ChiGoose

I would love to take up the issue with Barr for misleading the country with his summary. If you know how to get in touch with him, let me know. In the meantime, I would suggest reading the actual report, or even the executive summaries of the actual report written by the guy who wrote the report. The further away you get from the actual text, the easier it is for pundits and political actors to mislead.

I'm just a man, typing on a message board, asking people to please read primary sources

That is a blatant and intentional misreading of the facts that leads to the sowing of seeds of distrust. Collusions isn't a crime and Mueller was not investigating collusion. Mueller found ample evidence of obstruction but could not charge a sitting president.

I think these are important questions and I will do my best to answer them. I will note that political news coverage is often of poor quality and legal news coverage is almost certainly to be of extremely poor quality. Therefore, coverage of a legal investigation with political implications is generally going to be terrible. Therefore, I want to stick to the facts of the investigation and not how it was covered or received by different camps. We can all pull hysterical coverage from various sources over the last several years to try to prove a point but that would just devolve into talking past each other instead of having a real, fact-based conversation. 1. [W]hy hasn't anyone been indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced for any crime or campaign violation if the investigation produced evidence of illegal activities such as conspiring with a foreign entity against the government? The biggest thing that differs in the Mueller report versus how it was covered in the public was the scope. Mueller notes that his remit from from the Department of Justice (DoJ) was to "investigate 'the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,' including any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign." (Mueller Report, p1) In accordance with this instruction, Mueller made the determination that, since "collude" is not a crime under federal law, he would apply the framework of conspiracy. Under federal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between to or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement's goal. (https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/conspiracy) So if you're reading through this, you can probably start to see where the problem for the Left is going to be. Mueller saw his scope as limited to what the Russians were doing and whether or not the Trump campaign had an actual agreement with them to commit crimes. He did not believe he had authority to look into Trump's potential business crimes or essentially any crimes that weren't a conspiracy with the Russians unless he happened to stumble upon them when looking into a potential conspiracy with the Russians. As we know, Mueller was unable to establish that the Trump Campaign had an actual agreement with the Russians to interfere in the campaign. Which should not have been surprising because they did not need a formal agreement to coordinate with and benefit from the Russians. So even though Mueller found ample evidence of the Trump Campaign meeting with Russians, soliciting help from them, benefitting from them, and providing them with information, if there was no actual agreement to a specific end (interfering in an election), Mueller did not feel he could charge a conspiracy. Despite this, Mueller did secure 8 guilty pleas and a trial conviction based on crimes he did encounter during the investigation. Additionally, he spends over 100 pages documenting the connections between the Trump Campaign and the Russians. Importantly, Mueller documented in Volume II that Trump himself had almost certainly broken the law by obstructing justice on several occasions. However, given that he felt he could not charge a sitting president, he declined to formally accuse Trump. This clearly reads as a roadmap to impeachment, especially since he cites to the Constitution's impeachment clause when explaining his rationale. Yet, it seems that the Dems, knowing that they could never secure a win in the Senate no matter the facts, declined to take Mueller up on this and let Trump skate because they felt it wouldn't help their political position to get bogged down in a losing fight. 2. How can something that goes on for over a year and spends millions of dollars on legal fees and lawyers and interviews that produced tons of evidence just get a readout and then gets dropped? Lots of reasons, but mostly: politics. Democratic leadership was happy to hand off most of the investigative responsibilities to Mueller. While the Senate did have a serious intelligence investigation going on, the House was controlled by Republicans who did not want a real investigation so they let Devin Nunes just mess around to distract people. When Pelosi took the gavel in 2018, she likely had a mistaken idea of what Mueller was up to, assumed he had the goods and was happy to not launch a serious investigation into other potential crimes herself because it would be seen as partisan and cause her problems. When the report finally came out in 2019, it was preceded by a misleading summary by Attorney General Bill Barr, allowing Trump and his team to claim total vindication before the actual text was available to refute that claim. There were days of Trump's team being elated and Dems being dejected. By the time we had the actual facts, the narrative was already set. The Senate's bipartisan investigation actually did note that the Trump campaign had regular contact with Russians, expected to benefit from them and posed a threat to US national security. But the full report came out in late 2020, too late to make any major noise. 3. My read of the summary was Mueller's conclusion that they might be innocent but we can't prove it. A conclusion that defies the basic premise of the entire legal system. A presumption of innocence and the need to prove guilt, not disprove it. Mueller essentially concludes that, even though the Trump campaign was in constant contact with the Russians and benefitting from them, the elements of a conspiracy were not met since they did not have an actual agreement to interfere in the election. He also mentions that he had the power to say if he felt that Trump was innocent of obstruction of justice, but that the evidence did not support such a statement. Still, he declines to formally accuse Trump of a crime because he believes he cannot indict Trump as a sitting president, and therefore Trump would not have a chance to clear his name at trial. Instead, he points out all of the areas that Trump met the elements of obstruction of justice and noted that the Constitutional remedy at hand was impeachment (this was important in his eventual Congressional testimony as he stated that a president can be indicted after they leave office). Then, the Democratic Party did its most favorite thing in the whole world: shoot itself in the foot. With the exception of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Dems misplayed this entire thing from day one. Instead of having their own investigations into things that may be on the outskirts of Mueller's scope or other potential crimes (like Trump's business dealings), laying the groundwork for establishing (through their investigations and Mueller's) that Trump is corrupt and dangerous while building the case for impeachment, they sat on their hands and were shocked when they realized that Mueller wasn't going to do their work for them. At that point, they had failed to prep the country for an impeachment trial (even if they knew they would lose in the Senate), the winds had shifted against them and they were left standing there with no idea what to do next. The bottom line is that the Trump campaign worked with, and benefitted from the Russians for years but because they did not meet all of the elements of a conspiracy, Mueller did not charge them. Mueller clearly felt that Trump should have been impeached at least for the obstruction but the Dems blew that opportunity because their leadership is generally incompetent.

