Fruitless Speculation on What Might Be in the Mueller Report

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the Mueller Report will look bad for Trump.  For one thing, it is between 300 and 400 pages, not counting exhibits.  There should be enough in there for anyone to spin any way they want.

For another, it will presumably focus on the Trump campaign's contacts with the Russians.  That sort of focus contains an innate bias, emphasizing Russian contact over whatever else the Trump campaign may have been doing.  We know those contacts were extensive.  Many were no doubt completely innocent.  But the Barr summary makes clear that some were not innocent on the Russian side, but contained (illegal) offers to help.

So I see two ways that can be done, neither of which will look good for Trump.  One is to describe each contact, including the ones that turned out to be innocent.  But describing contact after contact, even followed with the qualification that we investigated this contact and determined it to be innocent is just going to emphasize how many contacts there were.  The other way is to write about only the contacts that included Russian .offers of help.  This will look bad because it leaves everything else out.

We do not know how many Russian offers of help there were, other than that the offers were "multiple."  We know the Mueller Report does not find that any of these offers were accepted.  That can mean one of several things.  It can mean there was affirmative evidence that the offer was rejected.  It can mean there is no evidence one way or the other.  Or it can mean that the whole thing looks bad and smells worse, but there is nothing solid enough to be actually indictable.

As of right now there are three known non-innocent contacts that will presumably be addressed in the report.  There are also two suspected non-innocent contacts mentioned in the Steele memos that I would like to see addressed even if the only finding was that Mueller could neither confirm nor disprove the contact.

First known, non-innocent contact: March and April, 2016, George Papadopoulos.  This one has already been addressed in an indictment.  George Papadopoulos was named as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign in early March, 2016.  On March 14, while traveling in Italy, Papadopoulos met Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor with ties to the Kremlin, who showed great interest when he learned of Papadopoulos' connection to the Trump campaign.  On March 24, 2016, they met again and Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to a woman he falsely claimed was Putin's niece and attempted to set a meeting between the campaign and the Russian government. The indictment sets forth in painful detail e-mails (confirmed by the Trump campaign) about Papadopoulos' attempts to set up a meeting between the campaign and the Russian government, which never panned out.  None of this, of course, is a crime, and it might be dismissed as part of the contacts with Russia that were suspicious in volume, but ultimately innocent, except that on April 26, 2016, Mifsud apparently told Papadopoulos that the Russian government had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails."  Papadopoulos drunkenly revealed this information to the Australian ambassador some time in May.

The timeline matters here.  Russian military intelligence first began attempting to hack the Clinton campaign in March, 2016.  They appear to have broken into campaign manager John Podesta's e-mails on March 21, 2016; the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) on April 12, 2016; and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on April 18, 2016.  The hack became public knowledge on June 14, 2016.  The Australian ambassador does not appear to have seen this drunken revelation as significant until news of the hacks became public, at which time he reported it to to US intelligence and the investigation began.

So, Mifsud's statement to Papadopoulos has been interpreted to mean that the Trump campaign had advance notice of the DNC hacks, but I don't think that is accurate.  It had been public knowledge since 2015 that Hillary send classified e-mails on a private server which was vulnerable to Russian hacking, and that some 33,000 of these e-mails had been deleted.  Since nothing (thus far) suggests that Mifsud told Papadopoulos (or knew, for that matter) which e-mails, it seems most likely that Papadopoulos though this meant that the Russians had hacked Hillary's private server and had the missing e-mails.  Still, his failure to notify the authorities of the offer does suggest that Papadopoulos was open to accepting a hostile power's espionage on a former Secretary of State for the sake of partisan advancement, just not that he was willing to cooperate in ongoing espionage.  The whole episode looked bad enough for Papadopoulos that he lied to the FBI about it, saying that the meeting took place before he worked for the Trump campaign.  He was not charged with anything else.

It is not clear whether Papadopoulos passed word of the e-mails up the chain of command.  If he did, he took care to do so orally and not leave a paper trail.  It is also clear that his attempts to set a meeting between the campaign and Russia were rebuffed.  So this could be taken as affirmative evidence that this particular offer of help was rejected.

Second known, non-innocent contact: Trump Tower, June, 2016.  We haven't heard anything about this meeting from Team Mueller, possibly because there is truly nothing more to know about it.  Donald Trump, Jr. got an e-mail from the entertainment agent for a popular singer whose father was a Russian oligarch.  It said:

Emin [the pop singer] just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.

The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.

This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin.

