The Mueller Report Episode

to make that tent. I thought it was an entire pie that you're eating because it's in the pie ten, but it's not. We're talking about the Mueller Report today. Yeah. Yeah, So yesterday Thursday, the Mueller Report dropped like a Beyonce album, but with with a lot of lead times and not

out of nowhere. Uh. And I read all of it over the course of like I don't know, nine or ten hours or so, and I took eleven thousand words of notes and now I'm going to read them all to you guys, and words of a lot of its copy paste. So what would that be like a Rihanna album who drops their album with lots of lead times, like actually years of lead time. Dr Dre doctors, we still don't have detox. I have thought that there's a

lot of similarities between Dre and Robert Mueller. Oh absolutely, yeah, absolutely, they're both O g s that is true. Yeah, or ones and O g ones A G man Yeah, ones and O g ones in original g but not the best in the bids for nothing folks, yea what just general thoughts on Robert Mueller's prose style? Uh? Not not great? Could he use an editor? Like a lot of buried leads? Um, you know, maybe you know copy editing is good, but

maybe maybe somebody to kick it up. A notch present presentation of ideas could have been a little more effective, could have been a little bit more fun. That was a sprite, not a beer. Huh sure, Miles, Yeah, Miles has a sprite. But I have a bunch of throwing bagels because this is going to be a frustrated comes armed as per usual, he will throw in bagels, all right, I guess before we get into it, well, have you guys,

have you guys read much of the report? I've read probably many articles with excerpts that would amount to maybe fifteen pages. Okay, by reading are based at this point. Yeah, I did a lot of that too. I want to start by talking about William Barr, the current Attorney General a little bit before we we get into the report itself.

We're gonna talk about him much in the report because he's not in the report, but I think a little bit of his background is useful for understandable context of his behavior, a track record of the context that he gave us. Yeah, I would, I would call him the lies, yeah absolutely, yeah. Yeah. But like this is like in his playbook. Yeah, this is home runs. He's done like this. Yeah. Yeah.

So in nine is Assistant Atorney General William Barr drew some ire for authoring a legal opinion that stated that the FBI had the right to abduct people in foreign countries without the approval of the governments of those host countries. When this became an issue before Congress, Uh, he was asked to hand over a full copy of that memo, and he refused and instead offered to summarize its key points. Uh. Yeah, he's got a got a playbook that hasn't changed in

thirty years. Um. According to former d o J legal advisor Ryan Goodman, Bar quote admitted some of the most consequential and incendiary conclusions from the actual opinion, which forced Congress to issue with subpoena to find that opinion. If you may notice, as with some words switched around the same thing that happened with the Muller reports, very interesting nine abducting back then Noriega, Oh got I gotta go, who I think was a cool dude. He was not

looking at that at all. Yeah. I mean, well, it's funny because like before this, right, Bush was trying to figure out how to get Noriega out, and first like, oh, it would be it would be tight if the Panamanians like overthrew them, but you know, I don't want to. I don't want to tell what to do, and they being like, please do something, please do something, please do something. We'll help you. Maybe we won't. And then they failed.

There was like a failed to attempt. And then it got to the point where I'm sure they were just like, al right, how the fund do we just like send our people into we just abduct him? Yea. William Barr says, yes, yeah. Now. In during Barr's first run as Attorney General, the news broke that the Reagan administration had kind of secretly given billions of dollars in loans and military aid to Saddam.

Who's saying when we went to war with Saddam, Who's saying, some of Bush's officials doctored documents in order to hide this fact. Six separate congressional investigations were convened to look into the matter. The House Judiciary Committee asked bar to launch an independent council investigation, and he said no, which is the first time that an Attorney general ever refused such a request. Huh yeah, wow, So already we're not We're not gonna be looking at that setting new precedence.

I mean, that's the one thing he has a good track record of. William Barr is the homie if you if you get him in, he's gonna do like literally whatever. Need you know that episode of Breaking Bad when when Jesse's girlfriend o'ds on heroin and they call in Mike to to clean up the body and everything so that when the cops come nothing incriminating will be found. William Barr is the that guy of attorney general's. Yeah he's like Mike, Yeah, yeah, he's the Mike, but with like

less no with as much dirty work. Yeah, he's good at dirty work, far less likable. Ye, William Erman trout because we all we all wound up on Mike's side by the end of Breaking Bad. But but I'm not on William Barr side. Yeah. I mean the other thing though, yet with the whole memo was just like the level of how he first said it was like, it only has to do with domestic law. It was like, you don't need it doesn't matter because it's just about domestic law.

And to know that when they actually got it, they're like, this has to do with so much more. This is this is all of you can be the Fourth Amendment, like all these good things. Yeah, he he left some critical stuff out, and hearing all that, you won't be surprised to hear that bar summary of the Mueller report left out some key facts as well, not just key

facts about the president. For one thing that omitted a fascinating little crime drama wherein Eric Prince and Michael Flynn tried to get their grubby little hands on Hillary Clinton's

near mythical thirty thousand deleted Clinton emails. Um, this is like one of the most interesting parts of the whole document to me, because the report reveals that Trump essentially repeatedly asked Flynn General Flynn to acquire Hillary Clinton's emails for him, and one of the through lines of the report is that Flynn is literally the only loyal person who was ever in Donald Trump's orbit, and so unlike unlike everyone else who works for Trump who was solely

interested in themselves, Flynn was like, yeah, I mean, my boss wants these emails. I'm gonna try and get these motherfucking emails. Um. He just needed someone to give him orders. Again. He loves getting orders. He loves getting orders. Um. So he worked with a lady named Barbara Ledean who was a former GOP staffer. Uh, and she actually managed to get her hands on what she believed was a tranche

of Clinton emails. And that's when Michael Flynn teamed up with our old buddy Echo Papa Eric Prince, and he funded the effort to verify the Clinton emails, which showed that they were in fact bullshit made to trick the g O p UM. So that's that's neat, fun little you get a fun little ninety minutes of uh, you know, you cut that into a well yeah. Um, So, as I said, I read the whole report in one like blurred,

frenzied eight hour or nine hour whatever session. I'm not a lawyer, and I won't pretend to have understood all the different arguments about constitutional law that the report makes. That kind of my eyes glaze over on that. Well, that's why you have me here, That's why I have

you here, famous constitutional law scholars. Gray Um. But it does seem from everything else I read about it that one of the things Mueller makes very clear at the end is that he believes that Trump's status as the president does not make him immune to charges of obstruction of justice. And he also makes it clear that the crime of of conspiracy with the Russian government does not have to have been committed for Trump to have committed obstruction of justice by trying to obstruct the whole which

was the sort of logic William Barr was using. Yeah, and like that's like the most repeat like the refrain if if this is one page long song, like like if this is American pie, the the refrain of the song the bye Bye Miss American pieline is Mueller saying, I'm not saying Trump didn't commit crimes. I'm not saying

Trump crimes, like, very very clearly and repeatedly. Um yeah, that's like one of the most commonly repeated things I know because William Barr, famous truth teller, he said, well that the whole conspiracy thing wasn't a crime, so like, how can you obstruct something's not even crimes? It's like, you know, and he was mad. Fuck. So it is remarkable how much of it is just like and this

is like Chris Christie repeatedly told Donald Trump. Like that's another thing that's in there is Christie repeatedly saying just don't do anything, Just don't do anything. He didn't collude with the Russian government, Just don't do anything and it'll be fine. And Trump being like, well, fuck, Chris Christie,

that's what the that It's like. Really, it's one of the weird things about this document is the people who come across as like paragons of sanity, and one of them is Chris Christie, which is how you know you're in a point. So sorry, I'm just going back to the beginning here. Um yeah, I felt like we didn't need to read after so I read the New York Post cover that said the Mueller Report, Trump cleaned, no crimes committed, dem hoax destroyed. And then I read the

bar summary. Why would we need to go any deeper than that? I don't well, I don't know. Jack. Let's talk about that for over. Let's say like an hour and a half something like that, you know, alright, Uh, let's get into it. So another big reveal, uh, concerned the infamous P tape, first revealed to the public, much on the line Steal dossier. The P tape was apparently a major subject of discussion among people close to Trump

and the weeks before the election. Two weeks prior to the election, a Russians, Russian businessman texted this to Michael Cohen, quote, stop the flow of tape from Russia, but not sure if there's anything else, just so you know, dot dot dot Yeah, flow tapes. Yeah, the flow of tape. And this is before the election, before this is before any

anyone out in the world was talking about tapes. Yeah, BuzzFeed had not dropped I think, um, John McCain had taken the report, had like made a note of the report to the FBI because he'd seen it, but like BuzzFeed hadn't dropped it. Yet um, Now, the Special Council apparently talked to this Russian businessman whose name I just cannot pronounce and I'm not going to trumpet find it.

Russian businessman who explained to Cohen that these tapes were compromising tapes of Trump's Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group, which had helped host the two Miss Universe pageant in Russia. Uh this guy insisted that the tapes were fake when he was talked to by the Special Council, so he told the Muhler investigation that the p tapes were faked, but Cohen did not know that at the time. So

that that's the most seeing stuff up front. The rest of what we have to talk about. It's going to be a lot less organized because we're basically just going through my raw notes, some of which will be sensible and some of which may not be, since by the end of the read I was pretty stir crazy and also very very inebriated. So this will this will get less logical as we go along. All right, Yeah, looking at that doc, we're using wing dings or web dings.

Are there other thoughts, Oh wow, and you know what, just go on ahead, man. So, uh, the the report starts off with what, under normal, sane circumstances would be a pretty damning sentence, the Russian government interfered in the two thousand sixteen presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.

Um Again, like that's one of the first lines. But compared to based on everything else, it almost doesn't even make an impact if we're living in a rational universe where the Trump administration was treated like other presidential administrations. The fact that that is the beginning of the report and the President has been saying for years, we don't know if Russia. Clue, we don't know if it was Russia, and just constantly equivocating and you know, just standing for Russia. Basically,

that would be a big story. People would be like, huh so now he knows, Like, now we know he was wrong. And the MULTA report clearly says that they intervened on his behalf and he's still lying on their behalf. That's just weird. Yeah, the most the question I had most going through this first part of the report that talks about Russian medaling is just like, this feels like an act of war. Like, not that I'm in favor of a war with Russia, but like this feels like

a digital pearl Harbor. Um. And it's pretty pretty shocking. A lot of this stuff about the Internet Research Agency was out from pre prior subpoenas and whatnot, but seeing it all put together here is um, it's really shocking. The report makes it clear that the Russians definitely wanted Trump to win and that they took substantial effort to ensure that he did. Describes the social media campaign that

they ran as have favored Trump and disparaged Hillary Clinton. However, quote, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities. Um. So the the reports are still care for to note that in a statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean that there was no evidence of those facts. So he's saying, we didn't find hard proof that they conspired with the

Russian government. However, we did find some evidence that they conspired with the Russian government, just not enough to make it a chargeable offense. He says that, specifically in reference to the collusion immediately after. Yeah, yeah, well and he

okay taught speaking about collusion. Um. In making the report, Muller applied the framework of conspiracy law to determine whether quote collective action of multiple individuals constituted a crime rather than collusion, because, as he notes, collusion is not actually a crime with the definition under federal criminal law. It's just a word people have been using. But like, as in terms of the FBI's job, it's an irrelevant term.

Is like, there's no way legally to determine it. Uh. Muller notes, in connection with that analysis, we address the factual question of whether members of the Trump campaign coordinated, a term that appears in the appointment Order, which is the order that established a special counsel's investigation with Russian

election interference activities. Now kind of confusingly, the report notes that coordination doesn't have a definition under federal criminal law either, but they defined coordination is requiring an agreement tacit or express between the campaign and the Russian government. So like that's sort of the framework under which Mueller is trying to analyze. The goal posts are pretty far out. Yeah, the goalpost far out, And it's surprising how many field

goals they still kick. Does that make Does that make sense? Okay, good job man, I don't go Uh yeah, no, nice, well done. My favorite squad running. Uh. And it's how many h field goals they kick and make and they have to actually successfully the field goals, not just kick them in their landing thirty yards short. Anyways, let's talk about the sports analogy a little bit. Um So, under this definition, they did not find coordination between the campaign

and the Russian government. In other words, Russia helping the Trump campaign win and the Trump campaign knowingly taking their help, which is documented, did not count as coordination because there was no tacit or express agreement to interfere with the election behind it. Right. It's one of those things where it's like they're not saying at Putin, Putin at Russia, dot gov or dot are you sorry? I have more respect? Uh? With subject headline, Hey, when do we want to drop

the emails? This is what I'm thinking, because yeah, it's really tough when more more or less, it was just sort of like, I think the Russians are kind of help hooking it up. Yeah, And it was it was just like about it. We know that these documents were hacked by someone. We know they're going to be released through wiki leaks. A lot of people are saying it's Russia.

Trump just keeps saying, I don't think it's Russia. But we know the documents are going to release, and we're planning weeks ahead of time how we're going to exploit what we know is going to come out in the releases. But because it's it's not, it's not Vladipoop picking up the phone and being like, hey guys, got some documents, Like it's there's there's additional layers of of of obscurement to it. Um Now, there are a couple of cases where it is almost that direct, which we'll get to.

Um So, Russia's efforts to influence the election, we're focused mostly around either the g r U, which is Russian intelligence, or the Internet Research Agency, which is essentially a private company that's also part of the Russian intelligence infrastructure. Now the i RA, which I will be referring to, even though it's kind of confusing because it's not the RA just killed a lady up in dairy. Uh. The IRA started its infiltration of the US by sending agents over

in two thousand fourteen. This is implied to be the beginning of their election infiltration efforts, but the details are all redacted out of harm to ongoing matter. Um, so there's a lot that's redacted in like relation to the i RA uh and it's later in the document quote. IRA employees traveled to the United States in mid two thus fourteen on an intelligence gathering mission to obtain information

and photographs for use in their social media posts. So they were taking pictures of Americans and locations that they could make more compelling fake people on the Internet to pretend to be American activists. That's interesting that actually happened. Like they didn't just use Google image search. They went and took pictures because they knew that it would be

possible to trace the images back. And Yeah, when I think about what I do online, when I suspect someone is like a fake person, it's like the first thing you do is do a reverse Google image shirts. So they didn't want that to be possible. Yeah uh quote IRA.

