And wow
Just wow:
Much as I hate to say it, this morning’s hearing was a disaster. Far from breathing life into his damning report, the tired Robert Mueller sucked the life out of it. The effort to save democracy and the rule of law from this lawless president has been set back, not advanced.
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) July 24, 2019
Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe is a leftist and an extreme Trump-hater. If he says this, you better believe the Democrats are regretting pulling Mueller back into the spotlight.
[ADDENDUM: By the way, Tribe and the rest remain firmly convinced that Trump is guilty of everything that has been alleged. They just are disappointed that this particular hearing didn’t fulfill their hopes and dreams. And some of the responses to Tribe’s tweet are from people who think all kinds of wonderful things did happen at the hearing. Hope dies hard.]
[ADDENDUM II: Much more here; please read the whole thing.]
Here are two highlights from the post I just linked; there are plenty more there:
No single individual has done more to corroborate Trump's charges of a Democrat-led witch hunt than Mueller, who showed today he had no day-to-day oversight of his own investigation, no knowledge of his employees' backgrounds, and no understanding of basic claims in his report.
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) July 24, 2019
And this:
Several times this morning this actually happened.
Mueller is asked a question about Fusion GPS or Prof. Joseph Mifsud.
He responds by saying he doesn't know anything about it and is informed IT'S IN HIS OWN REPORT.
— Brian Cates (@drawandstrike) July 24, 2019
ADDENDUM III:
And what can you say about these quotes from none other than Michael Moore? Well, I can say this: Moore still believes that Trump is guilty as the day is long, but he’s bitterly disappointed in Mueller’s performance today and hopping mad at those who thought grilling Mueller in front of the world would be a peachy keen idea. Moore also seems to think that Trump will win in 2020:
A frail old man, unable to remember things, stumbling, refusing to answer basic questions…I said it in 2017 and Mueller confirmed it today — All you pundits and moderates and lame Dems who told the public to put their faith in the esteemed Robert Mueller — just STFU from now on
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) July 24, 2019
“Trump must be gloating in ecstasy,” he added. “Not because of the failure that is Robert Mueller — his Report is still a damning document of crimes by Trump—but because Trump understands the power of the visual, and he understands that the Dems aren’t street fighters and that’s why he’ll win.”
“Dems aren’t street fighters.” I wonder what he’d like them to do now to prove that they are. Maybe he’d like Cory Booker to pump up the old testosterone some more and follow through on this threat?
I’m expecting “Mueller is only pretending to be confused because he’s afraid of telling the real truth” to be the new talking point.
Ironic that Tribe likely feels the “rule of law” that is absent in the country under “lawless” Trump is due to Trump attempting to enforce the actual rule of law.
The Democrats want a total do-over. They forced Mueller to act like a doddering fool to claim he was incompetent and that he failed to gather evidence of Trump’s obvious and varied crimes due to said incompetence. If Trump wins reelection, they can now do the same probe over again, only this time with better fabricated evidence and a “competent” investigator.
Dwaz:
See this.
By the way, the article I just linked mentioned that Mueller was asked if Trump had been exonerated and he said “no,” and then was asked if he could be charged with obstruction when he’s out of office and Mueller said “yes.”
Both, however, are fake questions, asked merely for propaganda purposes. That’s because it is impossible (as I wrote when the Mueller report first came out) to exonerate anyone, ever, except in something like a murder where there are fingerprints or DNA that belongs to someone else and the accused is eliminated because he or she has an airtight alibi as well. Even then, prosecutors cannot possibly “exonerate” anyway. They can only charge and try to convict. That’s the very basis, the central core, of our criminal justice system. Anyone who pretends otherwise is a fool, a knave, or actually both.
And as I wrote in an earlier post today, any president can be charged criminally for anything at all, if there is evidence, once he or she leaves office. That has nothing to do with whether sufficient evidence exists. It is quite clear that for Trump it does not.
Newspapers or people who report on this without making those points clear are in the business of propaganda. But that’s probably most people in politics and most newspapers.
I wonder whether the “Trump’s-a-Russian-spy” story might eventually go the way of other moral panics, lost in the endless reshuffling of the news cycle?
Heavy metal lyrics? First-person-shooter video games? Dungeons & Dragons suicides? The AIDS crisis? The Bermuda Triangle? UFOs? Satanists and child abusers running day cares? Poisoned over-the-counter pharmaceuticals?