The jury in the Manafort trial had MAGA people on it but they still convicted him. The idea that because someone donated to a specific campaign that they cannot be impartial in a jury trial is something people claim because they're grasping at straws. Do we have transcripts of the jury selection process? I would much rather look at primary sources than accuse someone of bias because it furthers a particular political angle. If Durham was concerned about particular members of the jury, he could have moved to strike them before the onset of the trial. Jury trials routinely have guardrails put on them in terms of what evidence is allowed and what is not. It is part of the procedure for the attorneys to file motions in limine to argue that certain evidence should or should not be made available for the jury. Are you alleging that the judge made a material error in one of his rulings? And if so, which one and why? In any case, if that's true, Durham should appeal the case. We also know that Clinton did not start the Russia investigation. This is spelled out pretty clearly in the Mueller report. I know I've mentioned this before, but I seriously recommend reading the Mueller report for yourself if you are interested in this topic. It has tons of evidence and primary sources but it is frequently taken out of context and straight up lied about by political actors to further their own agendas.

So what's next for the Durham investigation? If Susman was supposed to be the first block in unraveling some big conspiracy and bring it all down, what comes next after Sussman is acquitted? Really seems like the special counsel investigation into the special counsel is turning into a real nothingburger. Maybe they need a special counsel to investigate the special counsel that investigated the special counsel so we'll finally know what really happened.

Sussman found not guilty.

Whoops! Good catch. I meant not possible. I will edit.

For people looking for possible solutions to reducing gun deaths (elimination is not possible but we should strive to save lives where we can), I find this article from 2017 to have a helpful breakdown of potential solutions that are backed by data: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/06/opinion/how-to-reduce-shootings.html Some highlights of potential solutions: I think most of these are fairly reasonable starting points. And we already banned bump stocks in 2019, so that's one box already checked. I would also suggest de-gendering the domestic abuse one. Women can be abusers as well and should be subject to the same restrictions as men.

And those people are not worth saving? People who survive suicide attempts rarely end up dying via suicide. And most methods of suicide have a completion rate of 10% or less. Suicide attempts by guns are 90%+ effective.

Look at the dates on some of those. 1907? What are we even talking about here? Is this supposed to make a convincing point about something? If you want real numbers, let's look at per capita gun deaths by country. If you notice, the average is 6.5 but the US is almost double that. Despite being a rich nation, we are lumped in with violent Latin American countries instead of our economic peers. Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-deaths-by-country We can try to cherry pick the data all we want but when you look at how often Americans are killed by guns, it far exceeds what you would expect to see in a developed nation. If you're fine with that because of whatever reason, that's up to you. But let's not pretend it's something it's not. We know it's solvable because other nations have solved it. Canada's rate is 2.05. France's is 2.83. Australia is 1.04. We can look to any of these countries to figure out how to reduce the gun deaths here, but that would require us actually wanting to save lives.

Other countries have people with mental illness. Other countries have people using social media. But most countries don't have the sheer number of gun deaths that we do. The difference is the prevalence and ease of access to guns. The Democratic Party has long advocated for stronger gun control laws. And while I don't think the policies they advocate are always optimal (banning AR-15s won't really do much), they at least try to make it harder for these killings to happen. The Republican Party not only opposes and blocks those attempts, but also promotes a gun-forward culture where we have things like the governor of Texas complaining because his state was in second in gun sales, not first. I am not politicizing the issue, the politicians are. Guns are dangerous tools and should be treated as such. We should make it harder for people to obtain them and promote a healthy and responsible culture around them.

