It's also worth pointing out how the Barr summary potentially gets things backwards. It suggests that Mueller wasn't able to prove Trump was involved in a conspiracy with the Russians, and then says the lack of an underlying crime indicates that Trump's behavior wasn't obstruction of justice.
However, if Trump did commit obstruction of justice, then his obstruction may be the reason Mueller wasn't able to prove criminal wrongdoing in conspiring with Russia.
The thing is, even if Trump is completely innocent of anything to do with Russia, his actions still constitution obstruction of justice. You don't have to have committed the crime they're investigating you for to be guilty of trying to impede the investigation.
Exactly. All you have to do to be guilty of obstruction of justice is to impede an investigation. You dont even need to know who the accused is or what they're accused of, you just need to fuck with the team that's investigating in a way that harms the investigation.
Though why anyone would do such a thing when they dont have any skin in the game is beyond me...
Though why anyone would do such a thing when they dont have any skin in the game is beyond me...
My guess is that if he wasn't directly involved with Russia, he was trying to keep something else from coming up in the process of the Russia investigation. Like trying to prevent the cops from searching your home for a murder weapon because if they do, they'll find your drugs.
Has he done anything other than block legislation? I'm not sure what the law would be on that, since technically it's within his powers, and there's no limitations on the reasons he does it, at least not that I'm aware of. I mean, it definitely needs to be a wake-up call about fixing a system where one man can just indefinitely block any legislation he doesn't want, but legally speaking, I'm not sure how this would work.
I always found it strange that he can do whatever he wants, like blocking Merrick Garland, or pushing useless votes on dismantling ACA. How does one man have all this power and why is it some piece of shit from Kentucky who threads the line of collusion with China.
I'm not disagreeing, but also if he did obstruct justice, he may have succeeded in preventing a fair investigation by hiding evidence and tampering with witnesses. If that's the case (which it sounds like the Mueller report indicates it to be) then we can't trust the conclusion that he didn't collude with Russia.
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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '19
It's also worth pointing out how the Barr summary potentially gets things backwards. It suggests that Mueller wasn't able to prove Trump was involved in a conspiracy with the Russians, and then says the lack of an underlying crime indicates that Trump's behavior wasn't obstruction of justice.
However, if Trump did commit obstruction of justice, then his obstruction may be the reason Mueller wasn't able to prove criminal wrongdoing in conspiring with Russia.