The ai AS operation also included the purchase of political advertisements on social media and the names of US persons and entities, as well as the staging of political rallies inside the United States To organize those rallies, ira A employees posed as US grassroots entities and persons and made contact with Trump supporters and Trump campaign officials in the United States. The investigation did not identify evidence that any

US persons conspired or coordinated with the i RA. So they definitely worked with the ira and supported their efforts, but they thought they were there. There's no evidence they thought they were anything but US based activists, because there were there were even examples of like Trump retweeting through some social media site like one of the IRAS protests that they were like a pro Trump thing that they were gathering. But there's no necessary way that Trump would

have owned that they weren't just a normal group of supporters. Yeah, that would have required him to do more more research into that than anything he's ever done. Yeah, which of course he didn't like. Yeah, but I mean, at that point, they're operating in a way that's supposed to come off as sincere as possible. Um, so we get even like, I don't think we needed any more confirmation that Goose offer two point oh was the g r U and that the d n C leaks were part of a

Russian government operation. But what, oh, Miles, are you serious? Yeah, I'm sorry man, if you even I thought he was some hacker dude in his basement, Yeah, and his mom's basement with his blood type of mountain dew blah blah blast. Yeah. I mean they the g r U are big fans of Baja blast. That's very well documented. Uh so um.

It notes that Wiki leaks made its first releases in July of two thousand and sixteen, like within days of candidate Trump announcing that he hoped Russia would recover emails

described as missing from a private server. So it like essentially it states very clearly that the g r U a lot of their hacking efforts to try to get her emails started within a couple of days of Trump saying, uh, I hope that the Russians get her emails, like he said that, and they started certain like spear fishing attempts to break into Clinton email accounts. That's new. Yeah, yeah,

that is new. It started days after he said that was you know, And I didn't take down the exact length of time, but I think it was within like forty eight hours. It was very close. So it's not like so yeah, yeah, before you could have thought, well, this is probably ongoing. Rather yeah, he literally said hey, I hope you should do that, and they started spearfish. I've always thought people pointing to that part, like him saying that in his speech, as like evidence that he

was coordinating or trying to coordinate with Rush. I've always taken that as like, yeah, but he was like clearly just doing his Trump thing and up there riffing and ship like that. But it seemed like that's crazy that they were like yes, yes, sir, yes, your honor. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, uh yeah, it was. It was pretty nuts. Um well I think yeah, I guess even if there isn't if you don't think it's they were in direct contact. It was definitely that like that was information they needed

to be like, oh okay, this is this will help. Yeah, it's It's worth noting that they had penetrated the d n C in June, so before Trump ever said anything, they had already started getting emails and stuff from the d n C. But they SUSPENSI they like specifically started spear fishing, which is essentially when you send out a bunch of emails to like people whose accounts you want to compromise that have things that if they click like it might, it'll be like, oh, log in because your

bank account and then it's a website I created. Yeah. So they started targeting Clinton aids and people like associated with Hillary Clinton UM on a wider scale immediately after that. So, like, that's one of the more damning things that's in the whole report. UM, even though that's obviously not necessarily evidence of coordination, because it's possible and in fact probably that what happened is Trump speaking out of his ass because it sounded good and tough, and the Russians being like, yeah,

we we can do more of that. Why not? Um, But is also pretty damning in a normal political environment. Yeah, I mean I don't care about stuff like that. I mean, it's very easy for him to say that, speaking out of his ass, because he was just in three meetings where people were like, damn it, it would be really great for our campaign if we had the Clinton emails.

And he just goes out there and like says it out of his ass and they're like, oh, we probably shouldn't say that, but he can because he's a fucking clown, and the Russians are like, got it. Like yeah, I mean that's the core. It is effectively coordinating, even if it's not like the legal definition of them like getting on the phone or like legally uh you know something

that we can prove. Yeah, well, but he would have to know that the Russians were going to do that, and that was all part like that it was all coming from there, right, rather than like sort of subconsciously expressing a desire that they could pick up on. And I guess the reason coordinating is so dangerous is because you're you know, bringing like one person's illicit like planned

to attack the Democrats into like alongside yours. That's why the like sharing, pulling information and like strategic information that Manifort did is so you know that is so significant because that's what makes it particularly effective is you're you know,

targeting the same areas, the same types of people. And I mean obviously Trump wanted her email, so it's just yes, like it doesn't technically rise to the level, but like when you're looking at like what we need to keep a sane electoral process, like not being able to jokingly tell somebody to help your campaign by doing an illegal thing. Yeah, is probably should be something we take into account. We should we should make that be uh illegal in the future.

It seems like a gap in our current because sixty years ago that wouldn't have really been a thing people could do, and now it is. Yeah anyway, Um, Sophie's giving me the two fingers sign, which means it's time for you. Guys are better at transitions. That was amazing one. I actually got freaked out when you did that. Haunted. Yes, yes, by these ghosts. We're back. So uh. One of the things that report makes really clear is what a staggering

success the Internet Research Agency's influence campaign was. Uh Facebook at all were no in no way prepared for this, and we're essentially perfect victims. Quote. Instagram accounts had hundreds of i RA Instagram accounts had hundreds of thousands of US participants. Ira A controlled Twitter accounts separately had tens of thousands of followers, including multiple US political figures who

retweeted ira created content. In November two thousand seventeen, a Facebook representative testified that Facebook had identified four hundred seventy ira A controlled Facebook accounts that collectively made eighty thousand posts between January two thousand fifteen August two thousand seventeen, Facebook estimated the ira A reached as many as a hundred and twenty six million persons through its Facebook accounts, and sixth of January two thousand eighteen, Twitter announced that

it had identified three thousand, eight hundred fourteen ira A controlled Twitter accounts and notified approximately one point four million people Twitter believed may have been in contact with an

ira A controlled account. UM. So, in just keeping all that in mind, the hundred and twenty six million people who were reached by Facebook like iri controled Facebook accounts alone, I want to note that according to Vanity Fair, Uh, there's a great Vanity Fair article titled you could feed all the voters who cost Clinton the election in a mid size stadium. Um noting that the three states that cost Clinton the victory, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania were lost

by a margin of seventy nine thousand votes. So when we're talking about whether or not Russian influence pedaling could have had a significant impact on the outcome of the election, that they reached a hundred and twenty six million people through Facebook, the election came down to seventy nine thousand votes, right, And that's where the part where Manafort exchanging information with Constant and Colimnik is so damning too because they go, oh,

no collusion. Well you have this person that is the most damning thing in terms of the campaign. He is the manager of the campaign at the time, right, sharing internal polling data and strategy and also saying these are the battle ground states were really focusing on because we think the Clinton campaign is actually taking some of these states from for granted, or as the media said, or just not putting as much investment in those states and

the like. Oh and we've also like and from there identifying the Clinton defect or demographic of voter who they especially needed to get to because once you get those people to vote third party or for Trump, great, Yeah,

you've actually whittling down the margins. And again, like you say, when it comes to something as just under eighty thousand people, uh Rebevans, I have a question for you the um why why does he Why would Muller like he acknowledges the thing that we're talking about, right, the Constant clinic maniport like connections. Yeah, he's very explicit about that. So

why did that? Because one of the critiques that I've seen the likes of Glenn Greenwald bring is that, how like do you believe that they didn't come up with one single indictment of somebody for Russia Russian collusion? Why does that not rise to the level of collusion? Well because siractic criminal term? Sorry, why does that not rise to the level of criminal conspiracy with Russia? Uh? Yeah,

that's that's that's a great question. I guess some of it is because, like, is it it's not illegal to share polling data somebody like he wasn't Manafort was giving this guy polling data. He was not in return getting a promise We're going to have this agency that you may not even know exists at this point attack these

battleground states to try to shift voters. There's nothing illegal about a guy giving like information as the campaign had he had control over, he can share that with whoever conscting clinic was not like next door to Vladimir Putin at the time, working for him or whatever, so that maybe did did they have a direct connection between the clinic? Clinic and Putin had a direct connection enough to be like we can ssider this person to be part of

the intelligence. Intelligence part of what Manafort is in jail for is related to this the acting as an unregistered foreign agent UM. Now that's not as a result of him sharing data with Colmnic, but as other results of things he did with Colimnic, because he was also talking with Colimnic about essentially establishing a peace plan that would

have given Russia backdoor control of eastern Ukraine. So one of the things Manafort was doing while he was giving the stat at a Colimnic was being like, and we'll establish a peace program that gives Russia a large chunk of Ukraine, uh in exchange for better relations with Russia. Like that was the thing he was working on at this time. And that's a lot legally shadier ground to stand on, but some of that still ongoing in terms

of like the the investigation and whatnot. And one of the things that man or that Muller repeatedly notes is that, uh, it's hard to say exactly what crimes Manafort did or didn't commit because he lied about everything and deleted all of his text messages and we didn't get them all. Like that's a repeated comment that Mueller makes, is that, like, there might be more here, but we just don't have all of the information from Manafort because he lies constantly

and deleted everything. Yeah, based on beans based on your reading of the Mueller report, do you would you guess that Mueller thinks that Russian intervention swung the election or is he taking that idea fair seriously enough to say that he definitely thinks that's possibility. I would say that everything that's in the report says it's definitely a possibility. He does not go as far as saying this one like that, and that's outside of the scope of his investigation.

But he spent probably like a good quarter maybe if if it's lower of the of the whole report, talking about Russian influences actions to swing the election, going in detail about them, about what Manafort did, about what the Internet Research Agency did, about what Wiki Leaks did. Wiki he very makes a very clear case that Wiki Leaks coordinated directly with the Russian government to release a lot of this stuff, Like he goes into exhaustive detail about

like that. Like one of the first half of the Muller Report, Part one is essentially a detailed outline of Russian efforts to influence the two thousand and sixteen election. Um, And I don't see how you can walk away from it thinking anything but that they put a lot of work and money into this, and some of them at least believe. There's even a statement from some guy close

to Putin saying Putin one after Trump won the election. Yeah, so I would say, and I you know, I can't get inside Bob Mueller's head, but he definitely takes the possibility seriously because he spent like a hundred pages talking about it, right. Yeah, so I do want to talk a little bit more about the Internet Research Agent. Say, there's another little line a little bit further down that

talks about how those four IRA employees snuck into the country. Uh, they lied and pretended to be four friends who had met at a party. I just wanted to visit the U S Which I'm sorry that was cute. Have you have you actually seen times when like Russian spies have gone abroad to like do recon and stuff. How obvious they look. Well, some people just want to look at some cathedrals. Remember those guys in England who were like had the most guys who poisoned for the for the listeners.

You guys who poisoned several people in Russia when they were tracked down by members of the site that I write for a Belling Cat, and we're found to have been agents of the g r U. They claimed to be tourists who were just there to look at cathedrals, and they looked like comic book versions of like Russian like goon like like like the most just like chiseled faces.

They their expressions were so like angry, and you couldn't for a second be like, oh these are cathedral enthusiasts, like these are these people just with their scowls look like they were either Russian spice or soccer hooligans and nothing else. Yeah, yeah they were not, Mike, So I can't believe like coming here, they're like, uh in your purpose for your visit, we are friends at the United States, Um, what's in your backpack? Camera? And sweat those look like

chair legs is for my marionette class. I must make here. I must go uh yeah, just like a wild Because that was the one thing that really surprised me about the because it was with Sergey scrup all right, that was those guys when he saw those photos like they're not even trying. They're actually not even trying. Yeah, like you feel I feel like the people at the border could like, I don't know, I guess this gets into profiling,

but like, so you guys are clearly Russian spy. I'm like, why is your friend folding up a frying pan with his bare hands behind? Look at me like like they like they if there was a shooting and I was near one of those guys, I would dive behind their forehead for cover because it was clearly thick enough to stop.

Both gods, it's freaky, yeah, you know, and easy, you think, like with the way some people finesse things, like with the way Kim Jong UN's brother was taken out, like they had those people warm more women with poison needles. Good plan, right, or just like trying to bring in weird people to be like, oh, it's a prey ink show or whatever. I don't know if they actually still

believe that or they'll cover or whatever. But if you just need photos, right, you could easily just send your like, oh, my cousin studying abroad, just make sure you get all the pictures off the SD card when you get back. But you know, why am I trying to do their job better? For? I mean, you know, Miles, when this when this whole podcasting game falls apart. I do think you have a future as a Russian contracting spy agents. I'm like, hey, Boots, babe, let's talk. Man. I'm like, Bobby,

you got this thing all the way it turned around. Man, I'm mature as a Russian spy. You should see his pass and to hire this guy. Yeah right, hey, but it stopped the flow of tapes, didn't it. It did stop the flow of tapes, the fake tapes. Oh yeah, I'm yeah, the tapes of flow. Um, okay, so not the progressive she was my improv teacher. Hey, so uh there's a there's fun lines in the report that are

partially acted. One that says the focus on the US presidential campaign continued through two a thousand sixteen and redacted two sixteen internal redacted. Reviewing the ira A controlled Facebook group Secured Borders, the author criticized the lower number of posts dedicated to criticizing Hillary Clinton and reminded the Facebook specialist, it is imperative to intensify criticizing Hillary Clinton. UM, just

very direct. A lot of It's interesting to me how much information the Mulla report has on what's going on here and a lot of it's redacted, So once we get a full version, I expect we're going to like, there's a lot in here about the journalists who worked with Wiki leaks um and I'm really interested to see some of those conversations when they're inevitably revealed, because that's

one of the things. Yeah, I think, I mean, we don't know what's redacted, but it talks about at other points that journalists, American journalists worked with Wiki leaks, and we're given access to the leaks ahead of time. Wiki leaks was getting the leaks directly from the g r u um and from you know, as goose Afer. So like as I'm interested in in the form those conversations took because I suspect some of those journalists kind of

knew what was going on. So who was coordinating with a Facebook expert there that was a that was a IRA agent like talking with one of their Facebook experts, one of the Facebook Yeah, that's an internal conversation where they're talking about you know, we have to intensify criticizing that. Funny when your job is that you get an email from your manager it's like, hey, we talked about this man. Yeah, we gotta ramp up the Hillary Clinton stuff, and then your job is to go back and be like, oh man,

she sucks. I mean, I can't believe you're destroying this country. Now. Such a bizarre sitcom. Most of the IRAS groups were like pretty pretty hardline conservative pro Trump, but they actually kind of spun the gamut. There was everything from being like their Facebook groups had names like being Patriotics, Stop All Immigrants, Secured Boarders, and Tea Party News, but also

had names like black Matters, Blacktivist, and don't Shoot us. Uh. There was an lb LGBT United Group, and then like religious groups like United Muslims of America all were actually I ray. Facebook groups was pretty big. Yeah, Blacktivist was very big. He and they they carried out rallies and stuff and got sizeable numbers of people, and they were pushing the anti Hillary, like Hillary Clinton's racist line to

try to get black voters to stop supporting her. UM. Now it's noted in here like there was a lot of ship last year. I think when it came out to the Internet Research Agency, it's been a hundred thousand dollars on thirty Facebook advertisements. UM. One of the things that's really clear from the Malar report is that they really didn't need to do that. Uh, most of their engagement seems to have occurred organically without the need to

put any money down to amplify things at all. Like that was almost more icing on the cake, Like just the way that social media is structured, they didn't need to spend money because they were creating fake news and that was that. Well, like they it's easy to if you just get to write fiction and pretend it's fact, you can create viral something that's gonna go viral because you just say the Pope said fun Hillary Clinton. Yeah, people Catholics are gonna want to read about Hillary Clinton's

going to kill your babies. It's controversial. It's something that gets people angry, and then like, your job's already done for you. You don't need to spend that money like they did in some cases, But it doesn't seem like it was that. That is one of the top rebuttals I hear from conservatives or even moderate people who are like,

this whole thing is a witch hunt. Is well, you're telling me thirty something thousand dollars of Facebook money is what swung this election, And it's like, no, it was the constant churn of like fake stories that were wish fulfillment for anybody who like thought about supporting Trump. Yeah. One thing that's really clear is that the IRA was a big push behind Hillary Clinton for prison. That hashtag like that was one of the big prison. Yeah, that was one of the big things they pushed started it.