Look, D’Souza is a known hack and grifter. He believes that Trump voters are stupid and holds nothing but contempt for them. He went to elite schools and lives the life of a coastal elite in NYC. He holds contempt for people who didn’t go to the Ivy League schools. He thinks everyone who buys the crap he sells are fools. He put out this movie not because he actually believes it proves what it states but because he believed he could make a lot of money telling people their conspiracies are true; that the only reason that an incredibly unpopular president who had spent a year mishandling a pandemic lost re-election because of a shadowy cabal that executed a wide ranging plot would be impossible to pull off in reality. If someone came to you and said that Occupy Democrats had a movie that proved that Trump was Putin’s puppet and you could see it for $30, I don’t think it would be reasonable for people to expect you to watch it.

My god, if you’re going to quote known grifter Dinesh D’Souza but then judge others on their information sources… I was honestly going to offer to watch 2,000 Miles so long as I could do so for free without any money going to the conman, but I’m growing increasingly convinced that even if I did, you would not believe anything I said if it didn’t support your worldview.

I don’t think it’s arrogant to look at all of these killings, especially since Sandy Hook, see basically nothing being done to stop it, and reach the conclusion that some people just don’t care to fix it. If I hurt your feelings, then I offer you my thoughts and prayers. I anticipate that this should be sufficient.

I would just as soon give a grifter like D’Souza money to watch his film as I would expect others to give money to Occupy Democrats. Grifters gonna grift.

Generally? The GOP electeds. They hide in their “thoughts and prayers” but if they actually wanted people not to die they would do some fairly popular things like mandated background checks, and common sense gun laws. Instead, they will say how awful it is while deflecting and saying it’s all mental illness despite the fact that every country has people with mental illness but no other rich country has these problems.

If they claim to not to be ok with it but oppose anything that would potentially prevent it, then I wouldn’t say they were actually not ok with it. If the ongoing indiscriminate killing of children isn’t enough for someone to actually want to stop it, then they are actually ok with it.

I’m actually glad to talk about suicides because pro-gun people often focus the conversation on mass shootings and/or mental health when more gun deaths are due to suicide or accident. People who survive suicide attempts generally do not die by suicide. And aside from guns, most suicide attempts fail. So people who cut themselves or take a bunch of pills generally survive and end up not taking their own lives. But suicide attempts with guns are far more likely to be fatal. While some methods may have completion rates of 5-20%, suicide attempts by gun are 85%+ effective. Meaning that, in most cases, the person would survive and end up not killing themselves but because they had a gun, they did not survive and did not get that second chance. When I look at the actual facts, what I hear you saying is my brother’s death doesn’t count or matter. Because he had a diagnosed mental condition but there were no laws that prevented him from buying a gun and blowing his brains out, that he doesn’t matter to you. And there are things I want to say about that but would probably get me kicked from the board. And in terms of my point about Chicago, I would suggest you consult a map and see where the most populous state in the city is versus the state lines. This isn’t hard. We are just making excuses to be ok with people dying.

Here ya go: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3828709/ The more guns, the more people die by guns. Who could have possibly guessed? Also, as someone who current lives in Chicago, the trope about gun laws here is very misinformed. ~60% of guns involved in gun crimes in Chicago come from out of state. Which means that Illinois and Chicago have somewhat effective gun laws but neighboring states do not. If we had a nationwide standard that kept guns out of the hands of criminals, Chicago would have fewer gun crimes. Source: https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/national-international/chicago-gun-trace-report-2017/27140/?amp Anyone who uses Chicago as an example of why gun control doesn’t work is actually accidentally arguing for a national gun control law.

If competent people with guns prevented shootings, that would be easy to prove. Just make a chart: one axis is gun ownership per capita, and the other is gun deaths per capita. If your assertion is correct, then the more guns in a location, the fewer gun deaths. Because everybody knows that people have guns and so they don't commit crimes. Except, when you do this, you see that the more guns in an area, the more guns deaths in that area. The presence of guns has a positive correlation with the number of people who are killed by guns. There are ways to mitigate this, but we are an unserious society who are happy to have kids killed in school because it fits our narrative.

I don't think @BillStime is being fair to the GOP. Check out all of the helpful policies the party advocated for on its last party platform that would greatly improve the lives of Americans across the country: Oh wait...

Cool story, except this would result in more gun deaths, not fewer.

Quantity =/= Quality

All countries have people with mental illness. Only America makes it easy to get guns. Only America has astronomical rates of death by guns. There is a line between banning all guns (which I oppose) and what we are doing today (basically nothing) that will save thousands of lives but we just do not care about human life in this country enough to do anything.