Speaker 1: Hmm, what's obstructing my justice? Says I'm Robert Evans. This
Speaker 1: is Behind the Bastards. Uh. There's actually a special crossover
Speaker 1: episode of of Behind the Bastards and the Daily Zeite Guist,
Speaker 1: and I have Jack O'Brien and Miles Gray on with
Speaker 1: me where we're calling this Behind the zeit Geist Daily Bastards.
Speaker 1: I'm eating right now because yeah, rip ourselves away from
Speaker 1: the microphones just to come back to other microphones, and
Speaker 1: we don't even have time to eat because we need
Speaker 1: to make that tent. I thought it was an entire
Speaker 1: pie that you're eating because it's in the pie ten,
Speaker 1: but it's not. We're talking about the Mueller Report today. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So yesterday Thursday, the Mueller Report dropped like a Beyonce album,
Speaker 1: but with with a lot of lead times and not
Speaker 1: out of nowhere. Uh. And I read all of it
Speaker 1: over the course of like I don't know, nine or
Speaker 1: ten hours or so, and I took eleven thousand words
Speaker 1: of notes and now I'm going to read them all
Speaker 1: to you guys, and words of a lot of its
Speaker 1: copy paste. So what would that be like a Rihanna
Speaker 1: album who drops their album with lots of lead times,
Speaker 1: like actually years of lead time. Dr Dre doctors, we
Speaker 1: still don't have detox. I have thought that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of similarities between Dre and Robert Mueller. Oh absolutely, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: they're both O g s that is true. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: ones and O g ones A G man Yeah, ones
Speaker 1: and O g ones in original g but not the
Speaker 1: best in the bids for nothing folks, yea what just
Speaker 1: general thoughts on Robert Mueller's prose style? Uh? Not not great?
Speaker 1: Could he use an editor? Like a lot of buried leads? Um,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you know copy editing is good, but
Speaker 1: maybe maybe somebody to kick it up. A notch present
Speaker 1: presentation of ideas could have been a little more effective,
Speaker 1: could have been a little bit more fun. That was
Speaker 1: a sprite, not a beer. Huh sure, Miles, Yeah, Miles
Speaker 1: has a sprite. But I have a bunch of throwing
Speaker 1: bagels because this is going to be a frustrated comes
Speaker 1: armed as per usual, he will throw in bagels, all right,
Speaker 1: I guess before we get into it, well, have you guys,
Speaker 1: have you guys read much of the report? I've read
Speaker 1: probably many articles with excerpts that would amount to maybe
Speaker 1: fifteen pages. Okay, by reading are based at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did a lot of that too. I want to
Speaker 1: start by talking about William Barr, the current Attorney General
Speaker 1: a little bit before we we get into the report itself.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about him much in the report because
Speaker 1: he's not in the report, but I think a little
Speaker 1: bit of his background is useful for understandable context of
Speaker 1: his behavior, a track record of the context that he
Speaker 1: gave us. Yeah, I would, I would call him the lies,
Speaker 1: yeah absolutely, yeah. Yeah. But like this is like in
Speaker 1: his playbook. Yeah, this is home runs. He's done like this. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in nine is Assistant Atorney General William Barr drew
Speaker 1: some ire for authoring a legal opinion that stated that
Speaker 1: the FBI had the right to abduct people in foreign
Speaker 1: countries without the approval of the governments of those host countries.
Speaker 1: When this became an issue before Congress, Uh, he was
Speaker 1: asked to hand over a full copy of that memo,
Speaker 1: and he refused and instead offered to summarize its key points. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got a got a playbook that hasn't changed in
Speaker 1: thirty years. Um. According to former d o J legal
Speaker 1: advisor Ryan Goodman, Bar quote admitted some of the most
Speaker 1: consequential and incendiary conclusions from the actual opinion, which forced
Speaker 1: Congress to issue with subpoena to find that opinion. If
Speaker 1: you may notice, as with some words switched around the
Speaker 1: same thing that happened with the Muller reports, very interesting
Speaker 1: nine abducting back then Noriega, Oh got I gotta go,
Speaker 1: who I think was a cool dude. He was not
Speaker 1: looking at that at all. Yeah. I mean, well, it's
Speaker 1: funny because like before this, right, Bush was trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to get Noriega out, and first like, oh,
Speaker 1: it would be it would be tight if the Panamanians
Speaker 1: like overthrew them, but you know, I don't want to.
