It’s images of text with no actual text included, which is why the file is so huge. Some of the pages are crooked, and there are some dirt spots. It really looks like the redacted report was printed onto paper, then scanned back into a computer to make the PDF. Probably to make double-plus-sure that no shenanigans happen to peek behind the redactions.
The “searchable” versions use some kind of OCR assistance (when I copy/paste text out of my copy, I can find some OCR-style typos).
My favorite bit is how some of the section headings themselves are redacted. Does one have to go to a special school to learn how to look that shady? Yikes.
Isn’t every “Harm to Ongoing Matter” redaction damning all by itself?
Presumably, they all point to things that are “not good” for each of those many other investigations. If they helped the targets of those, there wouldn’t be any reason to redact them as causing harm.
IE: This report doesn’t say you stole candy from a baby, it’s been redacted because there’s an ongoing investigation into you stealing candy from a baby. If the report said you never steal candy from a baby, it wouldn’t need to be redacted…
It seems like, if he’s going to be given a pass, it’s only because many of his obstruction attempts were blocked by those around him. Is “attempted obstruction” a thing?*
(*Edit: Yeah, apparently it is. According to John Dean, former WH counsel, it’s an “endeavor” statute - trying to obstruct justice is a crime. And he sure as hell did it.)
And it seems pretty clear, from an intelligence point of view, that Trump and his campaign absolutely colluded with agents of the Russian government, but that’s not the same as a criminal conspiracy, which is what Mueller was looking at.
It seems increasingly clear that Mueller, unable to prosecute a president, always intended this report for congress, who should be able to get an unredacted version (at least, if the law still mattered, which it doesn’t).
barr’s summary - no intent to obstruct:
trump - I didn’t know that was the speed limit, so I wasn’t breaking the law.
barr - I’ll buy that, you’re free to go
I have to admit, I am so sick and tired of this continuing shit show that I don’t really care what the report says because:
it won’t change my mind that Trump is a supremely incompetent jackass who shouldn’t have ever been elected in the first place; and
Whatever the Mueller report does say, it won’t change anything, and we’ll still have to put up with him for at least two more years, only more so because he’s running to be re-elected.
And I am ashamed to admit that in my mind, the best case scenario is that Trump simply keels over from a massive coronary.
“Mueller referred evidence of potential criminal activity to other law enforcement authorities in 14 cases. We’ve only known about two of those, Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, whose prosecution was referred to the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, and Greg Craig, a former Obama White House lawyer, who faces an August trial on charges he concealed work he did for a pro-Russian Ukrainian government. The other 12 cases referred by Mueller are blacked out in the report.”
Page 38 of volume 2- “Chris Christie: the accidental voice of reason.”
According to Christie, at one point during the lunch the President said “Now that we fired Flynn, the Russia thing is over.” Christie laughed and responded “No way.” He said “this Russia thing is far from over” and “we’ll be here on Valentines Day 2018 talking about this.” The President said, “what do you mean? Flynn met with the Russians. That was the problem. I fired Flynn. It’s over.” Christie recalled responding that based on his experience both as a prosecutor and as someone who had been investigated, firing Flynn will not end the investigation. Christie said there was no way to make an investigation shorter, but a lot of ways to make it longer.The President asked Christie what he meant, and Christie told the President not to talk about the investigation even if he was frustrated at times.
first, the Office did not obtain admissible
evidence likely to meet the government’s burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these
individuals acted “willfully,” i.e., with general knowledge of the illegality of their conduct;
The Concord (IRA) conspiracy prosecution hinges on the defendants having “general knowledge of the illegality of their conduct”. It seems Mueller has a lower bar for Trumpies.
Interesting how many of the redactions can’t hold up in this age of information. Parts of the report were already available from other sources so people could figure out what those particular redactions were talking about.
Some other parts people figured out because they redacted the name from an alphabetized list, so there was really only one or maybe two people it could be referencing.