Things rage, and then new things become the rage, and a decade later you’re chatting with your friend saying, “Hey, you remember when that was a thing?”
I’m old enough to remember a brief period before his death when an aged Richard Nixon was briefly rehabilitated. I can remember when Dan Rather spectacularly detonated his own career over a faked memo. I can remember when liberals thought was Christine Blasey Ford was their new cause, a crusade to be pursued passionately while this life lasted. I remember #MeToo.
These things evaporate as time passes.
For Democrats, it’s about getting their Russiagate/Mueller fix, keeping the base riled up, and soliciting donations. They know this is a dead end substantively. Mueller did a lot of questionable things (to say the least) in his investigation, but he seems to maintain a sliver of integrity. If he had anything, anything of substance against the President, we’d have long since known about it.
That’s not what this is about. It’s about mugging for the camera, stoking the flames of rage among the base, and milking big donors as much as possible.
If the hypothesis that Robert Mueller is feigning senility is to be entertained, then aren’t we in Saturday Night Live skit territory with their famed Ronald Reagan bumbling imbecile when in the presence of the press turns devious mastermind once they’ve left the room?
https://youtu.be/b5wfPlgKFh8
But committing a fraud upon the committee? Pah, that’s all just a good time! No worries!
The lawless president (who didn’t break any laws despite being investigated for over two years about every little thing).
I feel sorry for people like Tribe who cannot let go of their hatred because it’s too bound up in their ego. The rest of us need to stop front-paging people like this. The deference which they are paid it out of proportion to the value of the content that they provide.
The only time an AG of any sort said someone was totally innocent that I remember was in the aftermath of the Duke lacrosse case. Here’s CNN. Please note their use of scare quotes around innocent. MFM.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/11/cooper.transcript/index.html
There’s a big gulf between “I can charge you with a crime” and “I will win conviction in an open court”. As we saw with Hillary’s email server, a prosecutor may choose to not pursue a case if they feel it is too weak. Tho that was Comey and he wasn’t a prosecutor using the office’s power of discretion.
I feel sorry for people like Tribe who cannot let go of their hatred because it’s too bound up in their ego.
True. That said, those whom the gods choose to destroy, they first drive mad. Trump isn’t Nemesis, but he certainly seems to be her right hand man.
Senility is no vice in the pursuit of something or other.
By the way, Tribe and the rest remain firmly convinced that Trump is guilty of everything that has been alleged. –neo
True, and the impeachment train is rarin’ to go. There’s a long-wnded rant in the New Republic against Pelosi’s reluctance to proceed. The author, Elizabeth Spiers, believes the very fate of American democracy is at stake, though she doesn’t justify anything specifically because we all know what a terrible menace Trump is:
And here’s the real risk, both morally and politically: If Pelosi treats Trump as an aberration and continues to be passive in the hopes that we can all power through until next November, there’s no accountability mechanism built into our system of democracy that has any real credibility. There’s no crime so severe that Trump can’t get away with it—not intentionally neglecting brown children until they die in cages, not being openly racist, not raping women, not helping hostile foreign powers and covering up for dictatorial regimes that torture American journalists to death, not putting American lives at risk in imperialistic prosecutorial wars. That’s especially true for the offense that should be the most straightforward impeachment charge in this case—obstructing justice when our system of government works by design to prevent the president from abusing his power for personal gain. If nothing Trump does matters during this administration, nothing our system of democracy has in place to prevent descent into autocracy and tyranny matters, either. Norms and laws only work when they’re enforced.
https://newrepublic.com/article/154523/nancy-pelosi-impeach
I still say the Dems will impeach. It might be a futile gesture but it must be done, even if it fails, for the sake of the country and the children.
Impeachment becomes even more important if Barr and Horowitz ever get off the dime and start the counter-attack on the Mueller investigation.
Are Barr and Horowitz waiting for the opportune moment? Or is is it all a tease?
Dan Crenshaw tweeted this marvelous exchange; this Rep. makes it scathingly clear just how far this project strayed from the rule of law (very much in keeping with your points, neo):
https://twitter.com/RepDanCrenshaw/status/1154072950846496768?s=20
Interesting, the Real Straight Shooter, Mr. Integrity Mueller does not know what is in his report. The SOB would have been wise to refuse to testify and make the committees subpoena him, then if forced answer I plead the 5th.