But like they really they really pushed it. Um, that's one of the things they spend money to push, especially around the the RNC and the d n c UM. So the IRA efforts were two pronged, and they created a number of fake persons in groups obviously to like act as American citizens who are activists, but they also operated a sizeable bot net which would give these fake

people the impression of being real. Uh. It notes that numerous high profile US persons, including former Ambassador Michael McFall, Roger Stone, Sean Hannity, Michael Flynn Jr. Retweeted or responded to treats tweets posted by IRA controlled accounts. So again, um, they had a lot of success holding rallies. Uh. They would put US media in touch, like they would basically start a rally, get dozens or hundreds of thousands of

people to confirm that they were attending. Then they would find an actual American volunteer to act as a coordinator and make an excuse about how they had to be out of the state during the rally, and then they would put media in touch with the person who'd volunteered to be the coordinator to make it seem like it was legitimate grassroots effort. Um. The first rally they executed was actually in November of fifteen, and it was a Confederate rally. That was the name of the the event. Um.

These rallies continued after the two sixteen election. There's one example of one of the posters here which I actually think I saw during the election. It's the Miners for Trump ad for a Miners for Trump rally and that was an IRA rally. Wow, yeah, I definitely saw that. Add not children, no, no, no, like coal mines. Yeah yeah, yeah,

it's It's it's pretty wild. One of their groups was black or one of their fake people was named black Fist, which was purportedly an African American like trying to teach other black people how to protect themselves from law enforcement. Um. They were really focused on BLM because it was controversial because it was something people argued about and thought about on the Internet. And I knew if they created one like incident that involved Black Lives matter, like the right

wing media would do the rest. Yeah. That seems to have been a huge part of their goal. Um yeah, uh so, I'm not gonna go into detail. And every time the Trump campaign promoted IRA created material, but the report notes that in total, Trump campaign affiliates posted promoted dozens of tweets, posts, and other political content created by the IRA. So that's cool and again not coordination, not coordination in the legal sense. Synergy. Yeah, there's two people

working at parallel purposes. And that's the thing with conspiracy, like you need that agreement ahead of time, you know, so it's like it's defined what it is rather than being like, yeah, we want the same thing. Well everything happened. Yeah, Now that's one chunk of Russia's efforts. The other chunk were carried out by the g r U, which is again Russian intelligence. Um, and those are the people who

did the DNC hacks. They did the spear fishing that got them access to like a bunch of Hillary Clinton related emails and stuff. Um, so they had there are a couple of different GRU departments that did this. One of the things I found interesting is that the g RU carried out a moderate size bitcoin mining operation in order to buy the computer infrastructure they used to hack the d n C. So that's cool. Yeah neat. Oh so they were just like had a bunch of computers running.

They get as much bitcoin to fund their other computer. Yeah, yeah, it was bitcoin. Wasn't bitcoin like a penny stock at that time? Like, wasn't it really low? It was? It was worth more than that. It was in the hundreds I think at least. Yeah. Um so yeah. The the spearfishing campaign was incredibly successful in letting the g r U access to John Podesta's emails, as well as tens

of thousands of other messages from other campaign staffers. The g RU began planning the releases of this content at least as early as April nineteen sixteen, which is when one g r EU unit registered the domain d c leaks dot com uh and then anonymize the registrant. They paid for the registration using bitcoin that they had mined. Um. So that's cool. Um yeah, so we'll get we'll get into the rest of this, but first you know what's better than bitcoin products services? Money is better than no

no spending? Yeah, uh huh, yes, where am I? Uh capitalism? I'm not as good at answer to that a capitalism no. See, this is why I was. I was trusting what you all to do. The ad plug. But hey, guys, we're gonna take a quick break to tell your sickle of our ads real quick. Okay, uh one of our ads. Hey Miles Jack from work? Yeah, alright, uh go go listen to the man. We're gonna take a quick break. We'll be your bad and we're back. Great ads. That

was great lead into the ads. Let's talk about Roger Stone. So Roger Stone is notable in the Malari for his absence because he's not really in the Moulder report, but he clearly is because there's a bunch of redacted stuff like, oh, y'all are talking about Roger Stone. Now. One of those places is talking about the communication between the g r u uh in the persona of goos Off two point oh with a Trump campaign member while a former Trump

campaign member who's again clearly Roger Stone. So I'm gonna read a selection of that, which is again in the middle of a bunch of very redacted stuff. In early August two thousand and sixteen, redacted Twitter suspension of the goose off two point oh to Twitter account after it was reinstated, JRU officers posing his goose for two point oh wrote, redacted via private message, thank you for writing back. Do you find anything interesting in the docks I posted

on August sixteen the jar you added. Please tell me if I can help you anyhow, It would be a great pleasure to me. On September sixteen, the GRU, again posing his goose off two point oh, referred to a stolen Democratic campaign document posted online and asked Roger Stone, probably, what do you think about the info on the term an out model for the Democrats entire presidential campaign? Roger

Stone probably responded pretty standard. The investigation did not identify evidence of other communications between probably Roger Stone and goose it for two point out. So there's a lot of talk between Roger and goosef um. But he's saying the information you got us is pretty standard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it ain't ship it ain't ship um. But there's still an ongoing investigation there, which that's the stuff they could show you. Yeah, yeah, that's the stuff that they were

able to show you. Um, now, if there's any chance she still thought Julian Assange was anything but a partisan hack. Here's something he wrote to his colleagues in November two thousand fifteen. That's in the Mullar Report. We believe it would be much better for Goop to win. DIM's plus media plus liberals would then form a block to rain in their worst qualities. With Hillary in charge, Geop will be put pushing for her worst qualities. DIMS plus media

plus neoliberals will be mute. She's a bright, well connected, sadistic sociopath Juliana Sange talking about Hillary Clinton talking about Hillary Clinton, which might be an accurate description of Hillary Clinton, but uh, statistics seems weird because She's would be more interesting. Yeah, yeah, that's probably I'm going to guess anyone who rises to her level in politics has a little bit of sociopath in him. But I feel like any career politician, yeah,

you gotta have a little bit. I just yeah, I wouldn't be shocked if she had like some small German children tied up in her basement that she just like stuck pins in every once in a while, just to gate on us here just saying like, probably not in her basement, but maybe like a secret bunker that she walks to in the woods. But yeah, I don't, I don't know. Yeah, I don't. I don't want to say that. But I can see where I can see where her like dislike for Hillary Clinton. Yea, yeah, where where that

can come from? I mean, he also hated Obama, and but the fact that he's like, yeah, but we want GOP doesn't really make sense because they seem to violate everything that he and he was fairly about their worst excess as being reined in. That's part of what I find interesting there, is like, yeah, that's not how that worked out. You think he convinced himself of that or was just lying to commence others of that. I think

he might have. It's hard to say. With Julian Assange. Um, we we do know from the document that wiki leaks and goose for two point oh cooperated consistently and effectively to derail the Clinton campaign. Um. They were in constant conversation. Wiki Leaks sent them a message on July six thousand sixteen through Twitter saying, if you have anything Hillary related we would want in the next TWEO, which is he misspelled to days prefab preferably because the DNC is approaching

and she will solidify Bernie supporters behind her. After Goose for two point oh responded, Okay, I see Wiki Leaks explained. We think Trump has only a chance of winning against Hillary, so conflict between Bernie and Hillary is interesting. So again Julian Assange coordinating directly with Russian intelligence to try to drive a wedge between Bernie voters and Hillary Clinton. Yeah. Um, Now the seth Rich stuff is by far the most disgusting thing in here, and yet another reason that I

am very angry at Julia sange Um. The report makes it incredibly clear that after seth Rich had died, when he was receiving documents on the d n C leaks, he was lying in public press announcements and essentially saying it might have been seth Rich. Um. So again this is and again he's getting all of his information after seth Rich is already dead, so he knows it can't

be seth Rich. So on August nine, sixteen, the Wiki Leaks Twitter account posted announced WikiLeaks has decided to issue a US twenty award for information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staff or Seth rich On August, Assange was asked in an interview, why are you so interested in Seth Riches killer? He responded, We're very interested in anything that might be a threat to alleged Wiki

leaks sources. The interviewer responded to a Sange by saying, I know you don't want to reveal your source, but it certainly sounds like you're suggesting a man who leaked information to wiki leaks was then murdered. Sang replied, if there's someone who's potentially connected to our publication and that person has been murdered in suspicious circumstances, it doesn't necessarily mean that two are connected, but it's a very serious matter. That type of allegation is very serious and it's taken

seriously by us. So just to give everybody context, this is referring to right wing conspiracy theory that this h d n C staffer who was murdered in d C during the election. Uh, they started the conspiracy theory that

he was the one who Wiki leaked the documents. He was the d n C leaguer and was murdered by Hillary's murdered by Hillary Clinton, and as San stoked that conspiracy theory, which is number one and fathomily cruel to seth Rich's family at a point at which he knew it was not seth Rich, because he was getting he was communicating with these people and getting these documents well after seth Rich was dead, very obvious to him where

this had all come from. We know that for a point of fact, he was lying and stoking a bullshit about the the murder of seth Rich in order to hurt Hillary Clinton. That seems to have been the primary Even more, Yeah, which is the most in a document full of despicable things, might be the most despicable thing in the entire mold the report. Yeah, especially with Rat's Julian, what his family has gone through. And Yeah, just becoming this like business like just taking this person's murder for

this political narrative and almost unspeakably evil. Yeah. With regards to um the Trump campaigns or uh conspiring with coordination coordination with Wiki leaks. So one of the details that we talked about on The Daily Zeitgeist last week or a few days ago was that if the Trump campaign had been coordinating with Wiki leaks and wiki leaks like or if they have been doing what they did with wiki leaks to Goose of Forer, like, if they weren't that one step removed, then it would have been a

criminal conspiracy. Like do you think they were working with wiki leaks knowing that wiki leaks was one step removed and that protected them politically, And that's why they were going through wiki leaks as opposed to just going directly to the source. I don't think that they knew. I don't think they ever I don't even know if they ever thought about it. They just knew that wiki leaks had this stuff like in in you know, in defense

of the Trump campaign. Uh, it's entirely possible. They just thought Wiki leaks had damning information that they had gotten from one of their usual sources and no idea. Now later on, especially in the after election period, it becomes very clear that it was the Russians, and Trump continues to deny that it was the Russians, even as his

advisors are being like, it was definitely the Russians. Um, but they were like they didn't like, the Trump campaign didn't necessarily know that wiki leaks was getting all their stuff from the Russian government Wiki leaks almost certainly knew what was going on. Lionissange is not a dumb dumb dummy. Um yeah, And just since you bring it up, and maybe we'll get to this later. But the Trump continuing to deny that it was the hack was Russia? Does

that fall within the scope of Mueller's report? Um? Yeah, I mean it's in there. And they continued to deny, like even after it became very clear that there was Russian involvement. Yeah, that that's included from what Hope Picks told him. It was because he just could not stay the idea of people trying to delegitimize the election, and

because you know, because everything about him is fake. So his wealth, he can't show you his tax returns because he's not actually wealthy, and he doesn't want to get into it because then that will expose him if he even acknowled. I don't think out of self preservation, he might not even being able to acknowledge that's what it is, because it's like I didn't know. Of course, I didn't

get help from the Russians. I did it myself. Oh, I found the quote that I had from after Trump made his open call for to the Russian government to hack uh, Hillary Clinton's email. We said, Russia, you know, please get us her emails. This is what the Mueller report says, word for word. Within approximately five hours of Trump statement, GRU officers targeted for the first time Clinton's

personal office after candidate Trump's remarks. Unit to six five, which is the unit of the g RU that was doing this, created and sent malicious links targeting fifteen email accounts that the domain, including an email account belonging to Clinton. To Clinton aid, the investigation did not find evidence of earlier GRU attempts to compromise accounts hosted on this domain. Holy shit. Yeah, yeah, the Muller report is incredibly direct

about that, right, Um, so that's why it's total bullshit. Yeah, which is so funny. Yeah, we went from total exoneration to total bullshit. Now. The contacts with campaign Trump campaign

about Wiki leaks section of the Mullar report is heavily redacted. Uh, there's a section in there that's literally In debriefing with office, former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates said that a whole paragraph of redacted from harm to ongoing matter, and then Gates are called candidate Trump being generally frustrated that Clinton emails had not been found. Paul Manafort, who had later become campaign chairman, an entire paragraph of things is redacted.

