The upshot of the Mueller investigation is that there will be no indictments of members of the Trump campaign for conspiring with Russia to influence the election.
The redacted report released today makes it clear that there were numerous contacts and questionable activities, both in the campaign and the cover-up, but using the standards applied by Mueller and then Barr – no further indictments.
We can spend the next couple of years tossing evidence back and forth. NO COLLUSION. Yes, but what about this and what about that? BUT WHAT ABOUT CLINTON? We can argue about the standards applied, but in legal terms that is water under the bridge.
The matter of Trump and his campaign’s actions will never be resolved in this forum because neither side is going to concede the matter. Continuing this array of arguments seems a waste of time because we know the outcome.
What most concerns me in what Barr released today is the further confirmation of a significant Russian effort to influence the 2016 Presidential election to assist Donald Trump.
Can we agree that happened? And if we do agree on that, doesn’t the most important question become what should we do to minimize such interference in the future.
Trump supporters should agree with this. Since they believe that the Russian interference had no impact on the outcome of 2016 election, they should be comfortable reducing such efforts going forward since Trump can win in 2020, just like he did in 2016, with no help from Russian interference.
Trump opponents should agree with this. Since they suspect the Russian influence directly helped Trump’s election, they support efforts to get the Russian thumb off the scale.
We can spend months in textual analysis and back-and-forth about the Mueller investigation but that will probably change no one’s minds.
Why not shift our focus to protecting our electoral process? To me that seems the most patriotic thing we can do this day.
Great. I think many of us have been more than willing to believe the intelligence community and a plethora of reporting that shows Russia interfered in our election in a variety of ways and will continue to do so. We should do all we can to protect the integrity of our elections.
But the sad reality is that there is pretty much no incentive for Trump or Republican politicians to act in a way that goes against their self interest. If Russia is out there attempting to hack into Democrats and assist Republicans in elections, there is absolutely nothing I have seen to indicate current Republican leadership will do a thing to stop it.
Let’s see the responses here before we jump to that conclusion. To stay in the patriotic theme, let’s a have a little faith in our Trump-supporting brethren. What I am asking you to do is to stop bashing Trump’s behavior in the campaign and its aftermath… in exchange for cooperation on the more important matter.
Let’s not decide cooperation is not forthcoming.
And besides, and I am speaking solely for myself, I am tired of a discussion in which no one is going to change their mind.
So are you saying you have no problem with Russian interference in American elections?
My point in starting this thread was to ask people to get past partisan bickering and focus on what protects the United States.
If you want to start a thread to rehash the election in Alabama… please do, but this is a thread asking who wants to go beyond partisanship with regard to the findings of the Mueller investigation
Pg 30 of the report…yes they definitely interfered. What I hear from my Mango Moose friends is that we interfere in theirs so whats good for the goose and all.
Call me crazy, but the Russians spending $100,000 dollars on Facebook ads is less troubling than the spying upon the opposition party during an election year.