It’s all a sham.
Mueller is only pulling his own version of Comey’s previous “golly-I-can’t-seem-to-remember-any-of-that” maneuver.
(AKA “the Comey Defense”. AKA “the Comey Gambit”…. Well it worked pretty well for Comey….)
You simply have to keep the wolves (from both sides of the aisle) at bay, especially when they insist on knowing just how incompetent—if not crooked—you truly are. (That “I dunno” regarding GPS Fusion was simply brilliant!)
The only thing missing was Mueller plunking a bottle of Old Turkey on the podium and taking “restorative” sips from time to time (“Gotta wet my whistle, all these questions are dryin’ me out”) or, alternatively, sipping something (e.g., Coca Cola) hidden in a crumpled paper bag (cf. “To Kill a Mockingbird”).
Regarding Tribe, what a joker! It might be nice if he did know something about American jurisprudence as well as a tad about the Constitution. He is truly lost.
——–
And yes, Crenshaw is very, very impressive. Has been from the get-go.
Most amazing to me is that Nadler constructed this disaster. I don’t know the guy but he’s done well enough to get elected and seated in charge of a serious congressional committee. The incompetence on display – either he knew this was likely to happen and let it proceed, or he didn’t have any idea how Mueller would behave – is quite shocking. It almost makes me think Nadler put this on at Pelosi’s request as a way to shut up the crazy Democrats that are demanding impeachment of Trump. Almost, because I don’t think they are that clever.
Mollie Hemingway tells a joke:
“Old conventional wisdom: Mueller left his phone in the Oval Office to spy on Trump.
New conventional wisdom: Mueller left his phone in the Oval Office because he forgot he had a phone.”
More wow. From WaPo:
Former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s testimony before Congress was touted by Democrats as the moment public opinion could shift in favor of impeachment. It will instead likely be remembered as the moment when public opinion crystallized against it.
Democrats hoped that Mueller would either add to or at least provide independent corroboration of his eponymous report. That did not happen. Mueller’s unwillingness to fulfill this partisan task was manifest, extending to even refusing to read sections from that report, thereby avoiding any video of him reciting arguments the president obstructed justice. There will be no “smoking gun” moment, no claim that a “cancer is growing on the presidency,” arising from Mueller’s testimony.
–Henry Olsen
https://beta.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/07/24/muellers-testimony-crystallized-public-opinion-against-impeachment/?outputType=amp
Henry Olsen is considered one of the “conservative” commentators at WaPo. Though I’m not sure what that means with pundits like David Brooks and Jennifer Rubin around.
Chairman Nadler, we’ve searched and searched but have been unable to prove that you didn’t have sex with a box of doughnuts.
I almost wish they would go for impeachment based on the Mueller Report. I’m not a litigator, but I could demolish this piece of garbage line-by-line. I only heard excerpts, but I wasn’t impressed with Mueller’s cross-examination by the Republicans. I would hope someone asked, “Director Mueller, did any of these meeting suggested by Papadoupolus or Page ever take place?” “Director Mueller, was the Trump Tower in Moscow ever built?” “Director Mueller, was anything other than the Magnitisky Act ever discussed at the Trump Tower meeting?” “Director Mueller, are you saying that any foreign policy think tank that invites the Russian Ambassador to a dinner is an agent of the Russian government?” “Director Mueller, did President Trump actually send lethal weapons to Ukraine?” To quote the late, great, Yul Brynner “Etc., etc., etc.” Oh wait, come to think of it, he was born in Russia! Must have been a Russian spy!
Was Mueller faking some or all of his befuddled behavior?
It was reported that Democrat committee members had met with Mueller for several hours the day before the hearings to prep him.
Thus, I presume that they had to know what mental condition he was in.
Yet, they went ahead anyway.
What did they really think was going to happen?
P.S.–I don’t really see Mueller faking it, and destroying his public image, unless there was an awfully strong incentive to do so.
Did he perhaps think that a Mueller at the top of his game might get indicted, but that it was far less likely that a doddering, befuddled old man Mueller wouldn’t?
