You would have to have some knowledge of the dossier to know it was garbage. Proving it was garbage would lead you to the names Hillary, Dolan, Danshenko and the DNC. At the time of the Mueller investigation, proving there was nothing to it would have given you more information than certainly was publicly known at the time.
You would not be able to tell Congress that you knew nothing about the dossier. You would have to tell congress exactly what you just said, that the dossier was garbage. And then you would have to tell them why.
The dossier fit into the description of what Mueller was tasked to,research. Mueller was tasked to investigate the connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. The dossier supposedly spelled out the connection between the Trump campaign and Russia. That is exactly what Mueller was supposed to review. Again, the only reason he would have for not reviewing the dossier is if he had proof that it was garbage.
From Rosenstein authorization letter to Mueller he was to investigate: ”Any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of Donald Trump…”
Do you see any sort of limitation to Crossfire Hurricane in there?
The dossier covered exactly what Mueller was tasked to review. Nor was there a limitation that only criminal matters were to be reviewed.
Since no one could place Cohen in Prague the Steele dossier became less believable.
Some of the stuff about Carter Page was true. What was investigated was the claim around Gazprom. It was a plausible claim but turned out to be untrue.
And Mueller must have known that the dossier was garbage. Therefore, Mueller lied under oath when he said he didn’t know anything about the Steele Dossier. He knew it was garbage, and he must have looked at it enough to know why it was garbage.
Very well. He didn’t lie about it, he refused to answer questions about it. Notice he would not say that he hadn’t looked into it, he just refused to answer.
He in fact would not even say he did not look into the dossier, he just said he refused to answer anything about it.
He should have been held In contempt until he answered the questions, but of course Democrats held the House at that point.
Even saying he didn’t look into the dossier, while a failure as an investigation, would have been better than saying he refused to answer even whether he looked into the dossier or not.
Would Bannon have gotten by if he had showed up and told the committee that he refused to answer questions?
This is worse than I thought. He didn’t say he didn’t look into the dossier, he just said he wasn’t going to answer questions about it and that was allowed.
Does Brannon get to set the conditions of his testimony? We spent millions on Mueller’s investigation and he gets to decide what he will talk about and what he won’t talk about?
I would love to see Brannon get up there and, asked a question, say he isn’t answering those types of questions.
Why not subpoena him if he doesn’t want to talk about what he investigated? I don’t recall the “I don’t want to talk about it” exception to refusing to respond to Congressional questions.
How long was it between when Congress subpoenaed Brannon and he was being charged for ignoring that subpoena? When Mueller stated he would talk about the report but refused to talk about the investigation, that is exactly what should have happened. The very nature of that limitation says there were important things related to the investigation that they did not want in the report. And now, thanks to Durham, we are finding out at least what some of those things were.
And why was he not subpoenaed? That is the question. Why would he not talk about some things they investigated that he was paid millions to investigate? I think we understand more today.