Junior responded, "I love it especially later in the summer."  So you clearly have the statement from the candidate's own son that he was willing to accept help from the Russian government.  The intelligence community learned about this exchange by reading about in the New York Times.  Our systems in place to protect US persons were clearly working.  The Russians also knew how to work their way around such systems.  Presumably the use of an entertainment agent to deliver the story was deliberate.  The Russians took care not to discuss anything sensitive over the phone, but to meet in person.  The hacks were not yet public knowledge.  No mention is made of e-mails, State Department or otherwise.

The meeting was held.  Trump, Jr. attended, along with Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump's husband, and campaign manager Paul Manafort.  No dirt was offered on Hillary.  Nothing came of the meeting, which turned out to be a Russian delegation seeking to lift the Magnitsky Sanctions.  All participants at the meeting agree that this is what happened.  Junior initially reported that the meeting was all about adopting Russian orphans.  The Russians have responded to the Magnitsky sanctions by forbidding foreign adoptions of Russian orphans, so everyone in the know recognizes a discussion of Russian orphans as a discussion of the Magnitsky sanctions.  All parties present agree the discussion was about the sanctions.  Natalia Veselnitskaya, the leader of the Russian delegation, has provided a memo of the meeting all about the harm caused by the sanctions and dirt on Bill Browder, the man behind the sanctions.  She claims the idea that she had information on Hillary was all a misunderstanding.  And, in fact, Veselnitskaya was a long-term lobbyist against the sanctions.  Paul Manafort's notes from the meeting track Veselnitskaya's memo.  Jared says that he got so bored he texted his office to call and interrupt, a claim he has the text to prove.

If anything followed the meeting, it is not public knowledge.  Junior's lawyer has defended his willingness to accept the information instead of reporting it to the authorities as the result of inexperience in running a campaign and not knowing that was what he was supposed to do.  I can believe it for Junior, and for Jared as well.  But Manafort certainly knew the significance of accepting information from the Russians.

So this meeting was not innocent on the Trump campaign side.  The participants attended expecting dirt from the Russian government and did not get it.  Maybe it was all a misunderstanding.  But for a misunderstanding it seems remarkably well arranged to avoid the notice of the authorities.

First suspected non-innocent contact: Carter Page in Moscow, July 7-8, 2016.  This one took place after the hacks were public knowledge and after the Russian hackers, calling themselves "Guccifer" started releasing hacked materials, but before Wikileaks began releasing documents.  It is a matter of public record that Carter Page traveled to Moscow at this time to give a commencement address to a graduating class.  He acknowledges speaking to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, but denies that anything of substance was said, all of which is quite innocent.

This is where things get shady.  On July 19, 2016, Christopher Steele's memo (pages 9-10) reports that Page also met with Igor Sechin of the giant Russian oil company Rosneft and discussed "the issue of further bilateral energy cooperation and prospects for an associated Ukraine-related western sanctions against Russia."  It reports that Page reacted positively but remained non-committal.  That would in itself be just as innocent as any other campaign meeting with foreign powers to discuss policy, except that Sechin is also under Magnitsky sanctions. The same memo also says that Page also met with Igor Diveykin, a security official, who said that the Russians had damaging information against Hillary Clinton that they might be willing to share and also darkly hinted that the Russians had such information on Trump as well. The hack was public knowledge at the time, but there is no mention of e-mails.  If true, this meeting was another offer of help from the Russians, with a rather unclear response.

On September 23, 2016, Yahoo News ran a story saying that during Page's visit to Moscow, he discussed sanctions relief with Sechin and also met with Diveykin (no discussion of the content of the Diveykin meeting).  Steele was, in fact, the source for this article, but the author managed to disguise his source to make it appear that he got the information from sources in Congress.  Page went on the record repeatedly denying the contact.

The FBI took Steele's allegations seriously enough to seek a warrant to wiretap him some time in October.  The applications states that the FBI has "learned" that Page met with two Russian officials.  "First," the application, pages 15-18, cites what is clearly Steele's July 19, 2016 memo about the meeting.  Pages 19 and 20 are then blacked out.  The application then cites the Yahoo article as saying Page met with the two Russian officials.  It then cites Page denying the meetings.

My understanding is that the general journalistic rule is not to publish allegations of this type unless confirmed by a secondary source.  My guess, therefore, is that the author of the Yahoo article, after getting his tip from Steele, made inquiries with his sources in Congress and was able to get confirmation that the conversations took place, but not about the contents.  My guess is also that the FISA warrant on pages 19 and 20 was able to provide confirmation that the conversations took place, and therefore that Page was lying, but could not confirm the contents of the conversations.  No charges were ever brought against Carter Page.  Maybe he wised up and did not tell any provable lies to the FBI.