So yeah, there's again they may the Trump campaign very well may have known who was behind the DNC leagues and stuff. There's a lot that's redacted there, Like who knows what's going on there? Right? Um, I mean with regards to Trump saying he doesn't know that it's Russia, like he's acknowledging that he got help from somebody. He just doesn't want it to be Russia for some reason. Yeah,

and he denied that. And he definitely had contact with the PETE like in colluded with the people who had the Russian hacked documents, but it wasn't directly with the Russian government. Yeah. The footnotes about Manafort in the in the in the in the mular report are pretty pretty great. Uh, this, this version of it appears like versions of this paragraph appear in multiple times. Manafort entered into the police pleagreement

with our office. We determined that he breached the agreement by being untruthful in proper sessions and before the grand jury. We have generally recounted his version of events in this report only when his statements are sufficiently corroborated to be trustworthy, to identify issues on which Manaforts untruthful responses made themselves be of evidentiary value, order to provide Manaforts explanations for certain events, even when we were unable to determine whether

that explanation was credible. So basically, Manafort lied so much that we couldn't include a lot of what he said because, like he there's just nothing you can take out of what he Yeah, he's a pro. He's a pro. You know, he's a great. Lot's amazing when you're so full of ship, like someone who's even trying to investig I honestly don't even know this motherfucker said so much bullshit. The former head of the FBI is like, he's so full of ship.

I'm almost impressed that he's still breathing. He did a Yoda voice for an entire session and completely fucked with me, asshole. You get it. You really get the feeling that Bob Mueller might hate Paul Manafford as much as I do. Oh, I'm sure. Uh, it's it's pretty great. Now. Much of the stuff that Trump said to Cohen about Wiki leaks is redacted due to ongoing investigations, which is, you know,

did to the stuff that Maniford said. Cohen and Trump both seems to have talked at length about their communications with Trump about Wiki leaks, but that ship is all black barred. So here's another heavily redacted paragraph. According to Gates, by the late summer two thousand and sixteen, the Trump campaign was planning a press strategy, a communications campaign, and messaging based on the possible release of Clinton emails by

Wiki leaks. Three or so sentences of redacted stuff, and then in the middle of a sentence, while Trump and Gates were driving to Laguardi Airport, fully redacted sentence comma. Shortly after the call, candidate Trump told Gates that more releases of damaging information will be coming. So again, might

be some direct ship. This might be some of that evidence he was said that that they had of direct cooperation, or it might be like I don't know, or yeah, or that's it went through too many channels to get there, or it's like, well, yeah, it was this person. Too much was deleted, you know. Yeah, But what Michael Cohen didn't He says like I'll come to the hill and I'll tell I'll tell you everything that I can tell you that what was probably redacted in there. Yeah yeah,

Mr Messy, Mr Messy. Well, I mean, look, maybe he can get a couple of years knocked off his sentence. Yeah, maybe maybe he can. Um, and maybe his daughter will show up to court with three crutches. Um. There's stuff about the Trump Tower in Moscow. UH. Most of it's not super interesting. It seems like it was pretty haphazardly pursued, although it is interesting how directly the Russians wanted to tie the Trump Tower deal to the election. That part

is interesting. The carrot was that. That's the carrot on the stick. I mean yeah, they seem to have tried to. UH. On November three, the day after the Trump Organization transmitted the letter of intent, Felix Sayer emailed Cohen suggesting that the Trump Moscow project could be used to increase candidate Trump's chances at being elected, writing, Buddy, our boy can become president of the USA, and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putin's team to buy in

on this. I will manage the process. Michael Putin gets on stage with Donald for ribbon cutting for Trump Moscow and don to owns the Republican nomination and possibly beats Hillary. And our boy is in. We will manage this process better than anyone. You and I will get Donald and Vladimir on a stage together very shortly that the game changer. Later that day, sat Up followed up. Donald doesn't stare down, He negotiates and understands the economic issues in. Putin only

wanted to deal with a pragmatic leader. A successful businessman is a good candidate for someone who knows how to negotiate business politics, whatever it is, all the same for someone who knows how to deal. So that's really direct offers from Felix Sayer. But Cohen does not appear to have said, yes, let's crime in those explicit words. But again there's like a bunch of offers directly from people

connected to Putin to help with the campaign. We can engineer this, Yeah, we can engineer this, because I mean it's you know, they if you invite it, if you make it clear that you don't know that this is wrong, they're just gonna keep making offers, keep going like it's it's just gonna be NonStop. It's like, you know, have a termites and not taking care of it. It's just gonna They're gonna keep feeding on on the rot until uh, your house falls down around you and your wife gets

mad at you. Yeah, and you're on the toilet, but luckily the house collapse neatly around you. Yeah, now in there an there, right. Guess I did have a shower collapse on me once, like the structure. Yeah, yeah, the roof of the shower fell on me while I was taking a shower. This isn't like a slum I used to live. I was about to say, like, knowing you,

you're like, well, it was the shower very late. It was great that we didn't have a roof in the shower for weeks, which was actually okay because it's a shower so when it's raining, it's not the biggest deal in the world. So it was bombay. How are you alive? Oh,

I'm a highlander. India just gained independence alright. So Cohen does not recall Trump talking directly about the potential impact the tower project would have have on the election, so he apparently he says he didn't bring that to Trump, But Cohen does recall conversations with Trump in which the candidates suggested that his campaign would be would be or that the tower would be an infomers or that they sorry.

Cohen recalled conversations with Trump and which Trump suggests that the camp the political campaign would act as an infomercial for his properties, which is some evidence to the idea that Trump never expected to win. Yeah, I fully believe. Yeah, who knows, but that does make me think that might have been part of it. Um. There was repeated talk of Cohen and candidate Trump visiting Russia, but the trip never panned out, possibly do in large part of the campaign.

Outside of the Tower deal, they were numerous attempts made by Russians to get Trump to attend or speak out the St. Petersburg economic form. He turned them all down due to time constraints. Joseph Miffsud is a Multese national and a professor at the London Academy of Diplomacy. He has connections to employees of the Internet Research Agency. Miff Sud met our old buddy George Papadopoulis in the spring of two thousand and sixteen, after Papadopolis had become a

policy advisor to the Trump campaign. The two discussed myth subs mith Sud's European and Russian connections and had a discussion about Russia. Mifsud offered to introduce Papadopolis to European leaders and leaders with contact in the Russian government UH and essentially, Papadophoulis went on to repeatedly try to set up a meeting between Donald Trump and the Russian government. UM. After these meetings with myth set, he continuously tried to

do that. It seems that for the most part, he was just trying to increase his value to the campaign by brokering a meeting between the two, like, and there's a lot of that in here, where like the most direct collusion is individual members of the campaign trying to get Trump in the room with somebody so that they can increase their value to the campaign. UM. Which is again, the only person associated with Trump during the election who actually was loyal to him was Michael Flynn. That that

is made repeatedly clear. Papadopolis is just trying to get a job after the election. Yeah, it's pretty pretty fascinating. The most damning evidence of this is Carter Page. He worked for the Trump campaign from January to September sixteen, becoming a foreign policy advisor in March. He had worked in Russia and lived in Russia before, and had direct

contact with Russian intelligence officers. Um. He continuously attempted to, uh, basically push the Russian government, lying on things like Ukraine and meetings with the Trump campaign and get the Trump team to adopt plans that would be like like reducing sanctions and stuff the Russian government would like. Again, not direct collusion, other than like you could say carter Page

was colluding, but like not the campaign itself colluding. Um. This is the guy that Republicans are like, they illegally looked into carter Page and they had no right to do that. Essentially, those PISO warrants, they were right. He was like overtly criming and working on clearly working on behalf of Russia. And the fact that intelligence looked into him doesn't seem that suspicious. No, it seems like you would be not doing your job if you didn't look

into carter Page. But that's what's so mind blowing about conservatives, Like they're actually not They're just ignoring the biggest factual thing to start with is that a foreign government tried to meddle in the way that we elect our president. Yeah, regardless of what side. Yeah, and I think that's they're they completely blow by that to then get it lost in the weeds of like, oh, Carter Page was really really unfairly targeted or whatever, rather than like, rather than saying,

oh my god, this is terrible. What We're not even able to operate on our own as a country to choose our leaders. That's weird. Yeah, Okay, So the Trump Tower meeting, the actual meeting itself does seem to have really been a nothing burger. Like the Russians, there was absolutely corrupt intent and the planning of it. Donald Trump wanted to get information on the clampaign directly from the Russian government, but none of that was really communicated during

the meeting. It was really just an attempt to get them to talk about the Magnetski actum And there's a lot of evidence that corroborates that they kind of got tricked into the meeting. Uh Kushner. We actually know that Kushner sent a message to Manifort during the meeting calling it a waste of time, and then message too of his assistants to try to get them uh to like call, so he had an excuse to leave. I love that. Our move, yeah, power move. But again there's Donald Trump

Junior might get in criminal trouble for this. This might be one of the things. There are fourteen ongoing investigations as a result of the Mulder Report. We only know what two of them are, and a lot of the stuff is redacted around the meaning that might be like some of it might be because Donald Trump Junior is being looked at for it. Um, there's other stuff in the report that makes it seems like Mueller is saying

he doesn't think that. Like it's like Donald Trump Junior was committing a crime but can't be charged for it because he didn't really know what he was doing and there was no corrupt intent, innocent by way of stupidity, by way of stupidity by just like sheer incompetence, which doesn't sound like my Donald Trump Junior. No, he was like father calls him like too dumb to live, and he is he you know when you see the pictures of him when he's when he's out in the woods hunting,

I just wish he never left the woods. You're like, there goes a dumb guy, and then you read about his actions and you're like, wow, Wow, it's even worse, Like how did he just not spontaneously catch fire? For how does not forgetting to keep breathing? Uh? The So the twelve investigations fourteen right, fourteen two that we know about twelve that we don't Yeah, quick maths for you, like who who are who is looking into those investigations?

Who's in charge of that? We don't know specifically. Essentially, what the Muller report says is that while they were doing their investigations, because they were not making prosecutorial judgments here, so this was not about them saying like this document was not about them saying like, we found crimes here, but when they found evidence of crimes, um that we're outside of the scope of the investigation or that like they weren't pursuing for whatever, they would refer to other

law enforcement agencies. And it happened fourteen times. So the Mueller investigation is over, but fourteen criminal investigations are ongoing elsewhere in the government as a result of things uncovered in the Muller investigation. We only know about two of them. Again, that would seem to be a big headline from this report that it kicked off four teen criminal investigations. But you know what, better than not that way, the right doesn't have time to try and figure out how to

smear that. Yeah, I think we're fine, because William Barr said so. It's honestly, like some of this is kind of the opposite of a Nixon, where like Nixon is this guy who's orchestrating a vast web of crimes and then a cover up. And Trump may not have committed crimes during the election, but everyone around him did, and then he committed crimes covering it up. That that kind of seems like a lot of what happened here is that everyone around him was a gross criminal and he

was a dumb guy. And then even though he wasn't at risk initially because like he wasn't initially under any investigation at all, and the only reason he personally became under investigation is because of the obstruction of justice, which is great presidenting. Yeah, isn't it funny? Like what if because it was around Michael Flynn, you know, and if that was the one guy who had his back, like to think like this romantic sense, Trump had Flynn's back

and then causes all this other ship to go down. Yeah, there's a little colonel of sweetness there, because you do get the feeling that Trump kind of likes guy. He's a good guy. I'm telling you he's a good guy. Yeah, I mean yeah, I catch him crying in the bathroom and the only human emotion at the center of this camp between Trump and Michael Flynn. That's a really good I think about romance novel cover Gone with the Flynn. Yeah,

what do you what do you call your listeners? I don't your little sons of bitches zekegang in bastard lovers. Somebody make that art, yeah, somebody, huh yeah, please, someone make that romance art. Somebody make Gone with the Flynn, because I really, I mean not that it's totally like that, but if there is a version where Trump kind of gets there is some murky stuff, but really he just like he's like, he finally, this is his first friend.

This is the first person he's ever done something selfless for. Right, he just thinks of all the times Michael Flinn like sincerely laughed at this and remembers everyone's fake laughter. We were going to go fishing in Montana well, and he is a general, so it does fall into the category of people Trump is capable of respecting. Yeah. I think that's the only category that might be the only military generals. No, you know what, he really really fucking likes the attorney

generals who committed uh crimes to protect their presidents. Oh yeah, that's true. He did. A big fan of a big fan of well, I don't know about crimes, A big fan of Bobby Kennedy and Eric Holder. Yeah. Yeah, so that he that the report repeats like four or five times that he's like, where's my Bobby Kennedy? Yeah, exactly. That he says some variation of like Bobby Kennedy protected

his brother, like Eric Holder protected Obama. Which also there's a part of it where I wonder if like he's kind of making uh like a like a brother's statement too, because he's like Kennedy hired his brother Eric or Obama hired Eric Holder, And it's like what are you what do you say? Are you get? Like you should have seen it. I was there. They're all brothers. Like the way he words it makes me think like there's a little bit of like a little on the way that

he calls Tim Tim Apple brothers. It's weird. Um, but yeah, so uh it should come as no surprise to that. Other than the heavily redacted Roger Stone, the most directly criminal member of the Trump campaign staff by far was Paul man Afford, who cannot avoid committing crimes. Um, Like, I think he would shut down if he had to stop. Um, there's a lot of yeah, this is this is where we get to the stuff about Constantine clinic. Uh, like them sharing polling data and whatnot. A cigar bar right day,

You know, it doesn't say it was that. That was another one. I remember Rick Gates and Manafort went with somebody at a cigar. I think Paul Manafort has spent most of his waking hours and cigar bars. Yeah. Yeah, And he's the most carcinogenic thing in he makes the cigars around him say yeah, like yeah. He keeps getting trouble in prisoner, like are you smoking in me? It's just like coming off his poise, Like I know, just s if he stops committing crimes, he would immediately catch cancer. First.

