida for Easter weekend, at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, U.S., April 18, 2019. REUTERS/Al Drago

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Special Counsel Robert Mueller may not have found evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia, but his report details extensive contacts between the campaign and Russian operatives who sought to influence the election.  

 

Mueller said in his report released on Thursday that he found "numerous links" and that the Trump campaign "expected it would benefit" from Russia's effort to tilt the ballot in Trump's favour.

 

Ultimately, Mueller determined the various contacts either didn't amount to criminal behaviour or would be difficult to prove in court, even if people in Trump's orbit sometimes displayed a willingness to accept Russian help, the report showed.

 

Trump and his allies, who derided the Mueller probe as a political "witch hunt", portrayed the report as vindication. "No collusion. No obstruction. For all the haters and the radical left Democrats, game over," Trump tweeted on Thursday.

 

"The bottom line is the president is exonerated and the campaign is exonerated of collusion," said Michael Caputo, a former adviser to Trump's campaign.

 

Some legal experts and political strategists were more circumspect, saying the report confirmed the Russian government was attempting to help Trump with the election.

 

"I think that's a pretty extraordinary finding of historical significance, whether or not there's a crime," said Matthew Jacobs, a former federal prosecutor who is now a San Francisco-based lawyer.

 

Many of the contacts in the report were already known. They included former national security adviser Michael Flynn's conversations in late 2016 with Sergei Kislyak, Russia ambassador at the time, and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, a political consultant who the FBI has determined has ties to Russian intelligence.

 

But the report contained fresh details on the range of official and unofficial dealings Trump campaign advisers and supporters had with Russians before and after the 2016 election.

 

For example, the report says that Manafort, shortly after he joined the campaign in the spring of 2016, directed his deputy to share internal polling data with Kilimnik with the understanding it would be passed on to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch known to have close ties to the Kremlin.

 

Lawyers for Manafort did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Kilimnik did not reply to an email seeking comment.

 

A Washington-based attorney for Deripsaka said he could not comment. In a statement to Reuters in January, representatives for Deripaska said he has never had any communication with Kilimnik.

 

The report also says that Manafort told Kilimnik in August 2017 about the campaign's efforts to win the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Trump ended up winning three of those states in the November election.

 

Mueller's investigation did not find a connection between Manafort's sharing of polling data and Russia's meddling in the U.S. election or that he otherwise coordinated with Russia.

 

Frank Montoya, a former senior FBI official, said he was nonetheless bothered by the interactions between Manafort and Kilimnik, especially their talking about battleground states.

 

"As a longtime counterintelligence investigator it makes the hair stand on the back of my neck," Montoya said.

 

The report detailed a meeting in December 2016 between Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Sergei Gorkov, the head of a Russian state-owned bank under U.S. sanctions. Gorkov gave Kushner a painting and a bag of soil from the town in Belarus where Kushner's family is from, the report says.

 

Mueller's team said it could not resolve a conflict in the accounts of Kushner, who said the meeting was diplomatic in nature, and Gorkov, who said it was business related.

 

Kushner has said neither sanctions nor his business activities were discussed at the meeting. Kushner's lawyer did not respond to a request for comment on Mueller's report.

 

The report also provided new details about a meeting that campaign advisers Donald Trump Jr., the president's oldest son, Kushner and Manafort held with a Russian lawyer at New York's Trump Tower in June 2016. The meeting was set up after the advisers were promised "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, Trump's Democratic challenger for president.

 

Mueller's team considered whether the advisers violated laws barring election contributions from foreigners. But, the report says, they ultimately decided there was not enough evidence to show they "wilfully" broke the law and they might have had problems proving the information offered on Clinton was really valuable.

 

When news of the Trump Tower meeting broke in July 2017, Trump Jr. issued a statement saying the meeting was set up to discuss adoption policy, not politics, before later admitting he had been expecting intelligence on Clinton.

 

Such interactions have broadly been referred to by Democratic congressional investigators as examples of possible "collusion". But because collusion is not a legal term, Mueller's team examined the Trump Tower meeting and other contacts through the lens of federal conspiracy law.

 

Mueller said his investigation was unable to establish that such contacts with Russians met the bar of criminality which required that the contacts "amounted to an agreement to commit any substantive violation" of U.S. laws, including those governing campaign finance and foreign agent registration.

 

Therefore, Mueller said his office "did not charge any individual associated with the Trump Campaign with conspiracy to commit a federal offence arising from Russia contacts."