Finally, on October 18, 2016 (pages 30-31), Steele sent a second, far more sensational memo that would seem to indicate the meeting with Sechin was far from innocent.  It says that Sechin offered "the brokerage of up to a 19 percent (privatised) stake in Rosneft" is sanctions were lifted, and Page agreed to lift the sanctions.  That would be, quite simply, a bribe, which the Constitution expressly recognizes as grounds for impeachment.  Given that none of this is mentioned in the FISA application, it appears that the FISA application was submitted some time before October 18.  I will also add that 19% of Rosneft was, indeed, privatized, although the Trump organization had nothing to do with it.  Mueller may have taken this as evidence that this offer was not accepted.

Third known, non-innocent contact: Manafort and Kilimnik, August 2, 2016.  Most of this was blacked out of the sentencing hearing, so we don't know much about it.  However, it appears that Manafort and his translator, former Russian Military Intelligence translator Konstanin Kilimnik met on August 2, 2016 at the Havana Club and held a discussion that involved a "Ukrainian peace plan" that would (presumably) recognize Russia's annexation of the Crimea and lift sanctions.  And Manafort provided Kilimnik with up to 75 pages of internal polling data that he walked Kilimnik through to explain.  It would also appear that both parties were highly secretive about the meeting, taking care to exchange emails only about when and where to meet, limiting their substantive discussions to face-to-face meetings, and leaving by separate doors.  The meeting took place 11 days after Wikileaks released its first batch of e-mails, at a time the hacks and leaks were public knowledge,  but before they had achieved full effect.

This is, potentially, what most people had in mind when they talked about collusion.  Did the Trump campaign provide information to the Russians with material to allow them to deploy their information more effectively.  This meeting and hand off of campaign polling data is the first indication that the answer might be yes.  But it leaves a lot of unanswered questions.  Was Kilimnik still in contact with his old employer?  Did he pass the polling data on to them.  If not, what use did he make of it?  And, above all, were is actions authorized.  There are numerous hints that Manafort, who had immense debts to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and who was owed large amounts by his old Ukrainian employers, might have been acting on his own and sold the polling data for money.

Hopefully, we will learn a lot more when the Mueller report comes out.

Second suspected non-innocent contact: Cohen in Prague, late August or early September, 2016.  Michael Cohen was definitely in contact with the Russians in the first half of 2016 negotiating building a Trump Tower in Moscow.  He definitely concealed this from the American people during the election.  This is serious misconduct in the sense that it deprived the American people of important information that might have affected their choice of a candidate.  It raises questions about how much of Trump's pro-Russian outlook was the result of his own financial interests rather than concern for the public good.  It is not, however, a crime.  The negotiations appear to have ended when the DNC hack became public knowledge.  Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about these activities. 

The Steele Dossier makes much more damning allegations about Cohen.  It alleges (pages 32-35) that Cohen took over as primary contact with Russia after Manafort and Page departed, and that he met with specific Russian agents in Prague around the end of August or beginning of September to arrange to pay the hackers. Cohen does not have any Czech visit stamped on his passport, but the EU now allows visitors to travel among countries with only the original point of entry marked on the passport.  Cohen apparently visited Italy in July, 2016.  He did not take a plane or stay in a hotel on Prague at the time in question.  He was in Los Angeles August 23 to 29.  There was also evidence  that he was confused with a different, wholly innocent Michael Cohen. 

That appeared to be the end of it, except that apparently intelligence services picked up a comment in the Kremlin that Cohen was in Prague about the time of the alleged crime, though no mention of what he was doing.  And McClatchy (unsupported by any other news service) claims that one of Cohen's 16 or more phones briefly created a signal in Prague around the time of the alleged crime.  Of course, someone else could have had Cohen's phone or the signal could have been false.  Obvious leads would be whether anyone saw Cohen in the US after August 29, and whether there was evidence that he was in Europe at the time near enough to Prague to make a day trip there. 

Of course, even if such evidence does turn up the most it will show is that the dossier makes certain allegations about Cohen, which he denies, but there is evidence that he might possibly have been in Prague at or about the time of the alleged crime.  That seems like rather weak tea.

When Cohen testified in front of Congress, he was happy to give exhaustive details about Trump's payoffs to porn stars and financial fraud, but he evidence about ties to Russia did not go much beyond that Trump was in contact with Roger Stone, who was in contact with Wikileaks (we all knew that), and that he might have known about the Trump Tower meeting.  He may be telling the truth.  Or he may have decided that he will never practice law again, but that telling all about payoffs to porn stars and financial fraud will get him a best seller and a fortune on the speaker circuit, while telling about Trump's Russia ties will get him some new and creative poison when he least expects it. 

We do have a few more hints about Cohen's role in all this.  The sentencing reports indicate that the Special Prosecutor appears satisfied that Cohen has told all that he knows.  The Southern District of New York is considerably less impressed with Cohen's cooperation.  But perhaps most significantly, the Special Counsel had seven sessions with Cohen finding out what he knew.  Michael Flynn, by contrast had 19.  This may tell us something about the two men's relative importance.