Speaker 1: I don't want to tell what to do, and they
Speaker 1: being like, please do something, please do something, please do something.
Speaker 1: We'll help you. Maybe we won't. And then they failed.
Speaker 1: There was like a failed to attempt. And then it
Speaker 1: got to the point where I'm sure they were just like,
Speaker 1: al right, how the fund do we just like send
Speaker 1: our people into we just abduct him? Yea. William Barr says, yes, yeah. Now.
Speaker 1: In during Barr's first run as Attorney General, the news
Speaker 1: broke that the Reagan administration had kind of secretly given
Speaker 1: billions of dollars in loans and military aid to Saddam.
Speaker 1: Who's saying when we went to war with Saddam, Who's saying,
Speaker 1: some of Bush's officials doctored documents in order to hide
Speaker 1: this fact. Six separate congressional investigations were convened to look
Speaker 1: into the matter. The House Judiciary Committee asked bar to
Speaker 1: launch an independent council investigation, and he said no, which
Speaker 1: is the first time that an Attorney general ever refused
Speaker 1: such a request. Huh yeah, wow, So already we're not
Speaker 1: We're not gonna be looking at that setting new precedence.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the one thing he has a good
Speaker 1: track record of. William Barr is the homie if you
Speaker 1: if you get him in, he's gonna do like literally whatever.
Speaker 1: Need you know that episode of Breaking Bad when when
Speaker 1: Jesse's girlfriend o'ds on heroin and they call in Mike
Speaker 1: to to clean up the body and everything so that
Speaker 1: when the cops come nothing incriminating will be found. William
Speaker 1: Barr is the that guy of attorney general's. Yeah he's
Speaker 1: like Mike, Yeah, yeah, he's the Mike, but with like
Speaker 1: less no with as much dirty work. Yeah, he's good
Speaker 1: at dirty work, far less likable. Ye, William Erman trout
Speaker 1: because we all we all wound up on Mike's side
Speaker 1: by the end of Breaking Bad. But but I'm not
Speaker 1: on William Barr side. Yeah. I mean the other thing though,
Speaker 1: yet with the whole memo was just like the level
Speaker 1: of how he first said it was like, it only
Speaker 1: has to do with domestic law. It was like, you
Speaker 1: don't need it doesn't matter because it's just about domestic law.
Speaker 1: And to know that when they actually got it, they're like,
Speaker 1: this has to do with so much more. This is
Speaker 1: this is all of you can be the Fourth Amendment,
Speaker 1: like all these good things. Yeah, he he left some
Speaker 1: critical stuff out, and hearing all that, you won't be
Speaker 1: surprised to hear that bar summary of the Mueller report
Speaker 1: left out some key facts as well, not just key
Speaker 1: facts about the president. For one thing that omitted a
Speaker 1: fascinating little crime drama wherein Eric Prince and Michael Flynn
Speaker 1: tried to get their grubby little hands on Hillary Clinton's
Speaker 1: near mythical thirty thousand deleted Clinton emails. Um, this is
Speaker 1: like one of the most interesting parts of the whole
Speaker 1: document to me, because the report reveals that Trump essentially
Speaker 1: repeatedly asked Flynn General Flynn to acquire Hillary Clinton's emails
Speaker 1: for him, and one of the through lines of the
Speaker 1: report is that Flynn is literally the only loyal person
Speaker 1: who was ever in Donald Trump's orbit, and so unlike
Speaker 1: unlike everyone else who works for Trump who was solely
Speaker 1: interested in themselves, Flynn was like, yeah, I mean, my
Speaker 1: boss wants these emails. I'm gonna try and get these
Speaker 1: motherfucking emails. Um. He just needed someone to give him orders. Again.