He's like the bus from speed but with I have to break sixty laws a minute. Something has to be poisonous about me. It's either my actions or the way my cells are dividing. Yeah. Um, so we already got over a lot of the Paul Manafort stuff. There's a great quote in here that I want to read. The Office reviewed numerous Maniford email and text communications and ask

President Trump about the plan in written questions. The investigation did not uncover evidence of Maniforts passing along information about Ukraine in peace plans to the candidate. This was the plan to give Russia control of Eastern Ukraine or anyone else in the campaign or administration. The Office was, however, not able to gain access to all of Manafort's electronic communications.

In some instances, messages were sent using encryption applications, and while Manafort denied that he spoke to members of the Trump campaign or the new administration about the peace plan, he lied to the Office and the Grand Jury about the peace plan and his meetings with Columnic, and his unreliability on this subject was among the reasons that the district District judge found that he had breached his cooperation agreement. So we don't know that Paul Manafort went to the

president and said, we we can work with Russia. They'll help us out if we give them eastern Ukraine. But Mully goes out of his way to say I can't say that that didn't happen because Paul Manafort lies about literally everything and deleted all of his communications with the campaign. And this goes back to the big question that I've always had that I think is one of the strangest details, is that, well, I'm sorry I got so much while

Russia is, you know, intervening on behalf of the Trump campaign. Uh, the Republican platform for at the two thousand sixteen R and C suddenly adjust to and to incorporate a very pro Russian stands. But that was something in the report the language from lethal aid too. I forget exactly what they used, but they like soften the language of the aid we were providing the Ukrainian government against the Russian backs.

But wasn't there something in the mother report that actually said that they couldn't find that strong connection between the platform change and some kind of direct like uh, stimulation prodding from the Russians. It doesn't say that it just like I think it's at least from my recollections, this didn't make it into my notes. But like they went into a lot of detail about how that changed, and they talk about maniforts communications with the campaign, but they

don't have a smoking gun that's definitely clear. Oh, just more. I guess the way they summed it up was there are several prominent contacts but were innocuous. Yeah, it's it's again one of those things where like a lot of stuff was deleted. We don't we don't know what was what was said there. But also it could have just been that Paul Manafort was pushing a pro Russian lying

on Ukraine, so was uh what's named Carter Page. So we're other people in contact with the campaign, and like it may have been those people repeatedly stating their opinions that caused some of the softening of the campaign, which isn't illegal. Yeah, no, I mean it just sounds like there's also they did a good job of having many ways to create pressure around it to guide people in a certain direction, and they did a lot of good

atmospheric pressure creating. So they're saying a lot of people provide like applied pressure and a lot of people were talking about it. They couldn't say that directly that there was a they could actually draw a line to that platform change in some kind of communication with somebody, aside from the fact that many people were kind of but innocuous is a very strong word, isn't It Doesn't that mean like not harmful or offensive? So I guess that

could just mean legally not something. Yeah they just said, I couldn't really else something on like even though it looks like that on their service, like oh suddenly there aren't like the platforms changing, but they just there weren't those stronger connections. Points to the nature of this whatever you want to call it, whether or not it's a conspiracy with with you know, Nixon, which is our other

political touchdown of this kind of corruption. It was very much emanating from the center, whereas the corruption here was all pushing towards Trump, who appears to have just been kind of focused on improving his brand and shouting at people and like, whereas the Russians would were reaching to everyone around him, and a lot of those individual people did stuff that was unethical or straight up criminal as

result of the Russians reaching out to them. Um, but it was not a coordinated effort between the campaign and Russia.

So rather than one gigantic crime, it was a million kind of tiny half crimes that create one big that created and wouldn't have created a crime in regards to Donald Trump, although again you know it's possible that he had some contact with Manafort, like which again the document, but like the crime was specifically started in large part when Trump was like started obstructing the hell out of some justice, which is why he wasn't under investigation until

that point. Um, because of his love for Michael Flynn, because of his his deep and honestly they're bros to hear that, like, especially when everyone else is such a snake. That's Michael and so ship out of luck to all of this too, Like he's fucked, He's got no money. Yeah, his like his son is like come on man, yeah, fucking dad. Like even Donald Trump's like he's a good man, you know, one of the great. You do hate Flynn

less than everyone else involved in this. And I say that as someone who deeply dislikes Michael Flynn, Right, that's what's so odd about it all. There's at least a kernel of like redeeming human loyalty and Michael Flynn he was so direct talking to Russian studios like I'll do it I'll do it. I'll do the work I gotta do. Yeah. Um, but he was also trying to get rich to so he he also was let off fairly easy for somebody

who was like directly undermining. Yeah, Like he's not going to get anything close to the worst penalty that comes out of this that will hopefully be a manafort and ought to be manifort. Yeah. And like the thing is like Flynn wasn't involved long enough to get at that point much priming done because there's mostly all of his interactions with the ambassadors and like being a Turkish agent and those other things that he's mostly in trouble for and being just a good solid bro, good solid bro,

you know. So uh, it's speaking of people who are caught committing crimes that are evident stuff in the Mular Report. Let's talk about Eric Prince, my favorite. So, Eric Prince testified to Congress that he met with Kirol Dmitri of only once during his trip to the Seychelles, where they talked about stuff they wanted to do. Um. So uh

he testified that I only met once. The Molar Report reveals that they met on two separate occasions, including one in which he attempted to get the Russian government to change the course of an aircraft carrier and send it away from Libya so that they wouldn't interfere with things that were going on in Libya, which is again evidence that Palm or that Erik Prince lied to Congress about the extent of his conversations with Karl dmitriev um, which

I think is pretty cool. Also that Steve Bannon seems to have been the guy orchestrating the whole meeting, and that Bannon seems to have been giving Eric princes marching orders. However, Uh, Prince deleted all of his text messages and so we don't know the exact extent of what Bannon was ordering

him to do or what they were asking to talk about. Um. So again, uh, probably something shady with Bannon there, um, although one part of it is that Bannon was just trying to get Prince something to do and didn't really care about what went on there, which is like, yeah, you go go meeting the say shehells with this guy. He's like Eric, Eric loves just getting on both loves and stuff, having James Bond meetings and stuff, say shells. That sounds like it sounds like a James Bond place.

Get him out there. Did you see that in Meddi Hassan interview? Oh god, yeah, that was so cringing. And he's like, so, what were you doing the stay show? I was like, ah, just meetings, meeting anyway. He liked the Congress. That's what you said. That's what you say. That's what you says. But I don't know what it's like. No, I'm reading the court transfer according to you. No, that's what you said transcript in what language? All right? Never mind?

So their Portarso reveals that Rick Garrison, a hedge fund manager and friend of Jared Kushner, also worked with Karl Dmitriev to put together a plan for better relations between Russia and the US. One of the results of this was the meeting after Trump became president between him and Vladimir Putin. Uh. They put together a list of like things to talk about during the meeting that apparently seems to have been used as like the minutes for that meeting.

Most of its pretty banal stuff like we're improving relations and like cooperation to fight terrorism and all that sort

of stuff. YadA YadA, YadA. Um. Garrison's interests seems to have disappeared after the financial deal he was working with Demitrio fell apart um, which again goes into the general pattern you see around like with the people who are around Trump, um, which is that, uh, everyone in Russia had a very specific set of goals with like in terms of lifting sanctions and in terms of Ukraine that we're trying to get people around Trump to push, whereas everyone on the Trump side of things was working on

their own personal goals, like like Garrison didn't give a shit about what was discussed in the meeting. He wanted to set the meeting up because it would get him in good with Demitriovs that they could make like a financial transaction essentially. Um. So everyone on the Trump side of things had their own, very like niche personal interests at heart, and Russia was pushing a couple of very specific lines. You know, we want sanctions lifted, we went

control of eastern Ukraine. Um, we don't want Hillary Clinton to be president. Like, Russia was very focused the whole time. Everyone around Trump, except for Michael Flynn, was focused on like their own personal careers. Yeah, and Russia's that's how Russia uses people as they find out what your motivation is, what your fears are, and then you know, find ways to make you do what they want. And if you have enough people who are just so self serving, it's

like it's like chumming the waters. And there's a hundred sharks tethered to Trump, so naturally that that's gonna d pull all these fucking creatures in one direction. A hundred sharks and one dolphin named Michael just gets. Also, one of Kushner's Russian contacts gave him a bag of dirt. I thought that was funny, like a literal bag, a literal sack of dirt from the town in Belarus where his family came from. Oh that's that's pretty fun He was like, here's dirt on see that Joe made. I

should have brought the emails. I also like that if the sac of dirt the guy who rises just a total scum lords like just anything like, yeah it is from your town man, Yeah, yeah, that's from where your family comes from. One there by on foot, like is there an old fantom bottle cap in? So the explanation in the Mullar report for why the June ninth Trump

Tower meeting probably wasn't a crime. It's really interesting to me. Quote, there are reasonable arguments that they offered information would constitute a thing of value within the meaning of these provisions, which is the provision that determines whether or not the law was broken and setting up this meeting. But the Office determined that the government would not be likely to

obtain and substain a conviction for two other reasons. First, the Office did not obtain a missible evidence likely to meet the government's burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these individuals acted willfully i e. With general knowledge of the illegality of their conduct. And second, the government would likely encounter difficulty improving beyond a reasonable doubt that the value of the promised information exceeded the threshold of

a criminal vi elation. How do you monetarily attach the value to Hillary damaging internation on Hillary Clinton? That's why we don't know if Donald Trump Junior and Kushner committed a crime and organizing emmy. I would say, just if someone told me you'll have a I have a hard drive full of hacked Hillary Clinton emails, I would imagine that the price tag just to start off, you'd be like ten grand Tim Grant at the low end. The low end, I mean, I know people who do dift

for less. But like I think, all right, well, I guess realistically, if I wonder if there is a way you could, it's too abstract a trends. And also you don't so you're going blind. You don't know what's on the emails, what's in the emails. The look, bro, I got these emails, any one them or not? And Grant it could because it could just all be Hillary Clinton talking about her charity if prints for me. Yeah, that's what a lot of her emails were. It is Prince Princess,

I don't like to read on my computer screen. Yeah, she's an old lady who doesn't like computers. Um. So, the Mueller report states, after that paragraph I just read, the Special Counsel's office decided not to charge Donald Trump Junior or other campaign officials for the meeting. But then the next three pages are redacted due to an ongoing investigation, which again seems to suggest that someone else might charge Trump Junior for what he was doing in that meeting

at some other point. Um, because the investigation is still ongoing. Um. The two of like of the fourteen allegations of potential crimes that the Mueller investigation headed off handed off to other departments. The only two we know of are Michael Cohen and Greg Craig, who was a former Obama Council like White House counsel to President Obama. But Craig was

not charged for his work during the Obama administration. He was charged for acting as an unregistered agent of the Ukrainian government in the past before he came to work for Obama. Um. So those are the two of the fourteen that we know what they are. And this is the end of part one because Part two of the Mueller Report is what comes up next. And so now we're going to talk about struct in prove it. But Sophie says it's time for an ad break. Oh my god.

So first off, Sophie, Yeah, whoa, I threw the bagels. Robert just threw Sophie across the room and into the wall. Holy ship. Stop calling her a bag of bagels. Yeah, that's that's pretty pretty hard, pretty harsh. Um. Yeah, man, you're gonna you're moving product in this episode. I'll tell you what I am moving product as well as tossing bagels. Um. Buy things. Here we go, guys, we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back. And we're back

and we're back. Sorry, Jacket is really trying to take over this podcast. Where can people find you? That later? But first, Robert, what's something from your search history? Good question? What is instruction of justice one of the many things Donald Trump and I actually have in common? We have a surprising number of things a common. Yeah, he and I had the same literary agent one point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Trump's literary Yeah, he's thanked in one of his books,

Bird Bird and Waxman. Well, like, no, it's just what happens. You work, you work with whoever. He wasn't president yet, you have to say that. Uh? And then would he got three? Wrote songs about our relatives. Yeah, he wrote a song about what do You Got Through? Wrote a song about how Donald Trump's dad refused to uh let black people stay in his buildings? Uh? And what do You Got Through? Wrote a song about my relative, pretty boy Floyd, for beating a cop to death with a

log chain for cursing at his wife. Wow, yeah, that's pretty cool man. Pretty boy grabbed a log chain and the deputy grabbed his gun, and in the fight that followed, he laid that deputy down dozens sort of a cross rhyme. But uh yeah, hey, look when you're pretty clear, abou a guy who beats somebody to chain the rhyme? Um, I like your uncle's story better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shouldn't be cursed in front of pretty boy Flood's wife. I've

always said that you have now. The second part of the Mueller report opens by noting that it is specifically not ruling on whether or not there was obstruction of justice because to do so, among other things, undermine the president's ability to be president. Uh and also in general, because the Special Council can't make rulings on such things because it would be like a separation of powers. Thing.

One thing I've seen people say is that this is essentially Mueller's argument as to why Congress should impeach Um. And that's a pretty fair summation of things, because Mueller is essentially saying, I can't declare the president guilty of a crime. And there's a number of reasons that are more complicated that I that I I'm just not competent to get into um. But it's not my job it's not the special counsel's job, it's not the FBI's job. Congress needs to look like, make a decision. And here's

my case for why. There's a lot of evidence of obstruction of justice. And I do think that is the fairest way to sum up Part two as saying, here's a bunch of evidence the president obstructed justice. Congress, do your job. I'm handcuffed, so just you know, but here's this whole instruction manual. Yeah. I've seen some articles from more right wing publications where they're like Mueller dropped the

ball by not saying that Trump didn't obstruct justice. He should have like made a decision one way or the other. It's about two hundred pages of that are basically like, I can't say that he committed obstruction of justice, but if I could say that, I would. But here's a description of him obstructing justice. Here's about how he obstructed justice. Huh yeah, alright, let's say murder. But he said beat a guide to death with a change change, So all right, well, yeah,

maybe it's not a murder. I'm gonna quote from the Mueller report here. Quote. Uh. First, traditional prosecution or delineation decision entails a binary determination to initiate or decline a prosecution, but we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment.