And now I have got to stop writing about Trump and Russia until we actually see the Mueller report and find out what is in it.  

Why Clinton Conspiracy Theories are Nuts

Look, I know it's pointless to offer rational arguments to people who (1) are impervious to reason and (2) would never read my blog anyhow, but the whole suggestion that Russia, Hillary Clinton and the Deep State conspired together to create the Steele Dossier and frame Trump makes no sense whatever if you let facts seep into the picture.

FACT:  The Russians hacked the DNC server and Hillary's campaign manager's e-mail and turned the contents over to Wikileaks to release in the manner calculated to cause most damage to Hillary Clinton's campaign.  It isn't just the FBI and Deep State saying this.  The cyber security firm Crowdstrike examined the DNC server and determined that Russian Military Intelligence had hacked it and multiple independent private security firms have confirmed the finding.  No one else, let alone anyone with technical competence to make an assessment, has offered any alternative theory as to who the hacker was, much less that the hack was faked.  The Mueller indictment has set for the hack in considerable detail and William Barr, Trump's hand-picked Attorney General, accepts this as fact.

And once this is accepted as fact, the rest of the story about Hillary Clinton conspiring with the Russians and the Deep State makes no sense.

The obvious question that gets asked is why Trump's opponents would go to such length to forge the whole dossier and then never use it in the election.  The usual answer is as an "insurance policy" just in case he won.

Can we think for about five minutes whether that would make any sense?

Russia's motive would presumably be to weaken the US by undermining our leaders.  I would not put it past the Russians to forge documents against Trump even as they were pulling for him in the election.  No one expected Trump to win.  The best the Russians could hope for was to severely weaken and undermine Hillary before she took office.  Conceivably they might forge documents against Trump as an "insurance policy" to weaken him if he came to power.  But if that was their plan, it would probably have been wise not to release the documents into the US before the election lest they see the light of day and strengthen Hillary.  And since it is clear that what the Russians wanted most was the lifting of sanctions, it would make even more sense for them to hold onto the documents until after that was addressed.  If Trump failed to lift sanctions, then by all means unleash the documents against him.  And even if he succeeded, the Russians might release the documents anyhow in the interest of weakening and dividing the US.  But until a decision was made one way or the other, the Russians would be well advised to make nice with Trump and not undermine him.

The Deep State's motive would presumably be to put their patsy, Hillary, into power instead of Trump, who might drain their swamp.  Forging Trump/Russia documents would make sense in that context.  Even conspiring with Russia would be conceivable.  But it seems awfully far-fetched to think that the Deep State would go to such lengths to forge documents that they never expected to use.  To say that the Deep State did use the documents to obtain a warrant to wiretap Carter Page still doesn't make sense.  If the goal was to spy on the Trump campaign, why wait until October, late in the election season, and after Page had left the campaign?  And what did they gain by spying on Trump and then never releasing any information they learned?  Then there is the matter of why the Deep State, after going to such lengths to keep Trump from being elected by forging documents and then concealing them, then threw the election to Trump by announcing two weeks before the election that it was reopening the Clinton investigation.  The usual answer is that the FBI intentionally stymied the investigation in order to focus on Trump and that its hand was finally forced at a most inopportune time by agents on the case. But why didn't the FBI then play its trump card -- release the forged documents, or at least reveal the Trump was also under FBI investigation?  Why see its scheme failing and respond by not using the insurance policy it had in place in case of failure?

And then there is Hillary Clinton.  Her motive was the simplest of all.  She wanted to be elected President.  As such, she would not be interested in "insurance policies" to be held in reserve in case she lost.  She would want to use such things to win.  At most, she might hold an "insurance policy" in reserve if her fortunes took an unexpected turn for the worst.  And it would be inconceivable that she would conspire with the Russians at the same time they were conspiring against her.

Trump and the Anti-Wood Chipper Brigade

OK, I obviously lack a colorful turn of phrase.  Prize for that goes to John Boehner's former press secretary, Michael Steel (not to be confused with Michael Steele), who commented that repealing Obamacare without a replacement in place "makes as much political sense as diving headfirst into a wood chipper."  Now THAT's a colorful turn of phrase!

I have also seen a lot of complaints that this is getting a fraction the coverage of Jussie Smollett.  And while that seems wrong, it is probably premature to panic/gloat too much about this.  And here is the reason.  Trump is extremely impulsive and and unsteady in policy making.  He has a definite affinity for wood chippers, but his staff does a pretty good job of steering him clear of them.  His propensity for making policy by tweet is often overruled by cooler heads -- or by the deep state, depending on your point of view.

