Randy Shipley: It was both actively seeking to cultivate a relationship with the Russian government and willing to work with it to acquire damaging information about its political opponents. That willingness included explicitly sharing information with or soliciting information from Russian operatives. So many meetings... So many lies (like the letters from Trump on the Tower meetings) -
Again, my going through the Mueller Report today doesn't support this assumption. The report indicates that there was no conscious, official, effort to try to conspire with the Russians at the expense of the Hillary campaign. That "damaging" information referenced in the linked article relates to the Emails.
If you've held a security clearance, you'd know how serious a security risk is for accessing emails. It doesn't matter if they're just for official use only. It also doesn't matter if they have one of the more sensitive classifications like Top Secret, Secret, Confidential, etc. She had these emails outside of an authorized government server. Then thousands of these emails "disappeared".
Had a member of the military done this, the military member would've risked facing court-martial. This is how serious this is. The "damming information", if it was in Russia's, China's, Iran's, or in a random organization's hands, and if it was done through negligence on Hillary's part, would indicate a violation of regulation and/or law.
No, the main suspicion, or knowledge, of "foreign operatives" involved Ukraine, not Russia. Yes, there were so many meetings, but they are not of the nature that you paint in your post.
Randy Shipley: Then there is what the report says about obstruction
What factcheck dot org said:
"Mueller noted that it was only the refusal of Trump's underlings to go along with his efforts to tamper that kept Trump from being able to successfully impede the investigation." -- "Fact" Check dot Org
What the Mueller Report quoted in the link said:
"The President's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests." -- Mueller Report
There's a difference between "tamper" and "impede", as used in your link, and "influence" as stated in the Mueller Report.
Also from the Mueller Report:
"Obstructive act. As with the President's firing of Corney, the attempt to remove
the Special Counsel would qualify as an obstructive act if it would naturally obstruct the investigation and any grand jury proceedings that might flow from the inquiry. Even if the removal of the lead prosecutor would not prevent the investigation from continuing under a new appointee, a factfinder would need to consider whether the act had the potential to delay further action in the investigation, chill the actions of any replacement Special Counsel, or otherwise impede the investigation." -- Mueller Report
Removing the Special Counsel, or limiting his scope, would not have stopped the investigation altogether. The next senior member of the investigative team would step in and carry out the investigation until a replacement is appointed.
This is key. This didn't occur. Had Mueller been removed, no obstruction would've occurred as the next one in line would've taken over Robert Mueller's duties. The investigation would've continued.
A reading of your link does not prove that the President committed obstruction. Likewise, a rereading of the Mueller Report does not support the obstruction charge. Robert Mueller didn't make a decision on that aspect of the investigation. However, when asked if he was impeded or obstructed, he replied, "No."
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