The Office of Legal Counsel has issued an opinion finding that the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting president would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions and violation of the constitutional separation of powers. So again, that's Mueller's explanation for why he's not going to say whether or not a crime was committed. Um, But he does go out of his way to say that the president can still be charged

with the crime after leaving office and dicted after leaving office. Uh. And then he notes this, if we had confidence, after a thorough investigation of the facts, that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state, which is the second time in the report that he says accordingly, Well, this report does not concluded the president committed a crime. It also does not exonerate him. Repeated word for word on three different times, says this does

not exonerate the president. So that's cool. It's like he's trying to tell us, the evidence we obtained about the president's actions and intent presents difficult issues that present prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. The evidence we found of crimes makes it difficult to say that there were no crimes. Yeah, uh cool, so yeah,

so I mean, you know, Congress can look into it. Yeah, I mean, that's that's what's so also frustrating about just how conservative media chooses to just ignore these things for like, just I think all they can do is point to the fact that Donald Trump isn't in jail and saying like, well,

if he did something wrong, be in jail. So even though there's all this stuff like no, but you're also ignoring the fact that I'd imagine if Robert Mueller was brought up to the Hill and asked, like, if this were a private citizen, does this look like regular straight up crime to you, Like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yes, it's crime. Yeah. The Mueller investigation makes a lot, says a lot about the anger President Trump felt when Jeff

Sessions recused himself. Talks repeatedly about his multiple, multiple constant attempts to get Jeff Sessions to unrecuse himself. A word. I don't know if existed. It's always in quotation marks, and I'm not I think he might have coined that to which it's a word. Now, well, why can't why can't my dog undie daddy? Yeah, he's never had a dog, Yeah,

I know, but I had yeah yea. Uh. Now, the President's remediately made all of his problems worse by trying to co worse people into saying he wasn't in trouble. I'm gonna read this next paragraph, which is about sort of him trying to get Comy to to uh go after or to stop going after Michael Flynn because there's

some there's some beautiful shade in there. In the following days, the President reached out to the Director of National Intelligence and the leaders of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency to ask them what they could do to publicly dispel the suggestion that the President had any connection to the Russian election effort or Russian election interference effort.

The President also twice called Comy directly, notwithstanding guidance from again his lawyer to avoid direct contacts with the Department of Justice. It goes out of its way to be like the law President's lawyer said don't do this, and the president did this. Um. There's a lot of fascinating information and here about how Trump manages a team during a crisis. UM. And honestly, this chunk of the report

is worth everyone reading in full. I am going to read another quote about a meeting he had with Lewandowski. The president asked about the status of his message for Sessions to limit the Special Council investigation to future election interference. Lewandowski, Yeah, he wanted to limit the Muller investigation to future Russian in Yeah, exactly. I just saw this movie with Vandam Time Cop. Yeah, like any Time Cop it to the

next lection. But that doesn't make I don't think was that known that he was trying to get it to be. I think this might be one of the new things that we learned in the investigation. What does that even mean that he wanted to me investigate if they can do it in the future. Don't talk about what they did in just talk about what they might do in very specific request for someone who committed no crist That's one of the things that makes me think he did

commit direct crimes. I'm kind of on the fence about like whether or not his behavior inten prior to the obstruction of justice was like direct cooperation because it's kind of hard to say, um, or maybe they don't realize that this is something that was happening way four like like well five years. We might want to look at making your president. Yeah, like it's entirely possible, Like I I just don't I just don't know. But it's none of us, none of us. It seems like, just just

don't know. Yeah, uh so, um, yeah, this is great. Further attempts to have the Attorney General take control of the investigation. Uh In early summer two seventeen, the President called Sessions at home to again ask him to reverse his recusal from the Russia investigation. Sessions did not reverse his recusal. In October two seventeen, the President met privately with Sessions in the Oval Office and asked him to

take a look at investigating Clinton. In December two seventeen, shortly after Flynn pleaded guilty pursuant to a cooperation agreement, the President met with Sessions in the Oval Office and suggested, according to notes taken by a senior advisor, that if Sessions unrecused and took back supervision of the Russia investigation. He would be a quote hero, the President told Sessions, I'm not going to do anything or direct you to

do anything. I just want to be treated fairly. In response, Sessions volunteered that he had never seen anything improper on the campaign and told the president there was a whole new leadership team in place. He did not unrecuse, So

it's like four times just there. The Special Council notes that it did not make a traditional prosecutorial judgment again about the President's behavior, but states that the evidence they found supports a few general statements about him, most of which boiled down to he may have obstructed justice, but it's hard to say since the evidence suggests he doesn't commit he didn't commit the underlying crime, but actively, you know, did act to damage the investigation. UM. So yeah, that

that that's repeatedly stated. Um. The President ultimately refuses to be interviewed as the result of investigation, but provided some written answers. H Muller gives an explanation as to why the or he did not choose the subpoena the president to force the investigation. Ultimately, while we believe that we had the authority and legal justification to issue a grand jury subpoena to obtain the president's testimony. We chose not

to do so. We made that decision and view of the substantial delay that such an investigative step likely produced at a late stage in our investigation. We also assessed that, based on the significant body of evidence we had already obtained on the president's actions and his public and private statements describing or explaining those actions, we had sufficient evidence to understand relevant events and to make assessments without the

president's testimony. Yeah. Uh, there's a lot of really heavily redacted paragraphs in this part, the most interesting of which is this one. Uh. Within the Trump campaign aids, this is about the DNC hacks. AIDS reacted with enthusiasm to reports of the hacks. Sentence redacted. Discussed with campaign officials that Wiki Leaks would release the hacked material. Some witnesses said that Trump himself discussed the possibility of upcoming release

releases a couple of words redacted. Michael Cohen, then executive vice president of the Trump Organization and special counsel to Trump, recalled hearing two or three sentences redacted. Cohen recalled the Trump responded, oh good, all right, and sentence redacted. Manafort said that shortly after Wiki leaks July two thousand sixteen release of hacked documents, he spoke to Trump. Sentence redacted, man fort and these are all redacted due to an

ongoing case. Manafort recalled that Trump responded that Manafort should sentence redacted, keep Trump updated. Deputy campaign manager Rick Gates said that Manafort was getting pressure from a couple of words redacted information, and that Manafort instructed Gates a couple of words redacted, uh status updates on upcoming releases. Around the same time, Gates was with Trump on a trip

to an airport. Sentence redacted, and shortly after the call ended, Trump told Gates that more releases of damaging information will be coming. Sentence redacted. We're discussed within the campaign and the summer of two sixteen, the campaign was planning a communication strategy based on the possible release of Clinton emails by Wiki leagues. There it seems to be that sounds

like cooperating crime happening. Just the number of redactions. Yeah, that's some That's the sketchiest paragraph in the whole thing. Um At least that to my eyes, we should make a mad Libsler report. We should make a mad Lives of the Muller Report. I'm just gonna use the word but yeah, but far yeah, most fartu Gate was Gates with was with Trump on a trip to the airport. Far far far far far fart fart, and shortly after the call end, Trump told Gates that more releases of

damaging information will be coming. Fart fart, fart, fart. We're disgusted. Yeah that works, no or just but no, just make a sentence. So it's the most damning because he speaks knowledgeably about what wicked Leaks is about to do, basically like yeah, right, yeah, yeah, just like we talked about. Yeah, oh good, this this thing that I know is happening. Good. So Paul came through on that. Yeah, good man of

Fort um So. My favorite story, and maybe the whole Molder report, is the tale of Donald Trump's lunch with Chris Christie after firing Flynn. Now, this is on February four, seventeen, the day after Flynn resigned. Um So, Trump had lunch at the White House with just Chris Christie. Quote. According to Christie, at one point During the lunch, the President said, now that we fired Flynn, the Russia thing is over.

Christie laughed and responded, no way. He said, this Russia thing is far from over, and we'll be here on Valentine's Day two thousand to eighteen talking about this. The President said, what do you mean Flynn met with the Russians? That was the problem. I fired Flynn. It's over, Christie recalled, responding that based on his experience both as a prosecutor and as someone who had been investigated, firing Flynn would

not end the investigation. Christie said there was no way to make the investigation shorter, but a lot of ways to make it longer. The President asked Christie what he meant, and Christie told the President not to talk about the investigation, even if he was frustrated with at his time. At times, Christie told the President that he would never be able to get rid of Flynn like gum on the bottom

of your shoe. Towards the end of the lunch, the President brought up Comy and asked if Christie was still friendly with him. Christie said he what was. The President told Christie to call Comy and tell him that the President really likes him, tell him he's part of the team. At the end of the lunch, the President repeated his request that Christie reach out to Comy. Christie had no intention of complying with the President's request that he contact Comy.

He thought that the president's request was nonsensical and Christie did not want to put Comy in the position of having to receive such a phone call. This is one of like five times the President tells someone to talk to Comy or someone else to try to get them to do something, and that person just doesn't do it. It's like yeah, okay, And just like again, it's like with McGann when he's like fire Muller and he's like, I'm packing my ship. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm gonen yea.

This is nuts, like really previous, but I'm not doing this crazy ship. And I just love that. Like Christie specifically tells Mueller, I've been investigated for crimes, so I know what to do and it's nothing. Also, I just love that his Also Trump is so confused because he's used to this corporate thing. He's like, what Michael was stealing? Fire him? Okay, good, that's that's delt yeah, like and

now it's like, oh, it's not over. What do you mean, Yeah, I mean his Christie's advice is good, Like, you can't you can't shorten the investigation, but you can make it longer by committing crimes, So don't do. And then again, who knows. Without it would have been like if you know, if Jared Kushner wasn't in the way of Chris Christie actually joining the White House Chris, it definitely seems like Trump would have handled all of this better if Christie

had been closer to you know. When you also think about it, he doesn't listen to anyone, so it could have been a holographic ghost of his father. Christie McGann might have taken the same lift away from the White House, like you know. So the report heavily corroborates Comy's claims that Trump cleared out the room to speak to just him about letting Flynn go, a decision that could definitely be seen as a serious attempt to influence the investigation.

Um he talks to other people besides Coney. That also lists Comey's notes and stuff. It definitely seems like based on everything the the Mueller investigation dug up. Comey's recitation of events while he was head of the FBI is very credible, um the uh Mueller investigation and seems to be concluding that, like what Trump did was obstruction in this specific instance, although again it doesn't call it that

because it's not going to make a prosecutorial judgment. Um. Well, the president said he hoped Comy could let let Flynn go, rather than affirmatively directing him to do so. The circumstances of the conversation show that the President was asking Comey to close the s v I S investigation into flint

like and so it began pretty clear. Yeah, Trump repeatedly whined about the investigation during intelligence briefings that comes up that like he would be talking about like isis and something, and he'd start whining about the investigation, and the briefers didn't know what to do about it, Like they were like, I'm not going to comment, I don't really okay, right, Yeah, you have like someone from like this CI what about

this Russia bullshit? Huh. Yeah. He did repeatedly complain that the Muller investigation was making his job as president impossible. But it seems like everyone he worked with besides him was trying to move on and just do their jobs, and he was the one that couldn't get rid over it, which I find interesting. Um, if he had been able to, most of the bad behavior in this section would not

have occurred. Uh yeah. On at least two occasions, the President began the Presidential Daily Briefings by student that there was no collusion with Russia and he hoped to press statement to that effect could be issued. Pompeo, head of the CIA, recalled that the President vented about the investigation of multiple occasions, complaining that there was no evidence against him and that nobody would publicly defend him. Um. Yeah,

that's it's it's pretty wild. Michael Flynn would have defended me. Yeah, he sure what a buddy, He sure would have um his. Trump repeatedly badgered Comy in other Department of Justice officials to announce that he was not under investigation. They tried to explain to him why this was a bad idea,

but he did not listen to them. Trump basically used compe firing Comey as an excuse to note that on three occasions, the FBI director told him that the President was not under investigations, Like it seems like his primary reason in firing Comy is that Comey wouldn't state publicly that he had told the President that he wasn't under investigation, and Trump used the firing memo as an excuse to say that, Um, yeah, it's it's it's pretty pretty wild.

The Molar report definitely seems to be concluding that the firing of James Comy may have also been an example of obstruction of justice. Um, so that's pretty cool. What versions are? What version of the report are you looking at? Do you do you fucking think we'll believe? Now? What version? Because we know for a fact Trump is not reading the report? No, good god, no, no, it's a thing. We're probably not reading an entire article about the report.

Um there's a chance he might be might have listened to bars entire summary, but like, what, what do you think he knows? Because it does seem like across the days after the day after the report, he started calling some of the details bullshit, Like I just wonder, we've never had a president who can't or won't read before? What? How how is the information coming to him? Like how

is he digesting? Is it just foxes? It seems like he mostly gets it from Fox News, right, That's been the past, But this is like such a specific doc he meant, and it's so dense that like, I just I'm curious like that. I mean, I'm sure there'll be another book where someone talks about how they had to like dumb it, like cliffs notes it or just highlight.

This doesn't talk about how Trump gets his information, but it does talk about how relentlessly when he's interested in something, like he was incapable of not asking everyone around him to try to get Comy to drop the Flynn thing when that was his focus. And then like when he wanted someone to say that he wasn't being investigated, he brought that up to every single person he talked to, because again, he's kind of incapable of listening to people,

especially when there's something on his mind like this. Right, I bet there's a lot of conversations happening where he implies that he's read the Muller Report, but everybody knows he hasn't. He's like, what do you think of it? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, remember page I remember that part that was right? I mean, total bullshit. Um. So the fact that like the so the report notes that the firing of James Comey would was never like going to close the investigation and could

not have, which is a mark in the president's defense. Um, it seems accurate to say that Trump's intent in firing Comey was to punish him for not openly stating that he Trump was not being investigated more than it was an attempt to disrupt the investigation. That seems to be the conclusion that the Mulder report makes. Uh. The analysis of whether or not the President obstructed justice gets really

interesting after this point in the report. It notes that his talk to Comy about the loyalty pledge, if you'll remember his asking Comy to be loyal does support the fact that he was trying to put the kabosh on the investigation. Um. But then it basically says that Mueller, Yeah, I'm just gonna read this quote because it's pretty remarkable.