He came alarmingly near to tweeting our way into war with North Korea, but staff managed to prevent him.  Then fell "in love" with Kim Jong-Un and attempted to override sanctions by tweet but officials talked him down.  He also attempted to withdraw 2,000 troops from Syria by tweet and was ultimately persuaded to leave some 1,000 in place.  And he has now overridden his administrations plans to stop funding the Special Olympics.  I could also mention his attempt to release further details of the Carter Page warrant.  Bob Woodward's books recounts many other instances of Trump's staff taking advantage of his short attention span and  lack of any policy depth whatever to steer him away from the wood chipper on other occasions.

Admittedly, this policy switch has gone beyond a tweet.  It consists of a one-page letter to the court, with the promise that a brief will follow.  No such brief has actually been prepared.  Whether one will is anyone's guess.  Trump's staff may, yet again, persuade him to step away from the wood chipper. 

I feared disaster if Trump won the election and I will have to admit that nothing disastrous has happened yet.  That appears to be because Trump is too lazy and too superficial to follow up on any of his nuttier ideas, and because of the persistence of the anti-wood chipper brigade.  But we all have to live with the persistent, nagging fear that some day the anti-wood chipper brigade might fail.

Donald Trump Proves Devotion to Second Amendment, Celebrates Victory by Shooting Self in Foot

Trump had his moment of triumph.  He had been exonerated.  Democrats were in chaos and despair.  Some people were proclaiming them wounded beyond all recovery, stained with a witch hunt and false conspiracy theory, and that we might was well just skip the 2020 election, since the results had already been called.

But Trump apparently decided that wrapping up the election so early wouldn't be sporting, so he would give the Democrats a sporting chance.  He turned his energies to his new priority -- stripping 20 million people of their health insurance.

A Texas judge has ruled that, since the individual mandate is essential to the functioning of Obamacare, the repeal of the individual mandate means that the whole act must be set aside.  Conservative legal scholars, many of them bitter Obamacare opponents, dismissed the argument as worthless.  Congressional Republicans and members of the Trump Cabinet recognize that stripping people of their healthcare is electoral poison.  So naturally the Trump Administration is supporting this decision on appeal.  I don't know how long the appeal will take.  I don't know what Fifth Circuit will rule.  But I am confident that this will never pass the Supreme Court.  It will fail on a 5-4 vote, with Chief Justice Roberts breaking the tie.  Roberts made clear in his last opinion that if Republicans want this law gone, they can repeal it, but stop asking the Supreme Court to do their dirty work for them.

It will, however, be a great weapon for Democrats to bash Republicans.  Once again, they can scream that Republicans want to take your healthcare.  It will energize party activists like nothing else.  It will be a highly effective way of concentrating the mind on the importance of the Supreme Court -- if Trump gets to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg, 20 million people really could lose their health insurance. 

Why Trump has chosen this moment for such a completely needless, self-inflicted wound is a mystery to me, and to most Americans of either party.

Oh, and did I mention that much of the Midwest is under water?

Barr Summary -- Take Off Your Tinfoil Hats -- All of Them

I must say, I don't find some of the finder parsings of the Barr Summary very persuasive.  Instead of teasing out every word in hopes of finding some sort of conspiracy hiding somewhere, let's look at what is there in plain sight.

First, the Russians Really Did Meddle in the Election in an Attempt to Elect Trump

In fact, Mueller has issued two indictments on the subject revealing many details -- one of a Troll Farm seeking Trump's election through social media and one of Russian Military Intelligence hacking Democratic servers and releasing the contents in a manner calculated to do maximum damage to Hillary Clinton.  These activities are described in detail; the goal of electing Trump is made clear.  William Barr, Trump's hand-picked Attorney General, makes no attempt to dispute these findings and accepts them as fact.

This would not be significant if there was not such a sizeable tinfoil hat contingent on the right, along with a smaller one on the left, denying that any of this took place.  All evidence is simply dismissed as a Deep State fabrication.  Ignored is that a top flight private cybersecurity firm also inspected the computers and determined that the Russians were behind the hack.  And now Trump's own Attorney General has endorsed these findings.

Many right wingers are urging that anyone who has made claims of collusion should be asked if they accept the findings of the Mueller Report as a precondition to be taken seriously.  Well, two can play at that game.  Any right winger should be asked whether they accept the findings of the Mueller Report that the Russians really did meddle in the election as a precondition to being taken seriously.  The results may be illuminating.

Second, No US Persons, Including Members of the Trump Campaign, Took Part in Either Conspiracy

That, too, was made fairly clear from the indictments.  Or rather, one U.S. person does appear to have participated in identity theft and bank fraud in helping the Troll Farm set of fake bank accounts to finance its activities, but without knowing that the scheme involved either Russia or electing Trump.

