I actually did read the Mueller report, thank you very much, and certainly not from Fox. Pretty insulting to insinuate that I haven't.
I'm sorry you interpreted my post that way that wasn't my intention. My post is merely meant to be a synopsis to what I considered false points in your above post, and to perform as an expository piece to those interested. For the record, whether you have read it or not I still highly recommend multiple rereads (as I do myself when the time arises, as it did today).
Yes, people were convicted, but many of them were perjury charges/campaign finance violations. Others, like Paul Manafort, yes were more serious charges, but none of them had to do directly with Trump is my point, and this is something that I have expressed to you a while back now.
I'm not really sure what you mean by these statements, or what, in particular, you are alluding to. The initial statement you made was "the Mueller report did not find anything damning" (paraphrased), to which I responded with the total charge count. I do not see why perjury charges / campaign finance violations are an exception to this, as you seem to indicate with your prepositional phrase 'but.' To go over all the charges real quick:
George Papadopoulos: perjury / obstruction (lying to FBI)
Paul Manafort: perjury,
financial fraud, obstruction of justice (25 various counts were attributed to him alone)
Rick Gates: conspiracy and
perjury
Michael Flynn: perjury / obstruction (lying to FBI)
13 Russian officials and 3 Russian companies: conspiracy to defraud the United States government, identity theft (charges related to the russian interference campaign)
Richard Pinedo: identity theft (in connection with Russian indictments)
Alex van der Zwaan: perjury / obstruction (lying to FBI)
Konstantin Kilimnik: witness tampering / obstruction
12 Russian GRU officers: election tampering and conspiracy to defraud the United States
Michael Cohen: tax fraud, campaign finance violations, perjury, obstruction
Roger Stone: perjury, obstruction, witness tampering
Sam Patten: not registering as a foreign agent (working with Ukraine)
Above I have highlighted the charges that fit what you just said, that "many of them were perjury charges/ campaign finance violations." Of the 34 indicted individuals, 7 have either perjury or campaign finance violations as an accused offense. Of these, the ones
most notable would be Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, van der Zwaan, and Papadopoulos. only 4 individuals who did not have any other charges. I would say your statement is seemingly belittling those charges too; signifying that some of the charges were
only perjury charges signifies that you think it is an alright offense. I for one think that lying to the American government during a committee investigating the President is malignant and criminal
The Democrats tried to use the Mueller report as a means to undo 2016. This is also why I believe they're following through with this Ukraine bullshit, especially calling for an impeachment inquiry when the evidence wasn't even out yet (which we all know Trump released the next day). It does make all of this look incredibly politically motivated. I'm not gonna do a super massive reply because that was not the point of me posting here again in the first place. I'm addressing that it's pretty shitty Tulsi is accused of being a Russian hack. Granted I don't like very much of her policy if at all, let alone her foreign policy, but I damn well have enough respect for her to not go that low, especially on a US soldier. I'll at least reply to bits and pieces of this, or at least what I feel needs to be replied to.
I think this is true, and you are correct. While impartiality was exhibited by the Mueller team itself the process of investigation is indeed politically motivated; more accurately the process of investigation and the lens through which the public eye could view it was politically motivated, which resulted in slanted journalism. I too think that calling someone a Russian asset with little tangible evidence is problematic, and in large part is motivated by a grandiose conspiracy of the establishment Democrats to debase opinions they do not agree with, as mentioned in a post I made above responding to Celticpride. I do think that partial understandings of politically neutral events should be corrected as soon as possible, which is why I made the post above.
I'll start with this, legally, that bold part especially, I found that to be an extremely poor statement on Mueller's part. Any legal prosecutor knows that it's based on evidence, no one is completely exonerated from any crime, but what he did was bad lighting. That's why you base your decision off of evidence, because many more times than not, we don't fully know what specifically happened with any given crime--we can only make do with what's available.
Well, whether you find it a poor statement or not isn't really your place to judge; as far as I know you are not a United States legal scholar or attorney at law; Moreover a crime committed in a traditional courtroom is not the same as high crimes as was investigated.
Additionally, he had every right to recommend to Congress to prosecute this matter, he decided not to.
He did, this was what the Mueller hearing was meant to clarify after the report was released. They go into depth during that hearing and I recommend watching it or reading a transcript.
Even there (side point), it is hard to obstruct what you didn't collude. I get people being concerned about him mouthing off about firing Mueller, for instance, yes that would be concerning. But that's the thing: all he did was mouth off, he never went through with it. Comey was a different story, there was legit reason to believe there was corruption and motive, and personally I think he did the right thing firing him.
The first part of this point does not make sense; if I am a 'witness' in a crime and I give false evidence or make the job harder for the investigators, I am still obstructing justice whether I am the main target of the investigation, a side character, or even completely unrelated. If Trump and those charged did not have anything to hide, why did they lie to the FBI, why did Trump fire and threaten to fire publicly? If I was Trump, and I knew I was 100% innocent, then I would simply let the investigation pass and let it clear myself, rip to other presidents but I'm different.
As to your second point, it reeks of opportune bias so I am not touching that. If we cannot agree that a lifelong veteran and Republican appointed to the special counsel handled a sensitive matter as impartially as he did then we can agree on very little as we are based in different realities and viewpoints of the world. Agree to disagree.
Wikileaks was a part of this, but the Steele Dossier did jump start a lot of this, it's very very hard to deny that. ]It was used as backing for even looking into Trump. And yes, after the report came out it was revealed that the dossier was off of completely consequential evidence, and not only that, it was clearly politically motivated. Not to mention, Trump did not ask Wikileaks to leak the goods on Hillary's emails, he just accepted it when it came. The most that happened was he was given heads up on it.
