The Mueller Report Is Out, and Trump's Brazenness Continues to Protect Him — as Does AG Barr

The redacted report prepared by Special Counsel Bob Mueller has been made public at long last. I really enjoy how the Department of Justice made the report a noncopyable and nonsearchable PDF to make analysis and information-sharing even slower and more difficult. That alone is informative about their true objective.

A troubling report by Dareh Gregorian at NBC News gives us some insight into why Mueller didn't recommend obstruction charges against Donald Trump:

Special counsel Robert Mueller reviewed [Donald] Trump's attempts to muddy the investigation, including efforts to tamper with witnesses and to have the attorney general take control of the probe — but decided not to charge him with obstruction because there was no underlying crime and many of those attempts were carried out in plain view.

So, because Trump was so brazen in his contempt for the law, he got away with it — about which I've been warning for nearly two years, since the Mueller investigation began. Here, for example, is me last December, in a piece titled "The Collusion Has Always Been Right out in the Open":

Over and over, people have argued with me that what I was saying about collusion couldn't possibly be true, because no one would be so stupid as to be that brazen.

But the brazenness wasn't stupidity. It was calculated. Trump and his co-conspirators knew damn well that there would be people lining up to argue that what they were seeing with their own eyes couldn't actually be what they were seeing with their own eyes, because no one would be stupid enough to be that brazen.

And here we are.

Recall Trump bragging along the campaign trail in 2016 that he "could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay? It's like incredible." He has always known that the more brazen he is about his corruption and malice, the more likely he is to suffer zero consequences for it.

He is hardly the only member of his administration who flouts the law and fears no repercussions — including and especially the men who are tasked with upholding the nation's laws at the highest levels.

The way that Attorney General Bill Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein ended their press conference this morning was genuinely stunning:

REPORTER: Is it an impropriety for you to come out and sort of spin the report before people are able to read it?

BARR: No.

*walks away* pic.twitter.com/nXH4Tk3Fyd

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 18, 2019

Reporter Ryan J. Reilly: Is it an impropriety for you to come out and sort of what appears to be spinning the report before the public gets a chance to read it?

Barr: [stares at him for a moment] No.

[Rod Rosenstein smirks and grins, and they all leave]

This is an entire administration out of control, regardless of what's in the report. And it is clear that there is far more damning stuff in the report than Barr would have had us believe — not least of which is a clear recommendation within the report for Congress to use its "constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct."

Barr straight-up lied about that.

It's clear why Barr has been constantly trying to get in front of the report to spin it — and it's a dead-ass lie that the report contains no recommendations for further action. Trust that the AG knows what "constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct" means.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 18, 2019

It means impeachment.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 18, 2019

Congress must pursue impeachment as a remedy immediately. It is the only option.

It is not a good one, owing to the Republican intransigence that works to protect Trump, but it is the only one.