This is where our side's tinfoil hat brigade hangs out.*  And yes, I admit, I have succumbed every now and then, with the leak of shocking revelations such at the Steele Dossier, the Trump Tower meeting, or Manafort's transfer of polling data, my initial reaction was to freak out and over-interpret these things, seeing them as worse than they ultimately appeared to be.  There is, to date, no evidence, none whatever, that Trump or any member of his campaign participated in or had advance knowledge of either the hacks or the troll farm.  If the Mueller investigation lays this to rest, that is all to the good.

Third, There Were Extensive, Suspicious Contacts Between the Trump Campaign and Russian Agents.

OK, so that really isn't in the report.  These contacts are nonetheless documented and extensive -- far exceeding what one would expect in any normal campaign.  There is reason to suspect that friendly intelligence services, in the course of routine monitoring of Russians, picked up on on some of these communications and passed them on to the US.  Such wiretaps contained nothing criminal, just suspicious frequency, by people who might know that someone could be listening.  And although Barr never makes this observation, it is implied in the next one.

Fourth, These Contacts Were Not Entirely Innocent on the Russian Side

Barr says that there were "multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign."  That does not mean that the offers ever referenced the hacks.  But any foreign assistance in a US election is illegal.   Marco Rubio, surprisingly, emphasizes these offers, apparently seeing them as examples of the Trump campaign's outstanding virtue in being able to resist such temptation.  Mueller has shed light on at least one such offer -- outreach to George Papadopoulos in April, 2016, before the hacks were known.**  This outreach was apparently rebuffed.  I would very much like to see the extent of such offers.

Fifth, None of the Offers Were Successful

This is the "no collusion" finding -- no one in the Trump campaign every took the Russians up on their offers.  That being said, I would like more information.  Does this mean that the Trump campaign always indignantly rejected the offers with outraged patriotism?  Or does it mean that some of the interactions don't smell too good, but there just isn't enough evidence to be indictable.  Inquiring minds want to know.

Sixth, the Coverup 

Although no one in the Trump campaign every took the Russians up on their offer, they never reported such offers to the authorities, as one would expect any normal campaign to do.  In fact, far from reporting such offers, members of the Trump campaign from Trump on down regularly lied about the contacts and did their best to conceal them.  Mueller declined to find one way or the other whether these rated as criminal obstruction of justice and set forth arguments both pro and con.  Barr apparently decided that, since there was no underlying crime, the attempts at concealment should not be indicted.

And Two Final Points From Me

I have two final points.  One is that Trump supporters are now arguing that because the report (more or less) exonerates Trump, that proves not only that the investigation failed to turn anything up, but that it should never have been launched in the first place.  To which I can only say, no.  The Russians interfered in our elections.  At the same time they were interfering, the Russians were also having suspiciously frequent contact with the Trump campaign, including illegal offers of assistance. The Trump campaign not only failed to report any of these contacts, but actively lied about them and tried to conceal them.  This being the case, it was absolutely reasonable and appropriate to investigate to make sure that such contacts were truly innocent on the Trump side.  Good to hear they were, but it was certainly reasonable to wonder, and to want to investigate.

And finally, I can certainly understand why Republicans want to keep the Mueller Report secret.  It will, presumably, detail Russian offers of assistance to the Trump campaign, the Trump campaign's rejections, and also the Trump campaign's attempts to conceal all the offers that it (presumably) rejected.  That should leave plenty of room to spin a story most unfavorable to the Trump campaign.

_______________________________________________
*(Except the Glenn Greenwald wing, which hates Hillary and the Deep State so much as to be willing to side even with Trump and Russia against them).  
**And, just for the record, there is nothing -- nothing whatever -- to suggest that the Russians told Papadopoulos about the hacks.  They referred to "thousands of emails," but nothing on the record mentions which ones.  Most likely Papadopoulos and anyone he spoke to simply assumed this referred to the missing e-mails from Hillary's State Department server.

On a Lighter Note: Tucker Carlson and the 20-20 Rule

Remember the Tucker Carlson controversy about what he said on the radio?  This seems like a good opportunity to apply Kevin Drum's 20/20 rule:  Bad conduct over 20 years ago or before the age of 20 is forgivable provided that (1) the conduct is not too serious, (2) the person in question has since reformed and (3) the person in question honestly faces up to past mistakes.  That last is usually the sticking point.  The Tucker Carlson controversy seems to be adding another condition: sometimes the search for past bad behavior is so intrusive and offensive as to run into a sort of exclusionary evidence rule. 

But to move on.

