Sore loser WP comes back to gloat!

Bottom line: Declares that he is way too stubborn to let this go! 

After nearly 28 days of waiting, our resident conservative turned liberal came back to "gloat" about the Mueller report, just as he had promised so many times. The only problem was that WP wasn't really coming back to gloat, but to complain.

We see evidence of crimes, you think it "exonerates" Trump - I don't see how that is any different than from before the report. But rest assured, there are going to be public hearings and investigations will continue for the duration. It's never going away, and America is not ever going to accept Barr/Trump's version of the conclusions.

To be perfectly clear, WP was always in the camp that Mueller would uncover a grand conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Putin to illegally steal the election. Much like Schiff and others, he also believed that "what we saw in plain sight" was already enough to charge people within the Trump inner circle. To the degree that these two separate (but related) beliefs were wrong, they have nothing to do with any Barr/Trump "version" of conclusions.

It was Mueller and his report that offered that they never uncovered evidence of a single American who could be declared to have been working for, with, or in cahoots with the Russians regarding anything having to do with the election.

Not one American. Period. End of story.

Not only does Mueller establish this in volume I - but he repeats the broad lack of crime (specifically regarding Trump) in volume II when he talks about the President's intent.

Second , unlike cases in which a subject engages in obstruction of justice to cover up a crime , the evidence we obtained did not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference. Although the obstruction statutes do not require proof of such a crime, the absence of that evidence affects the analysis of the President's intent and requires consideration of other possible motives for his conduct.

So the fact that the President was not found to have committed any criminal acts within the scope of the 2016 election is well established by Mueller himself.  While WP argues that it's still just a matter of opinion (I don't see how that is any different than from before the report), isn't the entire concept of spending 22 months and 30 million dollars to settle this argument?

Before the report, we didn't know what Mueller was going to find. WP was in the camp that Mueller would frogmarch members of Trumps inner circle, including his family, and quite possibly the President himself. That didn't happen. It's no longer a matter of opinion. That makes him wrong. It also places him in the minority of people who still believe there is evidence of conspiracy.

Now, unfortunately, WP has fallen hook, line, and sinker for the "revised" version of liberal talking points memo. They would like to ignore the question of whether or not there was collusion, conspiracy, or coordination, and focus on whether the very investigation itself put enough pressure on enough people to make them commit enough process crimes to call it a win. As many people point out, you don't have volume II without volume I, and volume I shows that the underlying investigation was every bit the witch hunt that critics suggested.

So WP, like others, declares that the President committed crimes of obstruction (which of course is different than pre-investigation allegations of criminal actions during the campaign). You cannot investigate someone because you believe that they might obstruct the investigation. So to the degree that anyone who alleged criminal actions relating to the 2016 election can somehow declare a minor victory because there are new allegations (but no recommended charges) that obstruction was committed seems more than a bit illogical and petty.

But this is where WP is not going to "accept" the Barr/Trump version of events. Like most liberals too stubborn to let this go, he is not just moving the goalposts, but he is moving the entire field. But even allowing for the entire subject to be changed (as if the entire Russian collusion narrative no longer matters), the fact still remains that Mueller did not go so far as to suggest that he would charge the President, in spite having all the authority to do so. Ken Starr certainly suggested in his report that President Clinton committed perjury during Grand Jury questioning, witness tampering, and obstruction.

Furthermore WPs attacks on McCarthy, Dershowitz fall well short. First and foremost their viewpoints are also the viewpoints of the Department of Justice. The Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General (who supervised the probe) both disagree as a "matter of law" that the events put forth in the report could be seen as obstruction. Furthermore, even giving Mueller and his team the benefit of the doubt on the subject of the law, they still conclude that there isn't sufficient evidence of corrupt intent to even make a charge if they agreed it was a crime to begin with.

That's a pretty harsh assessment of volume II of the report, offered by ranking members of the Department of Justice, with the assistance of many others in the DOJ. But that is what happens when none of your potential charges are anything anyone has ever been charged with before. That's what happens when you attempt to rewrite the laws regarding obstruction on the fly, because you desperately want to get someone.

Are there still disagreements and different "opinions" regarding this? Sure, but if we are not willing to take the viewpoint of the Department of Justice, then why have a Department of Justice at all. Why not have criminal trials on cable news, and allow the legal pundits to declare innocence or guilt?

Make no mistake, there are almost no legal experts outside of liberal media analysts (such as Jeffrey Toobin) who believe these obstruction charges are valid. I have combed most of the nonpartisan legal blogs and legal websites I frequent, and it's pretty consistent that they agree legally with Barr and the DOJ as a matter of fundamental law.

More to the point, every legal expert arguing that these events constitute obstruction, were the same ones who argued that the actions we all saw in plain sight would also be criminal. That should tell us something about the so called expertise of media legal analysts. They are not interested in being correct, but rather interested in telling people what they want to hear.

Bottom line: Toobin and gang were wrong all along. McCarthy and Dershowitz were correct all along. Just as WP was wrong all along and I was correct all along.