Monday, November 25, 2024
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Confluence

The Root: Robert Mueller Wrote a ‘Bish, What?’ Letter to the Attorney General After Barr Remixed the Special Counsel’s Report

Reading Time: 4 minutes Mueller punted. That’s the takeaway here. Mueller could’ve concluded that that the president did or didn’t commit obstruction of justice. The report he created described at least 10 significant episodes of possible obstruction of justice. But Mueller, who we already know knows how to work a phone because he surely called Barr to complain about his four-page summation, couldn’t call someone to ask if he had to adhere to a long-standing Justice Department policy that says a sitting president cannot be indicted and for that reason, here we are. Mueller punted and Fred Flintstone Face ran it back for a touchdown.

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New York Times: In a Functional Country, We Would Be on the Road to Impeachment

Reading Time: 5 minutes Most people aren’t going to read the nearly 500-page report. Republicans have already seized on Barr’s words — and on the lack of criminal charges in a document that was never going to contain criminal charges — to claim total vindication for Trump. The president’s manifest disloyalty to the country in trying to halt an investigation into a foreign attack on an American election is, to the right, of no account. Nor are the counterintelligence implications of Mueller’s findings, which aren’t part of the report. In the eyes of the president’s supporters, his campaign did not participate in the criminal conspiracy that helped elect him, so no more needs to be said.

The reaction to the report shows that between the minority of Americans who support Trump and the majority who do not, there may no longer be even the possibility of a shared sense of reality or national purpose. Even as exemplary a figure as Mueller cannot change that.

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Break News: Biden Will Announce His Plans to Join the 2020 Race on Thursday

Reading Time: 3 minutes ABC News has confirmed that Joe Biden will announce he’s entering the 2020 race Thursday morning in a video. This will be the beginning of Biden’s third run for the presidency and he enters the crowded Democratic field in the top spot in several polls despite the recent #metoo related PR issues that have plagued his soon to be campaign for weeks.

Biden brings a long career in public service to his presidential bid, which began in 1972 when he was elected to the Senate in Delaware. Biden served in the Senate for nearly 40 years, where he served as chair of the Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees, before becoming vice president in 2009. All of this makes him one of the most experienced candidates ever to run for the office of President. However, that kind of history in the public eye brings with it years of things to criticize. 

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CBS News: Militia allegedly trained to assassinate Obama, Hillary Clinton

Reading Time: 2 minutes The leader of a militia group who’s been detaining migrants near the U.S.-Mexico border allegedly told the FBI his militia was training to assassinate former President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Democratic donor George Soros. Larry Hopkins, head of the United Constitutional Patriots, is charged with possession a firearm as a felon and could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted. Hopkins appeared before a federal judge Monday.

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Fast Company: This platform wants to fix the disturbing lack of data on police violence

Reading Time: 4 minutes In the U.S., police brutality is a known problem: all-too-numerous headlines in recent years have detailed the deaths of Philando Castile, Freddie Gray, and Mike Brown, among many others. But recent research suggests that police kill around three people per day in the U.S., and those people are disproportionately black men. Those findings, though, still fail to account for other violence and verbal and physical abuse people face at the hands of police.

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Vox: Democrats are prioritizing “electability” in 2020. That’s a coded term.

Reading Time: 4 minutes More often than not, however, the expectation of who can win is inextricably wrapped up in the knowledge of who has won. What that feeling looks like for each voter could well be influenced by the kinds of candidates voters have seen win races before. And in the case of the presidency, that mold consists overwhelmingly of older white men, a precedent that could hurt candidates who don’t fit those characteristics.

“Metrics like authenticity and likability and electability are just code that we use against candidates who are not like what we are used to,” Christina Reynolds, a spokesperson for Emily’s List, a political organization that supports women candidates, previously told Vox.

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Vox: What we know about Mueller’s case against Trump on obstruction of justice

Reading Time: 8 minutes Serious tensions appear to be emerging between members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team and Attorney General William Barr on obstruction of justice.

Mueller team members have told associates their evidence against Trump on obstruction is “alarming and significant,” per the Washington Post. Some of them feel Barr’s letter to Congress didn’t properly describe “derogatory information,” according to CNN. And one official told NBC News the report includes new material that’s not publicly known.

Yet Mueller’s report did not say whether or not Trump’s conduct qualified as criminal, and Barr then declared that, per his review of the evidence, it did not.

But the recent leaks suggest Mueller team members think Barr’s assessment was too benign — and that there’s more to the story.

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