 

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball, Nathan Layne, Sarah N. Lynch, Karen Freifeld and Andy Sullivan in Washington; Editing by Ross Colvin and Paul Thomasch)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-04-19

[EVENKEEL]

No Conspiracy, How much more do you need to drop this crap and get back to work. From now on the harder the dems try to find dirt on Trump the easier his campaign will be. Trump 2020 is looking better all the time.

[Chomper Higgot]

There are 12 more indictments from the Mueller investigation.

 

Stay tuned.

Edited April 19, 2019 by Chomper Higgot

[Becker]

"Mueller said in his report released on Thursday that he found "numerous links" and that the Trump campaign "expected it would benefit" from Russia's effort to tilt the ballot in Trump's favour."

 

Impeach the draft dodging traitor and throw his orange fat @ss in Leavenworth

[attrayant]

2 hours ago, EVENKEEL said:

No Conspiracy, How much more do you need to drop this crap and get back to work.

 

Fine; let's cross that one off the list.  Only sixteen more to go.

 

Edited April 19, 2019 by attrayant

[EVENKEEL]

35 minutes ago, attrayant said:

 

Fine; let's cross that one off the list.  Only sixteen more to go.

 

No Conspiracy, that pecker head there used to be amusing on the Jon Stewart Show....now he's just sad.

 

Not long ago all the radical talking heads talked about all this hard evidence of Conspiracy. Now that's been debunked. With no evidence they found Trump guilty. Now what you got?

 

 

 

[Hanaguma]

It's funny (and sad) how this topic somehow doesn' get any traction... I guess everyone is following, lemming-like, as the mass media and the Democratic Party (but I repeat myself) undergoes mass hypnosis and forgets that "collusion" was the point of the investigation.  Now it's obstruction, next, the fact that in two years and 40 million dollars, the worst thing that was discovered is that Trump dropped the f-bomb.

[tlandtday]

It should be pretty clear to any rational thinker by now that this is nothing more than political assassination minus the gun.  They will attempt to remove Trump at all costs with no attention paid to justice or motivation.  Their gun just may backfire we shall see.

[quandow]

4 hours ago, EVENKEEL said:

No Conspiracy, How much more do you need to drop this crap and get back to work. From now on the harder the dems try to find dirt on Trump the easier his campaign will be. Trump 2020 is looking better all the time.

Read the report. THEN you can make comments like this (though, if you actually read it, you won't).

[quandow]

1 hour ago, EVENKEEL said:

No Conspiracy, that pecker head there used to be amusing on the Jon Stewart Show....now he's just sad.

 

Not long ago all the radical talking heads talked about all this hard evidence of Conspiracy. Now that's been debunked. With no evidence they found Trump guilty. Now what you got?

 

 

 

It wasn't debunked, there just wasn't enough evidence for a hanging. Remember, the US lets guilty men go free rather than hang one innocent man. And, I repeat myself - read the report before you go making incorrect noise.

[jcsmith]

11 minutes ago, tlandtday said:

It should be pretty clear to any rational thinker by now that this is nothing more than political assassination minus the gun.  They will attempt to remove Trump at all costs with no attention paid to justice or motivation.  Their gun just may backfire we shall see.

Pretty clear to any rational thinker? 

There is little doubt really that Trump obstructed justice. Mueller only didn't conclude that because he felt he could not indict a sitting president and as a result of that it would be unfair to conclude that. It's obvious from that report that he felt Trump obstructed justice though and he most notably said that if he found otherwise he would have exonerated him... but he did not.

He also laid out Manafort handing over polling data, battleground state information, etc to Russian intelligence. Don Jr accessing wikileaks information, etc. He could not determine criminal liability for those things, but noted that many of Trump's cabinet lied to them repeatedly and some deleted evidence. Trump meanwhile never granted him an interview, and in the written interview the man with the greatest memory of all time couldn't remember 27 times... and gave vague and useless answers to numerous other questions. Mueller basically concluded that the only way to resolve that would be to have a long legal battle to force testimony which he declined to do and instead issued the report. 

That is not political assassination. Nor is it a witch hunt.  It's a prosecutor laying out 448 pages of facts which paint Trump in a very negative light... Only to watch William Barr spin it in a way that seemed like it was overwhelmingly positive to him,  then watching Fox News and Trump's supporters claim victory for a month before he released the document which clearly shows otherwise. 

