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.
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*(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.
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