Is This Justice?

As the fallout with the Mueller Report and Barr Summary continues, the entire thing disturbs me more and more by the minute.

Let’s recap:

• The shady Russian connections and contacts with multiple people surrounding Trump during his campaign invite legitimate suspicions of nefarious activities. FBI investigations ensue, rightly so.

• Trump’s firing of FBI Director Comey, his comments about it immediately afterwards, and criticisms of his own Attorney General invite legitimate suspicions of the President of the Untied States obstructing justice in trying to stop the investigations.

• Due to the President’s actions, the DOJ is forced to appoint a Special Counsel to continue the investigations in order to maintain any sense of objectivity and credibility of the DOJ. This action is done by the President’s very own appointees…not the opposition party, not by the Deep State, an not even by the media (aka “the enemy of the people”).

• A Special Counsel is appointed when it is determined that it would not be prudent for the DOJ itself to conduct an investigation that includes the President, precisely because there cannot be assured impartiality from those who are directly appointed and serve at the pleasure of that very President. This is imperative in order to maintain trust and faith in our justice system by the American people.

• The Special Counsel conducts a very thorough, professional investigation while being publicly harassed, disparaged, and very possibly libeled on nearly a daily basis by none other than the President of the United States.

• After nearly 2 years of publicly berating and shaming his own Attorney General because he had the temerity to recuse himself from a situation where he obviously had a conflict of interest, the President finally fires him because he refused to protect him from these investigations.

• The President then appoints a new Attorney General, one who previously weighed in very heavily on his disapproval of the Special Counsel’s investigation and very pointedly declared that it’s impossible for the President to have obstructed justice, even while having none of the details or evidence obtained in the investigation. The President found his man.

• The Special Counsel completes his investigation and sends his report to the new AG.

• The AG now is deciding what information in the report will be provided to Congress and the American public. Remember, the Special Counsel was appointed specifically because it was determined that the AG/DOJ could not be impartial in this investigation due to an obvious conflict of interest in that the AG is directly appointed and serves at the pleasure of the very person being investigated. And remember, this is the AG who already exposed his bias and fully pre-judged the entire investigation as being illegitimate from the start even before being appointed.

• The AG issues a four page “summary” of the Mueller report, basically stating that the President, or any of the President’s people, did not do anything wrong.

So here we are.

We are supposed to accept the four page “summary” of the full 2+ year Mueller investigation without question?

The Republican Party, with a straight face, claims that this “summary” proves that Trump has done no wrong and this was all a Democrat witch hunt from the get-go…and we’re supposed to buy that and now move on? Remember, the Democrats did not appoint the Special Counsel (Trump’s appointee did) and the Democrats had absolutely no control in the government at the time.

Trump’s supporters have proven over the past couple of years that they are among the most gullible targets of demagoguery in the nation, or are some of the most unprincipled, intellectually dishonest factions ever.

Based on this “summary”, Republicans in Congress are now demanding that Democrat members of Congress, such as Rep. Adam Schiff actually resign from his Chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee because he has stated that there is evidence of collusion by the Trump campaign. There was and is evidence of it, but the Republicans shamelessly ignore it all and play partisan politics about something so serious as an actual adversarial foreign country directly influencing our Presidential election and the possibility of the President’s campaign playing a part in that.

Do the Republicans want to wait until they actually see all of the information in the full Mueller report? Of course not. They are all on board with the Trump narrative plan on this to hammer away while working to keep the full report from ever being disclosed. That is despicable.

Beth has a great piece on this that tells the full story, but Rep. Schiff responded quite well:

We are expected to take the word of a partisan, biased, political appointee, appointed by almost certainly the most dishonest President in the history of the Republic, who was specifically being investigated for obstruction of justice (among many other things), that there was no obstruction of justice or any other wrong-doing by the President? Seriously, is that a joke?

Is this justice?

It’s not the justice worthy of the title of an “exceptional Republic” that the United States of America used to legitimately claim. This is the justice of a banana republic run by a despot with the support of sycophantic minions.

Why on Earth would the media take this summary of the investigation seriously for longer than it took the time to read it? Why would they bolster and give credence to the Trump narrative that he has been completely and totally exonerated and vindicated? Hopefully, they will get their head straight and expose this farce for what it is and quit allowing the Trump narrative to continue without intense challenge.

The full, un-redacted Mueller report needs to be released to Congress (the Democrats) at a very minimum, and preferably to the American people in general. Do I say that because I believe the Democrats to be honest and trustworthy? Absolutely not. I say that because I now am fully, 100% confident that neither the Democrats or the Republicans are honest or trustworthy. So, until we figure out how to fix our system and take control back from these usurpers, the only way to obtain any measure of the truth is to use their hatred of each other as a check on each other. Yes, that is how broken the system now is.

I covered the issue of the collusion suspicions in a previous editorial and listed many questions that are still unanswered. We need the full Mueller report to get explanations of those questions.

Concerning the obstruction issue…Mueller specifically stated that he did not make a final conclusion on whether the evidence was sufficient to warrant obstruction charges on the President. He specifically stated that his report does not exonerate the President from that possible offense. That means that there is substantial evidence of obstruction.

Let’s consider why Mueller may not have made that final conclusion on obstruction.

It has been reported that Mueller and the AG had discussions about whether to subpoena direct, oral testimony from the President. The nature of that discussion is extremely important.

Was the President’s direct testimony the missing piece as to whether Mueller could make that final conclusion?

Who was the person who ultimately decided against demanding the testimony from the President through a subpoena?

Now, if Mueller told Barr he needed to do it and Barr refused, that would need to have been reported to Congress. Barr reported to Congress that Mueller was not denied anything.

So, is that the end of it?

Or, was Mueller very insistent on the subpoena but was talked out of it by Barr, such that in the end, Mueller didn’t officially request it and Barr could then claim that no request was denied?

What if Barr talked Mueller down by making the case that since the President could not be indicted, it would do no good to recommend indictment, so the subpoena wasn’t necessary.

Instead, maybe he talked Mueller into laying out the obstruction case without making a final determination and then allowing Congress to sort it out.

Is it possible that Barr then blindsided Mueller by stepping in and making the determination on it himself, allowing Trump to set the narrative before Congress had any ability to weigh in?

Is this a possible scenario? Are Trump and his lackeys dishonest and corrupt enough to hatch such a scheme?

The only way we’ll know is to see the full Mueller report and to have Mueller testify to all of it. Until then, the majority of the American people will not accept this and faith in our justice system will take another huge hit.

By their very actions and words concerning the Mueller report, Trump and the Republicans continue to display their total dishonesty and corruption. Frankly, it’s sickening. Worse, that so many people are fooled by (or are fine with) their deceptive actions is extremely disheartening.

For far too many, the ends justify the means…they are just too foolish and ignorant to realize that the supposed ends are all a bunch of lies as well; that their ends do not match with the ends of the corrupt politicians.

The ends for the politicians are not the policies that the supporters want.

Nope, the ends for the politicians are fame, money, and power. Full stop.

So for them, when they play the “ends justify the means” game, their “means” are actually “playing their supporters for fools” in order to obtain the “ends” of “fame, money, and power”.

And the supporters cheer, as if they are winning.

Our Republic is in big trouble, folks.