The big questions:

- If Trump was innocent why did he feel that the special counsel was the end of his presidency, and that he was screwed.

- If Trump was innocent then why did he obstruct justice at every turn?
- If Trump was innocent why did he direct his son to lie about the tower meeting?

- If Trump was innocent why did he continue to lie about the Moscow Trump Tower until he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar?
- If there was no wrongdoing then why did numerous members of his own cabinet or counsel refuse to execute things he ordered them to do? They essentially protected him from himself and protected themselves from criminal wrongdoing that he was ordering them to execute.

Those are hard questions to answer. But I'd invite you to take a crack.

Edited April 19, 2019 by jcsmith

[tlandtday]

Problem is you are leading with what amounts to hearsay.  Provide some solid proof of this quote by Trump then we can continue the discussion.

[jcsmith]

7 minutes ago, tlandtday said:

Problem is you are leading with what amounts to hearsay.  Provide some solid proof of this quote by Trump then we can continue the discussion.

Hearsay? There is a 448 page document on the incident with the full report here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5955379-Redacted-Mueller-Report.html#document/

 

That having been said anytime it's Trump's word in public vs. other figures word under oath with the pressure of perjury or lying to the FBI if they are dishonest... It's pretty hard to believe the pathological liar over someone who would be jailed if they lied...

Edited April 19, 2019 by jcsmith

[248900_1469958220]

You dont have to be a Trump supporter to find the 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' displayed by a lot of modern day (notice I say modern day) 'liberals'.....both amusing and very tiresome at the same time. Its time for the Democrats to put on their big boy pants and put forward someone convincing to challenge him. Clinton LOST get over it! I know she wasnt supposed to.....we all know she wasn't supposed to lose.....but Bernie Sanders got shafted last time (by who?....mmmmm) and is about to keel over,  Warren is as 'Indian' as a piece of haggis, and Biden is a weird creep around kids......is that it? Gabbard.....She seems like she may actually have some common sense....which may rule her out anyway because she will probably hurt too many 'feelings'......

[tlandtday]

Let the voters decide.  The ones who are being disrespected by this entire process.  Those that have had their democratically elected President obstructed at every turn he takes. Let's see what they say.  If Trump is so terrible he cannot stand a chance at winning or do you have so little faith or belief in the electorate?  Is that what this is really all about?  Discredit the government and discredit the voters so you can put your own in?

[Jingthing]

2 minutes ago, tlandtday said:

Let the voters decide.  The ones who are being disrespected by this entire process.  Those that have had their democratically elected President obstructed at every turn he takes. Let's see what they say.  If Trump is so terrible he cannot stand a chance at winning or do you have so little faith or belief in the electorate?  Is that what this is really all about?  Discredit the government and discredit the voters so you can put your own in?

Impeachment is a constitutionally protected option when justified. It's justified now. But just because it's justified doesn't mean that the house democrats will proceed with that.

[jcsmith]

6 minutes ago, tlandtday said:

Let the voters decide.  The ones who are being disrespected by this entire process.  Those that have had their democratically elected President obstructed at every turn he takes. Let's see what they say.  If Trump is so terrible he cannot stand a chance at winning or do you have so little faith or belief in the electorate?  Is that what this is really all about?  Discredit the government and discredit the voters so you can put your own in?

I doubt democrats attempt to impeach Trump unless a significant number republicans in the senate are willing to do so and to date the GOP has shown that they will die on the sword for Trump. But I don't think there is much chance that Trump will be re-elected. 

That having been said, I see that predictably nobody is going to take a chance to answer any of those big five questions I asked. If you are unable to justify why Trump did these things then how can you support him with a clean conscience?

[attrayant]

1 hour ago, Hanaguma said:

It's funny (and sad) how this topic somehow doesn' get any traction... I guess everyone is following, lemming-like, as the mass media and the Democratic Party (but I repeat myself) undergoes mass hypnosis and forgets that "collusion" was the point of the investigation.  Now it's obstruction, next, the fact that in two years and 40 million dollars, the worst thing that was discovered is that Trump dropped the f-bomb.

 

Do you also believe that Jeffrey Dahmer should have been released because police initially responded to a mere domestic violence report?  The Mueller report is Trump's refrigerator full of body parts.

