What is there to move on to?

Victor Davis Hanson writes in American Greatness,

...The besmirching of Barr’s conduct is surreal. He certainly has not done anything even remotely approximating the conduct of former President Obama’s two attorneys general.

Has Barr dubbed himself the president’s “wingman” or called America a “nation of cowards,” as did former Attorney General Eric Holder?

Has Barr’s Department of Justice monitored reporters’ communications or ordered surveillance of a television journalist? Has Barr used a government jet to take his family to the Belmont Stakes horse race, as did Holder?

Has Barr met secretly on an airport tarmac with the spouse of a person his Justice Department was investigating, as did former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who had such a meeting with Bill Clinton?

The Mueller report ignored the likely illegal origins of the Christopher Steele dossier, the insertion of an FBI informant into the Trump campaign, the unlawful leaking of documents, and the conflicted testimonies of former high-level intelligence officials.

All of those things were potential felonies. All in some way yielded information that Mueller drew on in his investigation. Yet Mueller never recommended a single indictment of any of the Obama-era officials who likely broke laws.

Mueller was instead fixated on possible collusion with Russia. But it is a crime to knowingly hire a foreign national to work on a presidential campaign—in other words, to “collude.” That is exactly what the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee did when they paid British subject Christopher Steele to smear Trump.

Did Mueller argue that the possible crimes of John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe and other former government officials—lying to federal investigators, perjury, obstruction of justice, deceiving the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, planting an informant into a political campaign, unmasking and leaking the identities of individuals under surveillance—were only peripheral to his investigation?

Not really. After all, Mueller indicted Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone and others for crimes that had nothing to do with collusion and were far less serious than the improper behavior of top Obama administration bureaucrats.

So what really explains the furor now directed at Barr?

One, progressives are terrified that a number of Trump’s critics—Brennan, Clapper, Comey, McCabe—may soon be indicted. They apparently seek to preempt such indictments by attacking Barr, a seemingly no-nonsense prosecutor who will likely follow up on any criminal referrals from any inspector general that reach his desk.

Two, the 2020 progressive agenda—whether defined as the Green New Deal, a wealth tax, Medicare for All or open borders—will not compete well with Trump’s currently booming economy. Impeaching Trump for collusion and obstruction is seen by progressives as the best (or perhaps only) way to return to power. That effort so far is failing, causing even more hysteria.

Three, the Mueller investigation is over, finished after 22 months, $34 million and a 448-page, two-volume report.

There will be no indictments of Trump for either collusion or the obstruction of justice during the investigation of that non-crime. So now what?

Since late 2015, Trump, as the supposed Russian puppet or the Machiavellian obstructer of justice, was nightly cable-TV news fare. Now, such fantasies are shattered. But progressives are not willing to let the Mueller investigation rest in peace and move on with their lives.

Perhaps they feel in the political sense that there is nothing to move on to. And they are probably right.

Read more here.

Coming...

Mueller did interview Trump regarding obstruction case!

In the Sonservative Treehouse, Sundance is seeing clearly some aspects of Spygate.

...The DOJ (Rosenstein) and FBI (McCabe) activity in coordination with the Robert Mueller team was always about the obstruction case from day one; heck, from even before Robert Mueller was appointed.

The totality of all primary effort has always been to protect the ruse of the Russia investigation by throwing out nonsense Russian indictments and keeping Manafort, Flynn and Papadopoulos (the original spygate targets) under control…. while the focus was on building the obstruction case against President Trump.

It could not be any more clear than it is today.

...It’s all about controlling the “narrative”.

This investigative ‘small group’ are the people inside Main Justice (DOJ) and FBI headquarters who redacted the Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text messages; removed messages and communication antithetical to their goals; kept key documents and information away from congress; stalled any effort to expose the unlawful aspects of “SpyGate’ and the fraudulent foundation behind the Carter Page FISA application; and undermined any adverse discoveries in the leak investigations (James Wolfe) writ large.

This investigative small group didn’t change when Mueller arrived, they just retooled the focus of their effort based on new leadership and new objectives. Those who created the Trump-Russia collusion/conspiracy case of 2016, evolved into creating the Trump obstructing justice case of 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Everything Mueller and Rosenstein were doing in late 2017 and throughout 2018 was intended to drag-out the Russia conspiracy narrative as long as possible, even though there was no actual Trump-Russia investigation taking place.

...It was always the “obstruction” investigation that could lead to the desired result by Mueller’s team of taking down President Trump through evidence that would help Pelosi and Nadler achieve impeachment . The “obstruction case” was the entirety of the case they were trying to make from May 2017 through to March 2019.