As described in Volume one, the evidence uncovered in the investigation did not establish that the President or those close to him were involved in the charge Russian computer hacking or active measure conspiracies, or that the President otherwise had

an unlawful relationship with any Russian official. But the evidence does indicate that a thorough fd FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the president personally that the President could have understood to be crimes or that would

give rise to personal and political concerns. So he's saying that, like, we didn't find any evidence of a conspiracy with Russia, but the evidence suggests that the reason the president was so worried about the investigation is because he committed a bunch of other crimes that he was worried wouldn't be revealed. That's Comey stating that as directly as he can. Um. Mueller, Mueller staging that. Sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah, just kind of

circling back on a detail that we talked about earlier. Um, just in terms of like Trump and the people around him having direct Russian ties. Somebody was pointing out, and this is a detail that I hadn't really heard. I think it was Andrew Sullivan was pointing out in the Intelligence or the New York Magazine thing that in the days immediately after the election, uh Putin and a lot of Russian officials were scrambling to try and get access

to Trump. So that's kind of the best argument I've seen for why like the at least the idea that like there was some deep, deeply tied in uh conspiracy like probably isn't true like all the unless it's tempening through people around him right there. Yeah, yeah, because I don't. Yeah, it's hard to be like Trump fully knows the full extent of everything, knows like just enough to be to know how to move, but not enough to seem completely

on the hook for anything. And I think that some of that might be the Russian government giving him too much credit, because knowing what we know now, if I was the Russian government, I was trying to influence him, I would just have I would just reach out to someone on Fox News and get them to talk about the president should let Russia have Eastern Ukraine? Like that,

you don't even you don't need to talk. He doesn't listen to people who talked to Like I'm gonna guess that's what Putin learned in their meeting, is that like, oh my god, this guy can't pay attention. Hear me, He's just talking about Comey, who the fund is? James to me, like a hand of that? Would you say that the investigation is not into me? Like right? Yeah?

Um so uh it talks about for a while about how he repeatedly tried to file the special counsel McGan after McGann refused to uh talk about how they were conflicts of interest between Robert Mullen. What Trump thought was a conflict of interest is that Mueller had interviewed for the head of the FBI job and not gotten it, which, like everyone else was like, that's not conflict of interest. And he was like, you got to tell people about this conflict of interest. But it wasn't even that, but

it's not. It was the golf course thing too. Oh wait, wait, wait, wait where he was like, Robert Muller tried to get into one of the golf courses. Oh that's not in here. Wait is that another one of them? Or maybe I missed it, look at but I'm one of the other things that was he was pointing to was like he's mad that he he tried to get into like a club and didn't or some other it was something. It was like, what you're also putting that layer on top of it. Beautiful that that is a very Trump story,

Trump March three, But we have conflicts. I have a nasty business transaction with Robert Mueller a number of years ago, I said, why isn't that mentioned? He wants the job as FBI director. I mean, these are things that are out there, they know it. Why isn't that and I didn't give it to him? Why isn't that mentioned? Wow? But what about the membership fees for Trump National Golf Course. I think that's the nasty business transaction that he's talking about.

Bob Mueller couldn't golf at a mediocre golf course, or it was it was a dispute over fees or okay, so it wasn't so okay. Robert Mueller's family was members of the Trump National Golf Course. He said, we actually we're not even using the membership anymore. We'd like to cancel it. Can we get some more membership fees back? And they did, right, okay, but that was like pretty damning, Well this changes everything. Yeah, let's just throw this, you

know what. I'm sorry we wasted everyone's time listening. I believe that a man was shot, who was shot in combat for his country, would would because because golf club membership, of golf club membership, he recouped uh. And that I do think that is more than anything a window into trump psyche, because that is totally something he would do. Trump would burn this country down if someone somebody oft

refund for yeah, oh yeah yeah. Now you probably have run into some of some quotes from pieces of Trump's reaction when he was first told about the special counsel investigation. I want to read that little bit in full because it's it's good for the soul, and we could all use that. At this point, the President learned of the special council's appointment from Sessions, who was with the President, Hunt, and McGann during conducting interviews for a new FBI director.

Session stepped out of the Oval office to take a call from Rosenstein, who told him about the special council appointment, and Sessions then returned to inform the President of the news. According to notes written by Hunt, when Sessions told the President that a special council had been appointed, the President slumped back in his chair and said, oh my god, this is terrible. This is the end of my presidency.

I'm fucked. The President became angry and lambastad the Attorney General for his decision to not recuse the investigation, stating, how could you let this happen? Jeff The President said the position of attorney General was his most important appointment and that Sessions had let him down, contrasting him to Eric Holder and Robert Kennedy. Sessions recalled that the President said to him, you were supposed to protect me, or

words to that effect. The President returned to the consequences of the appointment and said, everyone tells me that if you get one of these independent councils that ruins your presidency, it takes years and I won't people to do anything. This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. The President told Sessions he should resign as attorney General. Sessions agreed to resubmit his resignation and left the Oval office.

Hicks saw the President shortly after Sessions departed and described the President as being extremely upset by the special counsel's appointment. Hicks said that she had only seen the President like that one other time, when the Access Hollywood tape came out during the campaign. H chefs, Ah, it was it. Uh, Eric Ericsson maybe was the one. So I'm trying to think of the person. Oh no, it was someone from Gateway Pundit. I think Jim Hofft who said that that line.

The reason why the president acted responded, I'm fucked, it's over is because he knew that the deep state had now initiated a coup against him, and that was the reason. Yeah, m cool. It's just funny to see like the ways there like journalists on the right or trying to answer a rationalizing Oh yeah, it wasn't because he did anything wrong, because he knew the deep state was gonna suck and the whole thing. So yeah, yeah, there's also just such child like little child vibes to it. This is the

worst thing that's ever happened to me. And there's a lot about this that led to like you just hear how much how little trust everyone around the president has for him. Um So, Sessions gave in his resignation papers, but Trump ultimately didn't ask him to resign yet, but the President kept his resignation left letter, and then Rerines previous was like, Jeff, you gotta get that letter back. It's going to be The words he used was a shot caller on the Department of Justice's neck, Like you

have to take that back. Um So, the president tried to argue that Mueller interviewing for the Yeah, yeah, So the President tried to argue that Muller interviewing for the director of the FBI job was a conflict of interest. Steve Bannon told him that was ridiculous and petty. Like Steve Bannon called it petty because at least he's somewhat in touch with the version of reality. Some people are engaged. You have to be to be a good propagandists have

to at least know what the world is. You'll be like, yeah, man, I'm telling you, cupcakes are making our kids all freaky and ship. Like what it's speaking of cupcakes making our kids all freaky and ship. We have some products now for freak cakes. Freak cakes, they make your kids unhealthy and think for themselves by umb. So, if you how much money are we getting from the freak cakes people, usually high number. First, your diamond encrusted grill says freak

cakes on it. Well, let me tell you about freak cakes, miles, the only cakes that clean your teeth. Now, we're getting a lot of pushback from big Dental here every morning, dentists outside my door, picketing, fighting, fire bombing my windows. That's why I've got those diamond girls on the Wendows, so funk with big dentistry and buy some freak cakes. We're back. Speaking of us being back, here's more of

the Mueller report. Are you dead inside yet? Back? Because Trump got stabbed in the back by the Deep States? Sure did? Nice Jack, Jack returning on this round. I'm going to robot everything you say. Oh boy, well, you're gonna have to about everything Mueller says, because you got a we got a big mule quote here good, I'm ready. So the President repeatedly hammered McGann, his lawyer, to try and get to try to get McGann to call the Department of Justice and tell Rod Rosenstein that Mueller had

to go. Uh. This next paragraph paints a very vivid picture of what it's like working for Donald Trump. When the President called McGann a second time to follow up on the order to call the Department of Justice, McGan recalled that the President was more direct, saying something like cal Rod, tell Rod that Mueller his conflicts and can't be the special counsel. McGan recalled the President telling him Mueller has got to go. Call me back when you

do it. McGann understood the President to be saying that the special counselor had to be removed by Rosenstein. To end the conversation with the president, McGan left the president with the impression that McGann would call Rosenstein. McGan recalled that he had already said no to the President's request, that he was worn down, so he just wanted to

get off the phone. McGann recalled feeling trapped because he did not plan to follow the president's directive, but did not know what he would say the next time the President called. McGann did decided he had to resign. He called his personal lawyer and then called a chief of staff and Annie Donaldson, informer of his decision. He then drove to the office to pack his belonging to submit

his resignation letter. Donaldson recalled him again, told her the President had called and demanded he contact the Apartment of Justice, and that the President wanted him to do something that McGann did not want to do. McGann told Donaldson that the President had called at least twice and and asked in one of the calls, have you done it just

real quick? Um? Because I have I listened to the slow burn about the Clinton Lewinsky affair and the just the Watergate investigation and the level of intrigue and just Clinton doing bad things is so minimal that and the Republicans freaked out about that for ten years in a row basically and still are and still are freaking out about it. And they have the balls to, uh say that call our interest in this guy who can't who can't stop committing crimes. They have the balls to call

that Trump derangement syndrome. I just wanted to put perspective stop when crimes, when his employees who have a vested interest in his political success, repeatedly say please, don't do anything, You're not in danger, and then he endangers himself demanding that they commit crimes, calling them at all hours of the day, call Rode and say Mueller has to go. He has conflicts, those conflicts again just like that, Yeah, what was the problem. That's not how it works. What

do you mean? So McGann later told rens Prebus when he was still trying to resign, that the President had asked him to do crazy ship and seems to have been on the verge of resigning, but eventually did not in the President eventually dropped the issue because again he has the attention span of a fourteen year old um

as to whether or not this is collusion. While the President claimed he was just asking McGann to bring up Mueller's possible conflicts of interest to the Department of Justice, but and then the mole Report notes that some evidence does support this, but quote substantial evidence, however, supports the conclusion that the President went further and in fact directed McGann to call Rosenstein to have the special counsel removed,

which again his substruction of justice. The report notes that the president's conversations with numerous other people during this period, including Prebus and Chris Christie, showed that he had an intense desire to, in the president's words, knock out Mueller. Kind of fun to think of mullotyping all that out now. The evidence shows that the President was not just seeking an examination of whether conflicts of interest existed, but was instead looking to use asserted conflicts as a way to

termine the special counsel. So again, the conclusion by the Muller Report is basically, the president committed obstruction of justice, but we we can't say that because that's not in the scope of this thing. Here's this outlining the obstruction he committed. Here is a detailed description of him committing obstruction of justice. Yeah. Also, that's a good it's a good snapshot of what life is like for people who work for Donald Trump. It's also a good testimony to

how to deal with a shitty boss. Just say yeah, yeah, sure boss, and then don't do the terrible idea he's telling you to do. That's that almost always works. Oh yeah, it every day. Fuck you, Miles, Yes, sir, I'm going to get right away. Yeah. And and speaking of that, Jack, there's another great detail of that later in the report

on again. This is like a December of two thousand seventeen, after Flynn pleaded guilty of him hammering Jeff Sessions again to unrecus According to contemporaneous notes taken by Port, the President said, I don't know if you could unrecuse yourself, you'd be a hero. Not telling you to do anything. Dershowitz says, potus can get involved, can order a g to investigate. I don't want to get involved. I'm not going to get involved. I'm not going to do anything

or to reckue to do anything. I just want to be treated fairly. Huh. Yeah, Now, the report does seem to suggest that Trump's constant attempts to get Sessions to unrecuse himself were, in fact acts of obstruction, do they And they use quotes there too when they sound recused in that instance, let me see yes, okay, yeah, so I like so that really is like a shade move. Yeah, that's a shade move. This is not a word in

Trump vocabu you will unrecuse yourself. Yeah, So the report does seem to conclude that Trump's constant attempts to get Session to unrecuse we're in fact acts of obstruction. Uh, Like, I've seen the quotes every time, every time, every time recused himself. He seems very irritated by this point. There is Yeah, he's one. Just is fun this guy. He really frustrated at the President and at Paul Manafort. Yeah yeah, well I hear he's reading the report for audible. So

that's gonna be Roberta. We actually are having handling on behind the bastards soon. But we're not We're not talking about Trump. We're gonna we're gonna, we're gonna finally talking about how he nailed the NFL. We're gonna finally get that Mao episode out. Bob Mueller seemed like the guest for that. He's actually, if you heard his type five down at the Comedy Factory, really solid. I was surprised

he was doing so well with the prop bits. But yeah, he's actually, yeah, he's little racy, but uh yeah, right, yeah, really racy. It's like, yeah, well, because he says racy and then pulls out an inflatable race car. Yeah, yeah he does. It's a good joke. It's a good it's a good it's an afro on it. Yeah, that's what. The report does seem to suggest that Trump's constant attempts to get Sessions to unrecuse himself were in act acts

of obstruction. Quote. There's evidence that at least one purpose of the President's conduct towards Sessions was to have Sessions assume control of the Russia investigation and supervise it in a way that would restrict its scope. A reasonable inference from those statements and the president's actions is that the president believe that an unrefused Attorney General would pay a protective role and could shield the president from the ongoing

Russia investigation. Um. Yeah, uh, it's constantly interesting to me, how little loyalty and like is shown by the people who are close to President Trump. Um. Yeah, uh. He asked Rob Porter, the White House staff secretary, to deliver the president's demands to Rigan that he don McGan that he denied publicly the President had ever tried to fall

fire Mueller. Um. McGann dismissed that like the threat that he would be fired if he didn't deliver this by saying that it would look bad for the president if he did this, and McGann turn him down again. So again he keeps ordering McGan to break the law, and Began doesn't break the law. And that's part of why the case against him as an clearer because people didn't

listen when he repeat, these are lawyers. Yeah. McGann acknowledged that he had not told the president directly that he planned to resign, but said that the story was otherwise accurate. The President asked McGann, did I say the word fire? McGan responded, what you said is Calrod Rosenstein tell Rod that Mueller has conflicts and can't be the special counsel.