First of all, the remarks were made between 2006 and 2011, when Carlson was a grown man, so Drum's statute of limitations doesn't apply anyhow.  But maybe the statute of limitations should be shorter, so let's move on.

How serious was the conduct?  Well, let's start with the obvious.  It was a zero out of ten on the illegality scale.  But everyone seems to agree that, although a crime is need to actually prosecute, legal but offensive behavior can be sufficient to end a career.  So how bad was it on the offensiveness scale?

Well, let me compare to Ralph Northam's blackface.  Minstrel show blackface and Ku Klux Klan together are really bad.  But there is nothing actually inciting hate or violence, so I would not give it a ten out of ten, maybe nine.  Take off one point for the utterly innocuous caption and another point because everyone seems to have been doing it at Virginia Military Institute.  So, 7/10 on the offensiveness scale for Northam.  And for what it is worth, I would say wearing dark makeup to dress as Michael Jackson while doing his song and dance routine would be 2/10 -- something one could do innocently without knowing it was offensive.  Add one point for using shoe polish instead of more conventional makeup and I would give it a 3/10.  Going in blackface to play a rapper I would make closer to a 5/10 -- more stereotyped, less a case of honoring an idol.

As for Carlson, he called Iraq "a crappy place filled with a bunch of, you know, semiliterate primitive monkeys" who didn't "behave like human beings" and "don't use toilet paper or forks" and "they can just shut the fuck up and obey, is my view."*  Highly offensive and a clearly an expression of hate, but not actual incitement, so 9/10.  Minus one point for being on a shock jock show where the host is doing his best to provoke, so I would say 8/10 on the offensiveness scale -- serious enough to lose a job, unless accompanied by serious reform and remorse.

As for reform, clearly no.  Brett Kavenaugh was an obnoxious frat boy in high school and college, but his conduct toward women has been irreproachable during his legal and judicial career.  Ralph Northam was racially insensitive in medical school, but committed to racial equality in his political career, especially compared to the Republicans he was running against.  Tucker Carlson continues to pander to bigotry, he is just a little more discrete.

And as for honestly owning up, this is what sinks so many people in Drum's eyes, certainly including both Kavenaugh and Northam.  Tucker Carlson has not even discussed the underlying conduct, just argued that the investigation was so offensive and intrusive as to invoke the sort of exclusionary evidence rule.

When it comes to that rule, I personally think that searching Brett Kavenaugh's high school year book crosses the line, or at least comes up very close to it, but apparently I am overruled on that.  And certainly Democrats, after search Brett Kavenaugh's school year book, have no business complaining about a search of Ralph Northram's medical school year book.  But here we are talking about what Carlson broadcast over the radio.  Broadcasts over the radio are fair game -- certainly more so than year books.

Recap:  This is within Kevin's statute of limitations, it was perfectly legal but offensive enough to end a career, Tucker has continued a milder version of this ever since, refuses to own up in any way, and fair game as a public broadcast.  No forgiveness.

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*Probably more revealing, he also said that Republicans could no longer claim to be the party of fiscal restraint and should instead run:

I mean, not someone who’s like a Klansman or anything, but someone who's totally unbound by P.C. rules, who will just say whatever the hell he wants. 

You know, someone who really will -- and everyone claims, "Oh, I say it like it is." But nobody actually does. The guy who does, who says, "I'm unabashedly pro-American. Fuck the French. Who cares what they think? The Belgians? They don’t like it, they can pound sand.” You know what I mean? That guy is going to get elected.

It seems remarkably prophetic. 

On the Other Hand

I did say that dealing with Trump tends to make me paranoid, and other people as well.  Maybe we have been succumbing to paranoia for a long time -- since the Steele Memos came out in my case -- and it is time we move back to the real world.

William Barr's Report

So, we now have William Barr's summary of the Mueller Report and it appears to find in favor of Lawfare Theory Two: the Trump campaign attracted Russophiles, but never actually worked with the Russians. 

The summary first makes clear the extensive investigation that went into the report.  It found that neither Donald Trump nor anyone in his campaign "conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."  There were two main instances of Russian interference in the election -- the Russian troll farm putting out internet disruptions, and that hack and release of Democratic campaign documents.  The report did find multiple Russian offers to assist the campaign, but did not find that any were accepted.  And it cleared the Trump campaign of "coordination" as well as conspiracy.  The Mueller did not conclude one way or the other whether Trump obstructed justice, but Attorney General Barr has decided against prosecution due to the lack of any underlying crime.  Finally, the letter states that matters occurring before a grand jury may not be disclosed, but that disclosure will be made once confidential part of the report are determined.

What are we to make of that?

Let's start with what we know so far about Russian offers to help. 