[Jingthing]

I have a different feeling about impeachment. I think there is a case for that for the cause of preserving the integrity of the office of the U.S. presidency going into the future, so it would still make sense to impeach, conviction or not. Why? Mueller investigation was limited. There is a lot more that would be uncovered in a formal impeachment such as money laundering. This is bigger than only "trump" -- it's about asserting without question that no president is above the law and the congress is an equal power to the executive. Yes, we're at a historic time. "trump" is much much worse than Nixon. If he's allowed to stand without challenge, that is a horrible precedent. 

Edited April 19, 2019 by Jingthing

[Hanaguma]

Just now, attrayant said:

 

Do you also believe that Jeffrey Dahmer should have been released because police initially responded to a mere domestic violence report?  The Mueller report is Trump's refrigerator full of body parts.

You are comparing apples and elephants.  A two year investigation with hundreds of interviews, subpoenas, and investigators, could not come up with the evidence. Isn't that enough?

 

I don't doubt Trump is a world class BS artist, it comes with the territory of being a builder in New York City. He also is a political neophyte, which explains why he constantly asked his staff to do things that aren't allowed. Good for them for being quality advisors and refusing.  About the only things he has in common with professional politicians are a massive ego and a very passing acquaintance with the truth. Time to give up flogging this horse, his ribs are showing.

[jcsmith]

Just now, Jingthing said:

I have a different feeling about impeachment. I think there is a case that for the case of preserving the integrity of the U.S. presidency, it would still make sense to impeach, conviction or not. Why? Mueller investigation was limited. There is a lot more that would be uncovered in a formal impeachment such as money laundering. This is bigger than only "trump" -- it's about asserting without question that no president is above the law and the congress is an equal power to the executive. 

I don't necessarily disagree with you. I just don't think it would be a good move politically to do so. Because to do so would rally Trump's base behind him. I'd rather see them invest that time and energy into trying to pass laws to prevent something like this from happening again. Pass them in the house, and put the honus on the republicans in the senate to prove that they want honest and fair elections free of foreign influence. By no means am I saying they should give a pass on these things, but considering we're only a year and a half away from a new election, they'd be better off just laying out their case and then voting him out imo. 

[Jingthing]

10 minutes ago, jcsmith said:

I don't necessarily disagree with you. I just don't think it would be a good move politically to do so. Because to do so would rally Trump's base behind him. I'd rather see them invest that time and energy into trying to pass laws to prevent something like this from happening again. Pass them in the house, and put the honus on the republicans in the senate to prove that they want honest and fair elections free of foreign influence. By no means am I saying they should give a pass on these things, but considering we're only a year and a half away from a new election, they'd be better off just laying out their case and then voting him out imo. 

His base is limited. It does not grow. Sure they would stick with him but when "trump" is so massively and fully exposed with an impeachment process that will motivate the opposition to him as well. People have short memories. Being impeached indeed did help Bill Clinton, but on a scale of 1 to 100, what Clinton was charged with was about a 5 and "trump" at about 100. Different things are different things. This situation with "trump" is unprecedented in American history. If he isn't impeached may as well change the constitution.

I guess what I'm basically saying is that this "trump" situation is a historical challenge, a kind of "what did you do in the war Daddy" phase.

The senate republicans they are deplorable Quislings and history will be unkind to them.

But the voters did give the house to the democrats on 2018 for two main reasons -- to prevent "trump" from further degrading health care and also to provide OVERSIGHT over an unhinged demagogue president.

If they don't impeach when there is so much justification now to impeach, well, they won't look so good either in terms of What did you do in the war Daddy.

Edited April 19, 2019 by Jingthing

[attrayant]

1 minute ago, Hanaguma said:

You are comparing apples and elephants.

 

No I'm not.  You're saying that there was only one reason for Mueller's investigation, and any 'incidental' findings unrelated to that reason are somehow out of bounds or don't matter.  That's patently ridiculous.

 

1 minute ago, Hanaguma said:

A two year investigation with hundreds of interviews, subpoenas, and investigators, could not come up with the evidence. Isn't that enough?

 

No, because of all the body parts that were found during the investigation.

[jcsmith]

1 minute ago, Hanaguma said:

A two year investigation with hundreds of interviews, subpoenas, and investigators, could not come up with the evidence. Isn't that enough?

He certainly took the aid of Russia and knew where it was coming from. He was certainly aware of what Russia was doing, even if there is no evidence of him coordinating in it. His staff (Manafort) certainly fed them information including poll data. His family and staff certainly took a meeting with them to attempt to obtain information. His son and staff certainly received information from Wikileaks. There is plenty of evidence to support that. And according to Mueller many people interviewed lied to him. Several people destroyed evidence. Trump refused to be interviewed by him without a prolonged legal fight that Mueller elected not to engage in. 