Your initial statement was that "it was built upon a now-proven blatant and motivated lie via the Steele dossier." Your argument now is backtracked to saying that the Steele Dossier was only a supplementary piece to the investigation. If you wish to disagree with the very statements found verbatim within the report then I will ask for evidence to point towards how the Steele Dossier was the primary motivating force behind the investigation; additionally I would like a source that it is "a now-proven blatant...lie," as while there are certain allegations that the Mueller investigation chose to close, there are also several allegations that have been proven to be true.
Here is the Steele Dossier, so you may educate me as to the extent of its falsehoods, as it is possible I am not aware.
I want to make clear, I do not like that he didn't condemn that once so ever, but it is not criminal. Just dirty politics. I will comment though, there's substantial evidence that the DNC did this with Ukraine, so if you're gonna apply law equally, I find it rather hypocritical. The DNC and the Clinton campaign did ask Ukraine to find dirt on Trump prior to the 2016 election. Four US Democratic Senators later write to Ukraine threatening to withhold aid if they do not comply with the mueller probe. I wouldn't take so much issue if the scrutiny was applied equally. It's appearing like it is not.
To the claims that "The DNC and the Clinton campaign did ask Ukraine to find dirt on Trump prior to the 2016 election" I will respond with
this politifact report, which states that the individual at the core of the issue "was not an opposition researcher and that the DNC never asked her to seek dirt from Ukraine." There is no primary source I can point to for this so I will write it off as a politically muddled act that neither side can have any clear consensus on (since it is entirely possible she is simply lying to protect her own skin as is the DNC campaign, and it is also entirely possible that the circumstances are expedient enough for Charlie Kirk to deflect and gaslight.
As to the claim of "Four US Democratic Senators later write to Ukraine threatening to withhold aid if they do not comply with the mueller probe" I will respond with
this primary document (the alleged letter), in which you can read for yourself the language they use. You can also see that they don't "threaten" Ukraine, rather they point to a self-ascription that Ukraine is worried if it cooperates with the Mueller probe that military and financial aid will be withheld, an all too real concern in today's age. Rather than reading the letter to you I strongly suggest you read it yourself to gain your own perspective.
If there was this massive social media campaign, why haven't we seen it all over the place? This "social media campaign" was pretty minimal.
I'm not really sure how I am supposed to respond to this. Do you wish me to point to specific swathes of now deleted social media accounts? Skepticism is healthy, to a degree, but you are bordering on tin foil skepticism.
I will say, is it good? No it really isn't, heave my words on that, but my point is you can't use that as your clear-fire scapegoat to say that completely dissuaded the 2016 election results. Wikileaks on the other hand, yea that was pretty major. To play devil's advocate for a moment though, would it have been better to not know about her emails and the corruption behind that? It's similar to how that Hollywood access clip of Trump came out, damning him. Neither are good, once so ever. I didn't love either of the candidates in the 2016 election, and this was coming from a time when I was still admittedly liberal.
I didn't and I'm not sure how you could interpret my post that way. I thought I was fairly transparent on my own personal ideas about how I think the media tweaked the report to suit its own political interests. I am simply repeating the facts as laid out in the primary documents rather than pointing towards any news sources. I also never made any claims that we should ignore the 2016 election results based off of the Russian interference, more pointing out its mere existence which you seemed to be ignoring.
So on the whole, to use the Mueller report as a club against Trump (like you commented, how the media and the Democratic party ran with it), yes I do take issue with the amount of attention and money going towards it. We know now that the Trump campaign did not collude with the Russians, and it was nothing more than a rumor. All of this trouble could have been avoided.
Well, no, again that isn't what the report or my post said. The Trump campaign includes his campaign managers and higher up aids, 6 of the 34 of which were directly connected to Trump. This does not necessarily mean Trump himself is guilty but to say that "the Trump campaign did not collude with the Russians" is false, as several members did indeed collude. These are statements you can read for yourself in the report.
Like I mentioned above as well, it does look pretty suspicious now that this Ukraine impeachment bs is now the talk of the town to reverse 2016 (and I explained this more in detail in the first paragraph why I believe so). Especially when it's one after the other (aside from the fact that Dems didn't even want to vote on it to make it an "official" impeachment inquiry, despite labeling it as one, and the Ukraine situation running surprisingly similar to Mueller with how the goal-posts are still moving on what Trump did exactly that's impeachable), it does seem extremely politically motivated, and it's hurting the country. Our country is more divided than ever before, and the wounds will only be deeper if this continues. I'm pushing for unity and for actual policy to be discussed above all else, and as I said, the premise of my previous reply was in agreement that we should not be clubbing people as Russian hacks left and right.
I am not touching the first half of this paragraph. As to the second half, I do agree the country is divided. Right now, just from this interaction, I see two realities of America: one in which reality is based on whatever is convenient for "the cause," which is based in unfounded skepticism (Dismissal of Mueller report entirely, misrepresentation of facts, skepticism of the veracity of politically neutral events, and adherence to circumstantial evidence to support beneficial claims like Tulsi or Biden or yes, even Trump), and another side that is concerned with the blithe reiteration of facts. You continue to inject your own brand of politics into this back and forth rather than addressing the arguments or statements made themselves. It would help clear my own mind and possibly to understand your view if you were to respond appropriately to the arguments laid out; as of now you have not really "debunked" anything except to accuse the Mueller probe of being a DNC hack, to which I personally see no evidence. I would be happy if you could enlighten me.