Special Counsel members celebrate the Mueller report!

As was pointed out by many, special counsel determined three things:

1. That there was no conspiracy
2. That they could not recommend obstruction
3. That they were not happy with either result

The irony of the Mueller report is that for a group of straight shooting people supposedly so driven by regulations, laws, and procedures, the Mueller report was in violation of almost every conceived norm. As the old saying goes, if you cannot indict you don't incite. In other words, law enforcement is not allowed to investigate someone, come up short of an indictment, and then issue a public report that in turns criticizes behavior or otherwise works to undermine the person or people that they were investigating. 

Yeah, old Bob didn't rob the bank, but he is cheating on his wife, he surfs the web at work, and he lets his dog poop in the neighbor's lawn and doesn't pick it up. 

Yet, make no mistake, this is exactly what the report did. The reality is that William Barr's summary during the Press Conference was spot on. Mueller (regardless of the dog and pony show and numerous innuendoes) could not find any actual real tangible "evidence" of the underlying accusations. He couldn't even establish that one single American was complicit or in any way working with the Russians. From a pure constitutional, legal, and regulatory manner, that was all the Mueller report was required to report. That he came up short. That the entire idea of a collusion conspiracy was a hoax.

But that's not what he did. The "straight shooter" grabs a bow and arrow and takes his best shots. He tries to inply a theory here, toss in a coincidence there, and suggest that if he had more information, that the conclusion could change. Ahem. But the bottom line is that given 22 months, 30 million dollars, a few dozen investigators and attorneys, and given an intrusive investigation that searched everywhere but under my bed, Special Counsel found what the little boy shot at and missed. 

(likely because the arrow Mueller shot was bent from the beginning)

As far as volume II of his report, he starts off by declaring that he was not going to make a prosecutorial call, even though that was exactly what he was tasked to do. The motivation for this may not be completely clear, but you can all be sure that it was "not" because he thought he had the President dead to rights, and somehow didn't want to pull the trigger. Certainly Ken Starr did not have any issues declaring in his report that President Clinton committed obstruction. Ironically most liberals demanded that Mueller follow the Starr principle. 

The reality is that Mueller and his team engage in a pure fictional attempt to create a crime where none exists. You have to go no further than the fact that both the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General disagreed with Mueller regarding whether or not the actions mentioned could even be considered for an obstruction charge. Going through the areas of concern, I would be shocked if there is any relevant precedent for anyone EVER being charged for any of these actions.

Seriously:

• "efforts to prevent public disclosure of evidence" 
• "expressing skepticism" 
• "telling a direct report that General Flynn was a good guy"
• "asking someone to say publicly that he did nothing wrong"
• "firing a direct report"
• "asking the A.G. to supervise (which is his job)"
• "alleging conflict of interest of special counsel"
• "tweeting negative things about the investigation"
• "expressing anger at a continued investigation" 
• "efforts to have someone deny something to the media"
• "coordinating defenses with others being investigated" 
• "tweeting about a witness"
• "alleged actions of his attorney"

Amazing that anyone would consider any of these crimes? I suppose they might be when the subject is Donald Trump and your investigative team is a bunch of Hillary supporters. 

But even providing Mueller with the benefit of the doubt and using his own logic to draw the conclusion, the A.G. and Deputy A.G. felt that the evidence required to prove these charges was woefully short. Mueller himself, admits that the threshold to declare legal actions illegal by means of "corrupt intent" is a high hurdle to pass. Given the President's many possible alternative reasons for doing pretty much everything on the list, it would be nearly impossible to "prove" that the only "reasonable" conclusion was the corrupt intent required as proof to make any of these legal actions illegal.  

The facts (and I understand that liberals hate facts) was that the President did not obstruct the investigation. He handed over to special counsel every document ask for, encouraged anyone and everyone Mueller called to cooperate fully, and allowed the investigation to go to completion. If Special Counsel wanted to interview the President, then they could have attempted a subpoena. But when you charge everyone you interview and their brother with process crimes, nobody is going to want to come talk to you willingly.  

Moreover, the President was never guilty of the underlying crime (something that Mueller himself points out), making "incentive" to obstruct a murky argument to make in court.

But most importantly, in spite of issuing ten areas of concern, there was not one area where Mueller could suggest that his investigation was actually obstructed or otherwise hampered. Generally in order to prove obstruction, you have to show that the actions actually tangibly obstructed something. That would seem to be a pretty substantial "missing" piece of the puzzle, if Mueller actually believed he committed obstruction. Go no further than that, if you really wonder why Mueller did not pull the trigger on obstruction. 

Bottom line: this whole investigation from start to finish was a complete embarrassment and a stain on our history. While there may still be some dwindling CNN viewers who want to keep this thing alive, I don't think history is going to view this Special Counsel as anything very special.