 

So the best case scenario there is that Trump willingly took the aid of a foreign power to get himself elected. Unanswered questions is why does he feel so obviously beholden to Putin? That remains unanswered. Maybe it will never be answered. But it is certainly suspicious.

 

Obstruction though seems like there's a very solid case for it here, but policy would not allow indicting of a sitting president. If there is, the big question is why? What was he covering up? That's may not be a legal battle, but from a political standpoint it does matter.

[attrayant]

VOX: The Mueller report’s collusion section is much worse than you think

 

[The Trump campaign] was both actively seeking to cultivate a relationship with the Russian government and willing to work with it to acquire damaging information about its political opponents. That willingness included explicitly sharing information with or soliciting information from Russian operatives.

 

[Did the] Trump campaign actively work with the Russian government to improve its electoral chances?  [The] the report provides plenty of evidence to suggest the answer is yes.

[Jingthing]

7 minutes ago, attrayant said:

VOX: The Mueller report’s collusion section is much worse than you think

 

[The Trump campaign] was both actively seeking to cultivate a relationship with the Russian government and willing to work with it to acquire damaging information about its political opponents. That willingness included explicitly sharing information with or soliciting information from Russian operatives.

 

[Did the] Trump campaign actively work with the Russian government to improve its electoral chances?  [The] the report provides plenty of evidence to suggest the answer is yes.

I agree. It's a roadmap for impeachment if the house so chooses to take that path. 

[lannarebirth]

22 minutes ago, jcsmith said:

He certainly took the aid of Russia and knew where it was coming from. He was certainly aware of what Russia was doing, even if there is no evidence of him coordinating in it. His staff (Manafort) certainly fed them information including poll data. His family and staff certainly took a meeting with them to attempt to obtain information. His son and staff certainly received information from Wikileaks. There is plenty of evidence to support that. And according to Mueller many people interviewed lied to him. Several people destroyed evidence. Trump refused to be interviewed by him without a prolonged legal fight that Mueller elected not to engage in. 

 

So the best case scenario there is that Trump willingly took the aid of a foreign power to get himself elected. Unanswered questions is why does he feel so obviously beholden to Putin? That remains unanswered. Maybe it will never be answered. But it is certainly suspicious.

 

Obstruction though seems like there's a very solid case for it here, but policy would not allow indicting of a sitting president. If there is, the big question is why? What was he covering up? That's may not be a legal battle, but from a political standpoint it does matter.

 

What you're suggesting about Manafort sharing polling data certainly sounds like collusion. So why wasn't he charged with it?

[connda]

6 hours ago, webfact said:

Mueller finds no conspiracy, but extensive Trump-Russia contacts

"...but extensive Trump-Russia contacts".....that were not conspiratorial.  

 

Whatever, this will continued to be thrashed until November 3, 2020.  Invoking the Russian Bogeyman is easier than actually addressing the social and economic issues confronting the average citizens of the US.  

 

[jcsmith]

29 minutes ago, lannarebirth said:

 

What you're suggesting about Manafort sharing polling data certainly sounds like collusion. So why wasn't he charged with it?

I don't think they were ever going to charge Trump with anything. Here's that except though from the report, it's on page 15-16 of Volume 1.
 

Quote

Separately, on August 2, 2016 , Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort met in New York City with his long-time business associate Konstantin Kilimnik, who the FBI assesses to have ties to Russian intelligence. Kilimnik requested the meeting to deliver in person a peace plan for Ukraine that Manafort acknowledged to the Special Counsel's Office was a "backdoor" way forRussia to control part of eastern Ukraine; both men believed the plan would require candidate Trump 's assent to succeed (were he to be elected President). They also discussed the status of the Trump Campaign and Manafort's strategy for winning Democratic votes in Midwestern states.

Months before that meeting, Manafort had caused internal polling data to be shared with Kilimnik, and the sharing continued for some period of time after their August meeting.

Edited April 19, 2019 by jcsmith

[Ulic]

I was actually surprised to read that Trump feared this investigation would end his presidency. What I think he should really fear is his taxes/businesses come under the microscope. Specifically money laundering for the Russian mafia/government officials through his UBS loans and his building projects around the world. Russians have bought a lot of real estate from Trump.