The President responded, I never said that. The President said that he merely wanted Began to raise the conflicts issue with Rosenstein and leave it to him to decide what to do. McGann told the President that he did not understand the conversations that way and instead of heard call Rod there are conflicts. Mueller has to go. The President asked McGan whether or not he would do a correction, and McGann said, no, do do a correction. Yeah, do

a correction. I'm sorry, let me do a correction. Really great, And this is all about, by the way, a New York Times report stating that the President had tried to get McGann to fire Mueller, which Trump claimed publicly was all lies by the bias New York Times, and McGann himself was like, no, they got it right. No. That's a funny thing too, is so many journalists are vindicated to from this report to when things came out there like oh, this is all unfounded, blah blah, and a

lot of this stuff is now in here. That's why the Glenn Greenwald thing of him being like, see it was all bullshit is like, wait, did you even read the report, Because like, all this stuff you've been like saying was bullshit and overblown has been born out in this report because Glenn Greenwald was not going to do what I did and spend the entire all of yesterday in a dank room drinking King Scotch and reading the

Mueller Report. Because Glenn Greenwald lives on a mansion above a Brazilian favela filled with dogs, and it's better things to do than read this report. Is that where he lives? Yeah? Yeah, he makes like a million dollars a year. Yeah, he lives in Brazil, crushing it. I didn't know that with his beautiful husband. He's one of the best journalists on the planet. Oh God, bless you, God bless him. And he lives above the favelas and where like Rio or something.

I think it's in or might piece up all I don't off the top of my head. Yeah, yeah, but it seems like the sort of thing that he had locked and loaded right before the report even came out. There's no way he read it all. Good God, no four hours. It would betray everything he's done up until then. He's not. He's It took me eight and I really half asked the reading of this report, guys, and I know it's obvious. So this is all leading up to my very favorite paragraph and the entire Muller report. Um,

and this is as he's he's talking to McGan. The President also asked McGann in a meeting why he had told Special Counsel's Office investigators that the President had told him to have the special counsel removed. McGan responded that he had to and that his conversations with the President were not protected by attorney client privilege. The President then asked, what about these notes. Why do you take notes? Lawyers don't take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes.

McGan responded that he keeps notes because he's a real lawyer, and explains that notes create a record and are not a bad thing. The President said, I've had a lot of great lawyers like Ray Cohen. He didn't take notes, Boom mob lawyer Roy coh famous crime lawyer Roy like Roy Cohne, because I'm not committing crimes that guarantee you'll be impeached. Like, I'm not going to do that because I'm a real lawyer. But Gan's one of the guys who come across from this being like, well, at least

your comt because I'm a real lawyer. Is such a condescending answer to be giving to the President, and I'm sure to like with Trump, he's like not used to being spoken to like that, and I'm sure Don McGann is like, fuck you mode, I don't like ship. Trump probably took all that. He's like because I'm a real lawyer, because he's seen what's happening to Flynn. I'm not going to go to prison for you, and other people probably

would never. I hope that Don McGann was so just shitty, like I mean, obviously fuck him, like guiding Brett Kavanaugh through the confirmation ship and he's a bad person, Like just if it were like a scene in a show of just being like, shut shut the funk up. Because I'm a real lawyer, you fun. Because I'm a lawyer, I'm taking it's not banned to take notes, Donald, I've

never seen that. You've never seen that. The TV show that it would be someone Right, Yeah, the TV show that I would be from would not be House of Cards, it would be Veep. Because you also have to imagine that McGann was taking notes of that conversation. Well, this is telling him not to take notes. So Trump was then like, you're doing it again. It's like, you know, asking about notes, said creating record just said, but Roy Khane didn't do that. Okay, I got what I need, Yeah,

Mr President, like I got a lot of tables. Man, I gotta get out of here. Yeah. Next we get into a bunch more stuff of the Manifort stuff, which again it's a lot of obstruction e stuff there you can read it. We already talked about a lot of Maniforts crimes, a decent amount of it still redacted. We get to what's probably Roger Stone next. But again everything about Stone is redacted right now, so it's a little

bit hard to say. There is a partially redacted paragraph, uh talking about the President Michael Cohen that makes Donald Trump sound exactly like a mob boss. So I'm gonna read that next. A few days after the searches, the President called Cohen. According to Cohen, the President said he wanted to check in and asked if Cohen was okay, and the President encouraged Cohen to hang in there and

stay strong. Cohen also recalled that following the searches, this is after Cohen's house had been searched, Uh, he heard from individuals who were in touch with the President related to Cohen the President support for him. Cohen recalled that Blank, a friend of the president's, reached out to say that he was with the boss bosses Capitalized and mar Lago, and the President said he loves you and not to worry.

Cohen recalled that redacted for the Trump organization told him the Boss loves you, and Cohen said that redacted, a friend of the presidents told him, everyone knows the Boss has your back. Uh. That's that's that's a mob ash ship. That is a mob ship. But it's also like very touchy, feely, warm, yeah, sentimental for Trump. Yeah, and an army general. Yeah, Like that's probably as warm and feely as my Michael Cohen has ever been, including like on his wedding night. So yeah, yeah.

The fact that he has turned and sorry, I take a bullet for him, well, and I'm gonna testify, but he has to say it and in the third person, because saying you would be like two emotional and he said that. The report concludes the President probably knew and directly approved of Michael Cohen lying to Congress. The evidence could support an inference that the President was aware of

these facts at the time of Cohen's false statements to Congress. Um. So again, so the president probably committed a crime, and the evidence could probably support that he committed a crime. Yeah, Yeah, that's what Mueller seems to be saying. At the conclusion of the report, it reiterates that it will not make traditional prosecutorial judgments, but does note some conclusions in this investigation.

The evidence does not established that the president was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference, but the evidence does point to a range of other possible

person emotives animating the president's conduct. These include concerns that continued investigation would call into question the legitimacy of his election, and potential uncertainty about whether certain events such as advanced notice of Wiki leaks's release of hacked information, or the June nine, sixteen meeting between senior campaign officials and Russians, could be seen as criminal activity by the president, his campaign,

or his family. Third, many of the president's acts directed at witnesses, including the discouragement of cooperation with the government and suggestions of possible future partners, occurred in public view. Well, it may be more difficult to establish that public facing

acts were motivated by a corrupt intent. The President's power to influence actions, persons, and events is enhanced by his unique ability to attract attention through use of mass communications, and no principle of law excludes public acts from the scope of obstruction statutes. At the likely effect of the access to intimidate witnesses or alter their testimony, the justice

system's integrity is equally threatened. That seems so damned like such a sane description of what the president was doing than like nobody was using like those sorts of straightforward words to describe what he was doing for so long, and he's just like, no, this is how it works.

You can't publicly intimidate people. Yeah. Muller notes that 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. He kept urging them to do crimes, and they were just a little too smart to do it, right. Yeah. Uh, And I just I don't want to go to prison. I don't want you to go to prison. So I guess not that he yells at you for an hour

and a half yeah, so. Uh. It notes after this that the president is not immune to charges for obstruction of justice just by the nature of being the president. Uh. And then you know, I'm going to read essentially the final word in the report before the appendix, this well final paragraph, which in any sane society would be damning. Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the president's conduct.

The evidence we obtained about the president's actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence, after a thorough investigation of the facts, that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state, based on the facts and the

applicable legal standard, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him for the third time. Right, that's my fucking notes. Who really threw that bagel down? Where are the bagels? Where's my tossing bagels? They're already on the ground. Bring me my tossing bagels. Fuck you. I I'm not surprised by anything in there. Uh. Um, you know, Weeny William Barr to do some splaining, you

need some Robert Mueller splaining. And uh, I mean all this really shows is like this is I think the beginning of a much longer process. Yeah. I mean again again, there's still fourteen ongoing criminal investigations. So is there a version of this where they don't say we're going forward with impeachment hearings, but they do continue to like have hearings. Yeah, that's possible. They can investigate all these others. I think it's a foregotten conclusion that Mueller is going to talk

to Congress. That's and the Congress has already requested the unredacted version of the report, so that's probably going to happen. Um. So far, Democratic leadership has been unwilling to in fact directly stated they don't want to pursue impeachment, which, like I will say, based on my non lawyer knowledge of what I read in the report, definitely seems like there's enough to impeach over like to at least you know, do because obviously impeaching doesn't mean he gets kicked out

of the job. It's just starts. Impeaching is just a political There's definitely more there than there was with Clinton, um in terms of uh crime that was probably committed. Uh, but at the state, like people are wondering, like is it a good political strategy to impeach him? Which, like, is it a good political strategy to just like not charge the president for his multiple crimes? Yeah, I hope that you win the next election, like Democrats often don't like.

But there's no version of reality where the Democrats are able to act successfully impeach Trump from office given what is currently out there. So they would need depends on the votes too. Yeah, votes for on the Senate would require a bunch of Republicans to vote to impeach Trump. And that, I mean that is a good point that like, if he gets impeached and then like is actually kicked out, he might claim vindication or something you can say, it'll

probably drag on up until the election. And b And the last time we saw an unsuccessful impeaching of a president, the president saw a huge boost after. Yeah, although the president there like his poll numbers flat as a fucking

door nail. Uh, this president. Yeah, well, just in the wake of the Mullar report coming out, like it doesn't seem to have had any impact, Like when we're looking at like but yeah, but but it's been like a week or two since bar announced no collusion or whatever, and it didn't do anything because I think most people they don't need the report on either side to still believe he's either the best thing to happen or the

worst thing to happen. So so then I guess when you look at it from there, you're like, well, then if it's not going to move the needle that much, is it the best? Is that the best way of I'm not going to make a judgment on whether or not he should be impeached, because there's a lot of

thinking behind that. I will say it seems like a horrible dereliction of duty to not h hammer every aspect of this, Uh, bring Muller up before Congress, like like like publicize heavily every investigation that is still ongoing, like it needs to be kept in the public eye up until the election. Yeah, and maybe committed a huge number of crimes, it sounds like. And by having people like under oath in a televised test like if they're testifying

and giving testimony. You can hopefully chip away a little bit at the court of public opinion too, if you if it's NonStop of people being like yeah, and then he asked me to do this and I was like, yeah, I can't do that. Yeah. I want to hear Donald McGann talk about all of the times Trump tried to

get him to commit crimes in front of Congress. I really want that because what was the the in the Watergate thing, Like one of the first ones was like just like an office assistant who they asked to shred documents and like that whole thing was kind of the

first anecdote that people like, what's going on? Yeah, because like higher up, like I don't know how to use this documents shredder, right, And the idea that Nixon should be impeached was incredibly unpopular at the start of those televised hearings, and it completely flipped by the end of the televised hearings. But I mean, I think people are too aware of this whole process too, uh, like have

their mind changed that much by a televised thing. But I do think you know, as we're you know, looking at the election, if there is a televised Uh, you know, hearing where different just incompetence and dishonesty and just being terrible at the job are like kind of coming out and drips and drops. That's not a bad thing for Democrats, And that seems like it would be a smart strategy. Yeah, it does seem like it would be a smart strategy. But we are talking about the Democratic Party here, so

I look forward to them doing something that makes everything worse. Yeah, yeah, that is what I can rely on the Democratic Party for. So I'm excited about Hillary run with Tim Caine once again. Biden Kane ticket baby? Yeah, who do we who do we? Who do we talk? How do we? How do we get the lefties on board? Oh? Let's bring back Tim Kane. Love Tim Kane, Jack breaking. Mike just fell off, probably maybe related to all of the bagel tossing I've been doing,

no way to know. See, you've angered You've angered the Lord. You know what, Daniel, when you get done with him and those bagels again, I'm gonna give one more good tossing before we before we threat on it. Yeah, you guys, and he got any got any pluggables to plug bagel's down there? Thank you? Dan Last time I did. I did glade plug ins, I did belkan Searge protectors for your plugable enemy. Um yeah done here. Daily Zeitgeist Daily check it out. Oh they already know week daily Monday

through Friday. Well not not everybody, fuck bro, It's the sickest secondary podcast in the building. Man. Check out the Daily Zeitgeist. If you're looking for a great tube of throwing bagels, I can recommend Sairly Deluxe Bagel's Blueberry. Really than just listen to how good these toss solid bounce off one of the soundboards onto a couch. Really good throwing bagels and they're still intact. Those will be eating

those bagels. So yeah, it's because the preservatives. Baby. I think those bagels became throwing bagels because nobody wanted to eat them and I didn't want to throw them. They were therefore donated to the throwing bagel throwing Bagel basket that we can put for Robert every day. So buy some throwing bagels of your own, tossome to relieve your frustration about the Muller Report and the horrible morass of of hatred that we are all slouching closer to. In

gotta be a funnel like looking Forward the Best. Hey, Robert, do you have any plug Bulls? No, I think you do. I don't have any other shows, that's right, he only does. I don't even I don't even do this show. And I wanna talk about a podcast that I've been listening to lately, big fan slow Burn. Yeah, it's called Slowburn. No, it's called it could Happen Here. Uh. It is terrifying. It's about the possibility of a second American Civil War ties into all this a little bit. Yeah, it ties

into all this wishes at the border. Yeah. Uh. What you might not know is when we're talking about, you know, possible impeachment, that the right is already saying they will murder us in the streets if if people try and remove Trump from office. So just some of them, including several of the people named in the Muller report. Yeah, so that's worth taking into account. Uh. Yeah, it could happen here is mind blowing, very weak. It's growing more and more. It's become a phenomenon. Check it out. It

could happen here. So make yourself sad and scared what it could happen here, and then stockpile food and armaments and those buckets and from Jim Baker. From Jim Baker, Yeah, Baker buckets actually by Indian Army rations. They have a really good shelf life. The pretty pretty cheap, and they're probably like good flavors, really good. I mean, yeah, you want a lot of curry in your rations, like a chowman, m R, m R. You can get out here. Those

are the worst ones, all right. I have a podcast called Behind the Bastards, which this is, oh the podcast, this is I'm all out of sorts. You're so good at that. I liked when Jack was plugging your show. It felt like a weird like toast at a wedding. I got a podcast I want to tell you about. It's like Robert's like, oh god, I am hungover from the Mueller Report. It's it's terrible. Um. Also, buy merts for both of our show from Tea Public. It will keep you warm as the country burns down around you,

or we'll keep you cool. Get the top, get it, get it to top, because it's going to be even warmer. So could be insurgent warfare, climate change. I don't know. You might not need sleeves anymore. I'm just saying nothing looks better than a freedom fighter with like those arms buried the big gun arms. You could be like that guy in Libya who stuck a cannon and a shopping cart. Shopping technical it wasn't, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, the podcast

is over. Go hug your family, kiss a cat, throw some bagels,