When Hillary was being investigated for the mishandling of national security material, she claimed that she fell and hit her head, and magically forgot everything she was supposed to have learned in her approx. 40 hours of instruction on the topic. The FBI agents involved were hot to inspect her medical records, but Comey told them to stand down. Her claim to feeble mindedness was a get out of jail free card. (In spite of the statute that does not require intent.)
So when Mueller claims that he knows nothing about Fusion GPS … Please! I don’t buy it for a millisecond.
We should be very familiar with how the MSM aggressively uses and leverages omissions in their reportage. Now we are seeing official investigations relying heavily on omissions and ignorance and forgetfulness.
Mueller may be a bit enfeebled. But I think he made the conscious decision to run with that as a posture. Or he was told to do so.
There are likely two big motives at play. The Nadler’s etc. are always grabbing for more power. But many of the deep state people, and Hillary, just want to stay out of jail.
Pelosi, Nadler, Schiff and Cummings clown show of a press conference this afternoon: https://youtu.be/gCbwK1Ad3ZQ
Drag the slider over to approx. 1:15:00 for the start and go from there ( until, I suppose, you can’t take any more). It’s worse than Bob Mueller, believe it or not.
Don’t make it so complicated. Brave Sir Robert was faking and lying. Period. No mercy or pity for Brave Sir Robert. He is a vial, corrupt deep stater. Never was a straight shooter, just ask Whitey Bulger. Oh wait,he’s dead. Never mind.
I’m not always impressed with Roger Simon at PJ Media but his bit on Mueller tonight is intriguing. I can almost see Mueller this way:
I have another suggestion for something else that further explains the former special counsel’s behavior, a particularly precipitous decline from when we have last seen him, from competent to doddering.
He has a guilty conscience.
He should. And not just because Peter Strzok texted to his paramour what feels like decades ago that there was “no there there.” Anyone with an IQ in the proverbial triple digits has known that for a long time. (How distant it seems, months, years, that Dianne Feinstein was asked about the collusion/conspiracy— pick one — and admitted there was none.)
Mueller, unless he was living on Pluto, knew this. And somewhere, deep down, a part of him, an increasingly significant part, I suspect, must have realized what he was doing was wrong.
https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/does-a-guilty-conscience-explain-muellers-fumbling-testimony/
That was my thought, guilt, about Obama’s early debate with Romney where it seemed he was staring at his shoe half the time and having a deep, painful conversation with himself.
After Benghazi.
The Witch Hunt is over. Now the tables will be turned. Comey is going down!
where’s Manju?
lol
Wasn’t Tribe the person who was having his magnum opus written by somebody else? Not only was somebody else writing his book but they were also plagiarizing. In other words, Tribe has demonstrated that he is dishonest.
The MSM crafted image of who we were supposed to get was someone who looked like a Boston Brahmin, and who had a steel trap mind. Someone who would deftly parry hostile questions, and dazzle us with his encyclopedic knowledge, and learned brilliance.
What we got was our old Unca’ Bobby–the guy we put in the corner at family get-to gethers because he stares at the wall a lot with his mouth hanging open, sees things, talks to himself, and forgets where the bathroom is.
santisc on July 24, 2019 at 3:01 pm
santisc’s comment (which I missed 1st time through) complements my previous one.
While the Mueller testimony on Wed. looks bad for Mueller, possibly bad for the Mueller investigation, and bad for the MSM; it leaves the Democrat party in perfect position. They can continue to focus on the innuendo crimes that Mueller’s team “uncovered” while denying even the existence of any deep state conspiracy to subvert our democracy. (Fusion GPS who?) It could also be an opportune time to pivot away from Russia-Russia, to Trump’s racism and anti-immigrant stance.
Most of the pundits on the right are focused on the reversal of fortune whereby Mueller has gone from super-investigator extraordinaire to a doddering incompetent. But this is just one battle and the pundits don’t see the war. Mueller will likely be well compensated.
Some of the articles I’ve read claim that we can all now see how completely ineffectual the investigation was. Who is speaker of the House now??
Trump still has a very tough re-election ahead of him. Too many people are completely convinced that it’s not possible to have this much smoke around Trump without a fire.
“lawless”
I’d argue Tribe is more damaging to the nation in the long run than our current lawless president.
When leftists insist that Thus-and-Such is a danger to “our democracy”, they assuredly do not mean that Thus-and-Such is a danger to our Republic.
When leftists talk “our democracy”, they assuredly do not mean to include you and me in that “our”.