We know that in April, 2016 Russian agents approached foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos asking about improved relations with Russia and saying that the Russians had "thousands of emails" on Hillary Clinton. This was before the Russian hack of the Democratic servers was public knowledge, but after it became public knowledge that Hillary Clinton had sent State Department e-mails on a private server, making it vulnerable to Russian hackers, and that some 33,000 of those e-mails had been deleted.  So far there has been no indication that the Russian agents said which e-mails they were referring to.  Nor is it known whether Papadopoulos passed the information about the e-mails up the line.  What is know is that (1) Papadopoulos attempted to set up a meeting between the campaign and Russia but was rebuffed, and (2) Papadopoulos apparently found these communications damaging enough that he lied to the FBI about them and said that they took place before he joined the campaign. 

My guess: Neither Papadopoulos nor anyone else in the Trump campaign suspected the Russian hacks at this time.  They assumed that the e-mails being discussed were the missing State Department ones.  We know later that Trump openly invited the Russians to reveal those e-mails.  So why this lead was not followed up on is unknown.  Maybe the Mueller Report will shine some light on it.

We know that on June 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. got an email from the show biz agent to a popular singer who was also a Russian oligarch's son offering "some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."  The message did not mention e-mails of any kind, but went on to add, "This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump."  Junior responded that he would "love it."  A meeting was set but turned out to be an attempt to lobby the Trumps to repeal the Magnitsky Sanctions and did not offer any information about Hillary.  It was never clear whether anything further came of this meeting.  The answer would appear to be no.

We know that on July 7-8, 2016 Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page traveled to Moscow to give a speech at a commencement for the New Economic School.  This is where things get dicey.  The Steele Dossier on July 19, 2016 reported that Page met with Igor Sechin of Rosneft, Russia's major oil company, to discuss "future bilateral energy cooperation" and removing the sanctions.  Page was favorable but non-committal.  Steele also reports that security official Igor Divyekin met with Page and offered him possible damaging information on Hillary Clinton, while broadly hinting that there might be damaging information on Trump as well. On September 23, 2016, Michael Isikoff wrote a story in Yahoo.com News reporting that US intelligence officials were "seeking to determine" whether Page had met with Sechin to discuss lifting the sanctions, and also that he may have met with Divyekin (no details of the conversation).  The source for this story was, in fact, Michael Steele, although Isikoff successfully concealed this fact, making it appear that the source was an intelligence committee in Congress.  On October 18, 2016, Steele added a report that Sechin had offered the Trump campaign "brokerage of up to a 19 percent (privatised) stake in Rosneft" in return for lifting sanctions.

The FBI took these allegations seriously enough to use them as the basis to apply for a FISA warrant on Page in October, 2016.  The application mentions the material from Steele's first report, but says nothing of the Rosneft share.  Several blacked out pages follow.  My speculation here is that our intelligence community may have some independent confirmation that the conversations with Sechin and Divyekin really did take place, but not of the contents.  Thus Isikoff was able to get verification of the fact of the meeting only but not what was discussed.  There may have been information that lifting sanctions was discussed, or that may simply have been an educated guess.  The blacked out portion of the FISA application may consist of whatever the verification was that the meeting took place.  Once again, we have an offer of damaging information on Hillary Clinton, but no evidence that it was accepted.

The most damaging evidence of cooperation was that on August 2, 2016 (and possibly in May), Paul Manafort gave polling data to his translator, Konstantin Kilimnik, a former employee of Russian military intelligence (the same agency responsible for the hack and release).  If ever the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians, this would be it -- providing polling data that they could use in deploying their information.  It is also possible that Manafort was a rogue actor here, providing information for financial reasons without the permission of the Trump campaign.  And it is possible that Kilimnik was not still in contact with his old employer and used the information for some other purpose.  (Manafort's departure occurred about two weeks after the August 2, 2016 meeting).

It is certainly possible the that the Papadopoulos proffer was rejected, that the Trump Tower meeting came to nothing, and that the Carter Page report proved inaccurate.  But Manafort's data theft sounds like some sort of crime no matter how you look at it.  Regardless of the details, I am hoping that the final report sheds some light on these close-calls, especially the sharing of polling data.

And as for the statement that there was no "coordination," defined as "an agreement -- tacit or express -- between the Trump campaign and the Russian government on election interference" -- well that simply defies belief.  There was obviously coordination at least in the sense that the Trump campaign regularly quoted from Russian propaganda and tailored its message to what was being released.  Such coordination is not a crime, obviously.  But it is "coordination" as normally understood, and certainly troubling.

And finally, if every Russian proffer of help was indignantly rejected, and if there was no crime in the underlying conduct, then why all the lying and attempt to obstruct?

This, too, is something I hope to learn more about when the report is released.