The book I will be discussing this month is The Mueller Report. I'm going to assume that anyone reading this post knows the general content of the book so I won't spend a lot of time on that. But if you've been living under a rock for the last three years, the book is about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and what role the Trump campaign and administration may have played in that interference.
I'm not going to review this book in the way I would normally review a book here and my recommendation for reading it isn't based on how much I loved it or because of any political position I may hold. The reason I am recommending this book for reading is because there is so much conflicting information out there about what it says and about what was discovered during the investigation. For me, I wanted to know what it actually said so that I wasn't hearing cherry picked excerpts that would seem to support whatever narrative the reporter may have wanted to push. This is also the reason I have been watching the impeachment hearings, despite how exhausting it has been.
I will say that it's not an easy read by any means. But it does tell a story.
In the interested of full disclosure, as of right now, I haven't completed the book. I've read all of volume I and am currently working on volume II.
Volume I covers Russian interference in the election and the contacts made by Trump campaign officials. It started with a broad overview of the investigation, followed by the laws used and applied to make decisions. It then broke things down by individual and dates before it summed up the decisions made on who to prosecute and for what crimes. It was clear that from the start that since a sitting president can't be indicted that no application of the law(s) would be applied to the president or his actions. "We determined not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the President committed crimes." (Page 195, Volume II)
Several campaign staff members were working hard to make a meeting with Trump and Putin happen. Among those was George Papadopoulos. He sent an email that Paul Manafort forwarded (without copying George). In the forwarded email Paul said "Let[']s discuss. We need someone to communicate that [Trump] is not doing these trips. It should be someone low-level in the Campaign so as not to send any signal." (Page 103, Volume I).
At one point "Denysyk thanked Papadopoulos 'for taking the initiate,' but asked him to 'hold off without reach (sic) to Russian-Americans' because 'too many articles' had already portrayed the Campaign, then campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and candidate Trump as 'being pro-Russian.' " (Page 106-107, Volume I)
I know that Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that the report found no evidence of collusion but the report states - in several places - that the "evidence was not sufficient to obtain and sustain a criminal conviction". (Page 163, Volume I). That's not an exoneration but rather a prosecutorial decision not to move forward. That said, I personally found the evidence very compelling.
Something else I found interesting. I had finished Volume I before the impeachment hearings started and was shocked to find that a lot of the same players were involved in both the Russian interference case as are involved in the Ukraine episode. In my opinion, there's definitely a pattern of behavior between the two scenarios. And in the report there's even a mention of a quid pro quo.
The last quote from the report that I noted was on Page 207, Volume II where it discusses witness tampering. It states "Corrupt persuasion is shown 'where a defendant tells a potential witness a false story as if the story were true, intending that the witness believe the story and testify to it.' " Draw from that what you will.
The last thing I will say is that the book had a lengthy introduction by Alan Dershowitz included in it. I have seen Alan on shows defending Trump so wasn't surprised when he was discussing why the report never should have been written. He states that Rosenberg was more conflicted than Sessions and therefore should have never been put in charge of the investigation. He states that no special counsel should have been appointed, no report should have been written and it should have never been released to the public and he provides arguments for each of these convictions. None of it surprised me. What did surprise me is that at the end of it he stated that he had voted for Clinton in the 2016 election and voted all democrat in the 2018 election. My guess is he felt this disclosure would give more credibility to his opinions.
Whatever the argument, I feel this is an important book to read so that people can form their own opinions and make informed decisions going forward and that's why I chose this book to discuss this month, particularly with everything going on right now.
For more reviews, go to barriesummy.blogspot.com.
