Is this a royal "we"? People who seriously believe that the U.S. President is a Russian agent are unlikely to "know" anything after the full report is released -- or at any other time in the future.
Not the royal we, we as in the American public. Nothing has changed about what we know from Barr's letter. 1) Barr states that the Russians interfered in the election to help Trump. 2) Barr states that criminal coordination to hack the DNC or to manipulate social media was not proven by the investigation. 3) Mueller listed a bunch of reasons one could consider indicting Trump for obstructing justice, and a bunch of reasons not to bring the indictment, and in Barr's view there is no reason for an indictment.
That's all we know. (Yes, there are the leaks from the Mueller team, but that isn't something we know.)
Every other time we've had an investigation like this, it has been released to the public to some degree. This should be too. (Which was the position of the majority of the people polled, the position of the entire House of Representatives, and the position of Trump himself until a few days ago.)
@sambuca - "
Anyways, if Trump didn't fight back and turn public opinion, Mueller could have been investigating into 2020. " And you believe this why? I can make things up, too. "If Trump hadn't fired Comey he wouldn't have had a Muller investigation in the first place, so " fighting back" dragged it out. I see that despite Mueller not making any news for the month or so before the midterms was him deciding to impacting the midterms?
The point I was trying to make (not sure if I succeeded) is that Mueller (as summarized by Barr) has established that "justice" is that Trump is not guilty of collusion with Russia. Which is exactly what Trump claimed over and over again. Therefore to try to accuse Trump of "obstruction of justice" (which was allegedly the goal of his "fighting back") is ridiculous beyond belief. Trump was not obstructing justice. As a businessman familiar with the concept of counting money, he was trying to get to that "justice" sooner and with less waste.
Yes, I understood that. It is part (but not all) of the theory Barr put in his letter - that it is impossible to obstruct justice if you didn't get charged with the underlying crime. This is, of course, ridiculous on its face as a legal theory. Besides the obvious fact that if I successfully obstruct you, I don't get charged, which according to this theory means I didn't obstruct; it also means that if you are investigating a murder, and I obstruct because looking at me as a suspect is going to reveal I am embezzling from my company, I didn't obstruct. The entire idea is basically nonsense.
To be fair, Barr doesn't rely just on that for his argument against charging Trump. He includes something more similar to sambuca's argument. The President has the prerogative to fire people working for him, therefore firing someone cannot be obstruction of justice, because you always have to assume he had a legitimate reason. So because Trump claimed at first he fired Comey because Comey was too unfair to Hilary Clinton, then that is a plausible legitimate reason and so the DOJ has to accept it as the real reason and therefore not obstruction.
A lot of his early missteps seemed to be because the Trump family didn't want anyone to know of their business dealings and later contact with Russians. Which to my eyes seemed ridiculous because none of it was illegal and the FBI has a way to find out everything. If you followed some of this from the beginning, media people were throwing out the never used and possibly unconstitutional Logan Act.
I think this is most easily explained by the fact Trump is a bullshit artist. Russia came up when he was campaigning and people were asking about if he had ties to Russia. Since at that moment admitting he did would make him look bad or at least open up a line of attack on him, he lied and said he didn't. As long as he thought people would think it made him look bad, he lied about it. That's basically how he seems to do most things - say whatever he thinks is most advantageous at that moment. The fact it probably wasn't illegal didn't matter if it might make him look bad.
STN - The Barr memo
admits the Russians interfered to help Trump. All it says is that Trump Team's moves to collude (Accepting the meetings, not reporting them to the FBI, lying about their ties to Russia, encouraging Russia to attack Clinton, saying they loved the help, etc.) were not criminal coordination.
And, as Jailmon points out, the idea that Barr's summary is even less representative than it appears is now in play. (As opposed to just different than the MSM was reporting and Trump was claiming about Total Exoneration.)