Read more here.

It's about obstruction, not collusion

Andrew McCarthy writes in the Hill,

...I believe the so-called Russia-gate probe ultimately will be shown to have begun early in 2016. It may not have been formally opened on paper as “Crossfire Hurricane” until months later — until late July or early August. The murkiness is intentional. There is queasiness on the part of intelligence agencies, both because they were scrutinizing the incumbent administration’s political opponents in the midst of a contentious presidential campaign, and because they were aided and abetted by at least one foreign intelligence service — something that should not have happened; something the revelation of which could damage an information-sharing arrangement critical to national security.

But for however long investigators have been at it, and certainly since Mueller’s investigation came into full swing after May 2017, it has been obvious that there was no criminal conspiracy.

Yet, bear in mind: It was not collusion that triggered Mueller’s appointment. While collusion was the rationale for the overarching Russia investigation, we got a special counsel because of obstruction allegations. Mueller was brought on board eight days after the president fired FBI Director James Comey. In the interim, Comey leaked a memo claiming Trump had leaned on the bureau to drop any investigation of Michael Flynn, the president’s fired national security adviser.

...I do not expect collusion to be the highlight of Mueller’s report. Collusion was just the rationale for conducting an investigation for which there was no criminal predicate. I expect Mueller to file a report that highlights obstructive conduct, though probably not one that calls for an obstruction indictment. That, as I said back in December 2017, would throw the ball into Congress’s court for consideration of impeachment.

And now, lo and behold, with Mueller apparently about to issue his report, the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee suddenly has issued a flurry of subpoenas and document demands. Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.) says his committee is launching an investigation of obstruction, with an eye toward using the special counsel’s handiwork as the foundation for an impeachment inquiry.

You don’t say.

Read more here.

Collusion between Hillary's camp and the FBI. Ignoring that would be grossly negligent.

Kimberley and Jesse: Mueller investigators partisan Democrats and Clintonites.

Katie: Conflict of interest!

Juan says the big news of the day is that Mueller has asked a German bank for records on Donald Trump. Katie says, "not true!"

Greg: "They are lowering the bar. First, they wanted collusion. Now they want obstruction of justice!

Jesse: Prosecutors are giving different treatment to different people, based on their politics!

Nancy Pelosi says passage of tax reform has brought us to Armageddon!

Greg: Without hyperbole, the Democrats would have nothing!

"Damaging Trump’s capacity to govern."

Excerpts of Andrew McCarthy writing at National Review,

Trump was feeling remorse over Flynn. What he told Comey, in substance, was that Flynn had been through enough. A combat veteran who had served the country with distinction for over 30 years, and who had not done anything wrong by speaking with the Russian ambassador as part of the Trump transition, Flynn had just been cashiered in humiliating fashion. The one who had done the cashiering was Trump, and he was still upset about it.

That, obviously, is why he lobbied Comey on Flynn’s behalf. And as I have pointed out before, it was an exercise in weighing the merits of further investigation and prosecution that FBI agents and federal prosecutors do hundreds of times a day, throughout the country. That matters because, as their superior and as the constitutional official whose power these subordinates exercise, Trump has as much authority to do this weighing as did Comey — who worked for Trump, not the other way around.

The thing to notice, though, was that Trump never did it again. After Comey’s description of this February 14 encounter, the word “Flynn” never appears again in Comey’s written testimony. This appears to be the one and only time that Trump advocated on Flynn’s behalf. If Trump was obstructing an investigation, he was awfully passive about it.

...So, given that no one who was aware of the facts believed that Trump had committed obstruction at the time the conduct occurred, why is Trump now reportedly under investigation for obstruction?

...What the president appears to have objected to, and to have sought help refuting, was what he saw as the fraudulent claim — subtly advanced by Comey and perhaps others in the intelligence community — that he personally had colluded with Russia in connection with the election, and that he was a criminal suspect. That is not obstruction of an investigation. It is objection to a narrative — a narrative that the intelligence agencies knew was false yet refused to correct, no matter how much it was, and is, damaging Trump’s capacity to govern.

Read more here.

The "resistance"

Here is Ace of Spades on the "resistance:"

The Democrats are doing what their partisan base demands. I get that.

But I seem to remember the media and other allegedly-neutral institutions castigating Republicans for "obstructing" Obama -- as their own base desired. (And Republicans only partially blocked Obama, and they voted dutifully for all his cabinet picks.)

We cannot have a country in which one party is praised for obstruction and the other demonized.

If there are two classes of citizenship in a society, then we have no society. We just have the law of the jungle in which violence can be expected to solve many disputes.