Muellar clears Trump of collusion

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6845121/Justice-Department-says-Mueller-report-does-not-exonerate-President-Trump.html?ico=pushly-notifcation-small

Hear that? That is the sound of every liberal crying out in anguish. The US state is not going to make the bad man go away.

Title is inaccurate given the report blatantly says he's not exonerated. Worth changing it to something less sensational.

I guess the next step now is to see what the actual full report says, rather than the summary by the Attorney General. There's some inconsistencies in the statement, and it seems that Mueller has not decided either way whether or not to prosecute, rather, he's left it up to others. Summary also doesn't conclude whether there was any obstruction of justice.

If anything this raises more questions regarding the whole thing.

But the Democratic leaders in Congress slammed Barr's decision, saying he was not 'neutral' in the investigation, and called for Mueller's full report and its supporting documentation to be made public.
'Attorney General Barr’s letter raises as many questions as it answers. The fact that Special Counsel Mueller’s report does not exonerate the president on a charge as serious as obstruction of justice demonstrates how urgent it is that the full report and underlying documentation be made public without any further delay. Given Mr. Barr’s public record of bias against the Special Counsel’s inquiry, he is not a neutral observer and is not in a position to make objective determinations about the report,' Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a joint statement.
'And most obviously, for the president to say he is completely exonerated directly contradicts the words of Mr. Mueller and is not to be taken with any degree of credibility,' the two leaders added.

Title is inaccurate given the report blatantly says he's not exonerated. Worth changing it to something less sensational.

@Snufkin what’s happened you said mueller would prove collusion?

The fact is an intensive two-year investigation turned up no evidence indicating that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, despite all the media conspiracy theories and constant accusations. He's in the clear.

It's also stated there isn't enough evidence to pursue a prosecution for obstruction of justice, so Mueller won't and it's unlikely anyone else will.

Naturally Trump and his base will try to use this headline to exonerate him and I daresay it might work with many voters - most people unfortunately won't look beyond this one headline.

Neither of those things are what Barr's summary says. In the conspiracy/co-operation (not "collusion", which was always a dodgy choice of term) question, Mueller didn't find enough evidence to justify prosecution, i.e. that he thought proved lawbreaking beyond reasonable doubt. That could theoretically mean a whole range of possibilities. On one end, yes it could mean literally nothing, but it on the other end it could mean Mueller was 90% sure the campaign did conspire, but was just missing that one piece of evidence that would remove reasonable doubt. In practice neither are likely, and he probably fell somewhere in between - he probably found some evidence but not nearly enough to conclusively prove anything.

(As an aside, I've noticed that this is a weird thing people often tend to do when debating legal cases - assert that there was "no evidence" for something when really there was merely insufficient evidence. I don't know why, whether it's misunderstanding of how law works, or bad faith attempts to exaggerate the strength of their position, or something else entirely)

On the (more significant) question of obstruction, Mueller didn't conclude there wasn't enough evidence - indeed, he didn't make a conclusion either way. He either couldn't decide if there was enough, or didn't think it was his place to decide (or some combination of the two).

Also worth bearing in mind a couple of other comparable cases. The Starr investigation lasted for twice as long as Mueller's, and ultimately ended up completely clearing Bill Clinton of its initial remit on the Whitewater scandal and Travelgate - but in the course of doing so it ended up discovering taped phone conversations from a certain Monica Lewinsky, and we all know where things went from there. Going back further, the Watergate special investigation ultimately never found close to sufficient evidence that Nixon ordered or approved the initial Watergate hotel break-in (indeed, most historians now think he genuinely didn't know about it until after the event) - but it was all the other things that came to light in the process of trying to answer that question that did for him.

Now, I don't think it's likely that we'll see a similar situation now, even anything the more limited and inevitably unsuccessful attempt to force out Clinton. The environment in terms of partisan/media attitudes, good/bad faith, and spin, is too different (and indeed, this is likely to be an inevitably understated and ignored conclusion). But focusing only on the quite narrow initial remit remains pretty short-sighted.

(As an aside, I've noticed that this is a weird thing people often tend to do when debating legal cases - assert that there was "no evidence" for something when really there was merely insufficient evidence. I don't know why, whether it's misunderstanding of how law works, or bad faith attempts to exaggerate the strength of their position, or something else entirely).

"The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election."

That would indicate they had little or no evidence of it.

You're just splitting hairs. Regardless, my point still stands - they didn't find that he conspired/colluded/plotted with Russia and Trump is in the clear.

Collude(verb): cooperate in a secret or unlawful way in order to deceive or gain an advantage over others.

'Conspire' is a synonym. My choice of words is fine. You're being a pedant (which more or less sums up your whole post).

I'll give you the second one, however (where I said it stated they didn't have enough evidence to pursue a prosecution for obstruction of justice - 'inferred' might have been a better word), but again, it still says that the report did not conclude Trump commited obstruction of justice, and that the special council won't prosecute. This would infer they probably don't have enough evidence to make a successful prosecution, because if they did, it would have said something a bit more damning than essentially: "The report couldn't/didn't draw a conclusion, they aren't pursuing a prosecution, it's up to the Attorney General if he wants to." In other words, they didn't have enough to say Trump did anything illegal, but the AG can have a stab at it if he wants. Honestly it doesn't sound like they had enough on him.

You can cling to the fantasy that they will miraculously find the evidence they need later on, but I very much doubt they will.

Full Mueller report is out. let me summarized this for you all

1. Trump did not actively collude with the russians but members of his campaign knew and did not take the necessary steps to stop it as per norm.

2. Trump believed that the investigation will find out shady stuff he did in the past which he believes to be crimes and on 11 occasions tried to obstruct justice.

3. The special counsel could not recommend an indictment of Trump on the basis of obstruction of justice because it would "add burden to the president's capacity of ruling" and hence just left it hanging ( left it to congress to impeach him?? )

4. The investigation spilled into 14 ongoing investigations at state level of Trump's past crimes that are not related to russia collusion.