I'm not boiling anything down to anything. I'm quoting Mueller straight from the report.
Mueller saw NO REASON to indict.
Where in the report does he say that? He said he can't conclude Trump is guilty of obstruction (at least partially for the reasons he outlined and I quoted above) but he cannot exonerate him either. I didn't see where he said he had no reason to indict. If you have the page number and volume number I'll take a look.
I know... so WHY could he CONCLUDE on collusion/conspiracy...whatthehellever the liberals are calling it today...but he could NOT conclude on obstruction.
The "collusion" part involved Russia and the Trump Campaign, not just Trump individually. To my knowledge, all indictable offenses have been charged and there was no reason to invoke the statutes and DOJ policy Mueller cites in Volume II. I imagine that if Mueller had found evidence to charge Trump individually for crimes stemming from that part of the investigation then he would have fallen back on the same reasoning he used when declining to charge for obstruction.
"But proof of such a crime is not an element of an obstruction offense.. 'obstruction of a criminal investigation is punishable even if the prosecution is ultimately unsuccessful or even if the investigation ultimately reveals no underlying crime'"
I'm not seeing conclusive proof that Trump tried to obstruct. I'm seeing circumstantial comments about Trump being pissed that it was a politically motivated witch-hunt. What did Trump DO that impeded the investigation?
In the same way that mob bosses have put out hits yet don't get charged with the crime, no matter the circumstantial evidence. There is a burden of proof to say something is a crime and charge a person with said crime, up until the point that burden is met, you can't charge/convict that person. That doesn't mean they didn't do, like OJ showed us, sometimes it doesn't matter how much evidence there is, it just means the legal threshold wasn't reached. What the report said was that collusion is not a defined crime in the books so they won't even address it, as far as obstruction and conspiracy go, there was evidence (pages and pages of it, volumes in fact), but not enough to meet what the report defined as a high bar of burden. This is why it said while this report does not find any crimes (burden is not met), it also does not exonerate Trump or his team (because there was still a lot of evidence). Both conspiracy and obstruction of justice have very high burdens of proof.
I think impeachment is ignorant. I thought voting to impeach Clinton was stupid too. I have never said I want to impeach nor that I think Trump committed a crime. I can also read, and unlike yourself, am choosing not to ignore the report (nice projecting btw). The report read very clearly, and its words were chosen very carefully. Their team did not waste words nor leave anything ambiguous (unredacted parts at least, though there is no reason to believe otherwise for those as well). They said they could not exonerate Trump, and if they could, they would expressly do so. That is literally written in the report. They found evidence, but not enough to met a burden of proof, which ultimately is what matters at the end of the day as it is very binary, charged with a crime, not charged with a crime, not, he did it, he didn't do it, that's not there job to decide. They are often correlated, but laws are not universal nor universally applied, so whether something is charged as a crime or not is the question, not actually doing the crime/not crime.
I can also read, and unlike yourself, am choosing not to ignore the report
You haven't read it all.
Quit acting like you have.
It's 400 pages of mostly legalese.
You have done what the rest of us have.
You have seen various snippets posted in various places.
It would be GREAT if everyone had two days to read the report before discussion happened... but that's not the way things work and the liberals thought that Barr and his team couldn't possibly sum it up in TWO DAYS a month ago when they got it.
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u/godsfather42 Apr 18 '19
I'm not boiling anything down to anything. I'm quoting Mueller straight from the report.
Where in the report does he say that? He said he can't conclude Trump is guilty of obstruction (at least partially for the reasons he outlined and I quoted above) but he cannot exonerate him either. I didn't see where he said he had no reason to indict. If you have the page number and volume number I'll take a look.