Speaker 1: He loves getting orders. He loves getting orders. Um. So
Speaker 1: he worked with a lady named Barbara Ledean who was
Speaker 1: a former GOP staffer. Uh, and she actually managed to
Speaker 1: get her hands on what she believed was a tranche
Speaker 1: of Clinton emails. And that's when Michael Flynn teamed up
Speaker 1: with our old buddy Echo Papa Eric Prince, and he
Speaker 1: funded the effort to verify the Clinton emails, which showed
Speaker 1: that they were in fact bullshit made to trick the
Speaker 1: g O p UM. So that's that's neat, fun little
Speaker 1: you get a fun little ninety minutes of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you cut that into a well yeah. Um, So, as
Speaker 1: I said, I read the whole report in one like blurred,
Speaker 1: frenzied eight hour or nine hour whatever session. I'm not
Speaker 1: a lawyer, and I won't pretend to have understood all
Speaker 1: the different arguments about constitutional law that the report makes.
Speaker 1: That kind of my eyes glaze over on that. Well,
Speaker 1: that's why you have me here, That's why I have
Speaker 1: you here, famous constitutional law scholars. Gray Um. But it
Speaker 1: does seem from everything else I read about it that
Speaker 1: one of the things Mueller makes very clear at the
Speaker 1: end is that he believes that Trump's status as the
Speaker 1: president does not make him immune to charges of obstruction
Speaker 1: of justice. And he also makes it clear that the
Speaker 1: crime of of conspiracy with the Russian government does not
Speaker 1: have to have been committed for Trump to have committed
Speaker 1: obstruction of justice by trying to obstruct the whole which
Speaker 1: was the sort of logic William Barr was using. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like that's like the most repeat like the refrain
Speaker 1: if if this is one page long song, like like
Speaker 1: if this is American pie, the the refrain of the
Speaker 1: song the bye Bye Miss American pieline is Mueller saying,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying Trump didn't commit crimes. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: Trump crimes, like, very very clearly and repeatedly. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like one of the most commonly repeated things I
Speaker 1: know because William Barr, famous truth teller, he said, well
Speaker 1: that the whole conspiracy thing wasn't a crime, so like,
Speaker 1: how can you obstruct something's not even crimes? It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, and he was mad. Fuck. So it is
Speaker 1: remarkable how much of it is just like and this
Speaker 1: is like Chris Christie repeatedly told Donald Trump. Like that's
Speaker 1: another thing that's in there is Christie repeatedly saying just
Speaker 1: don't do anything, Just don't do anything. He didn't collude
Speaker 1: with the Russian government, Just don't do anything and it'll
Speaker 1: be fine. And Trump being like, well, fuck, Chris Christie,
Speaker 1: that's what the that It's like. Really, it's one of
Speaker 1: the weird things about this document is the people who
Speaker 1: come across as like paragons of sanity, and one of
Speaker 1: them is Chris Christie, which is how you know you're
Speaker 1: in a point. So sorry, I'm just going back to
Speaker 1: the beginning here. Um yeah, I felt like we didn't
Speaker 1: need to read after so I read the New York
Speaker 1: Post cover that said the Mueller Report, Trump cleaned, no
Speaker 1: crimes committed, dem hoax destroyed. And then I read the
Speaker 1: bar summary. Why would we need to go any deeper
Speaker 1: than that? I don't well, I don't know. Jack. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about that for over. Let's say like an hour
Speaker 1: and a half something like that, you know, alright, Uh,
Speaker 1: let's get into it. So another big reveal, uh, concerned
Speaker 1: the infamous P tape, first revealed to the public, much
Speaker 1: on the line Steal dossier. The P tape was apparently
Speaker 1: a major subject of discussion among people close to Trump
Speaker 1: and the weeks before the election. Two weeks prior to
Speaker 1: the election, a Russians, Russian businessman texted this to Michael Cohen, quote,
Speaker 1: stop the flow of tape from Russia, but not sure
Speaker 1: if there's anything else, just so you know, dot dot
Speaker 1: dot Yeah, flow tapes. Yeah, the flow of tape. And
Speaker 1: this is before the election, before this is before any
Speaker 1: anyone out in the world was talking about tapes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: BuzzFeed had not dropped I think, um, John McCain had
Speaker 1: taken the report, had like made a note of the
Speaker 1: report to the FBI because he'd seen it, but like
Speaker 1: BuzzFeed hadn't dropped it. Yet um, Now, the Special Council
Speaker 1: apparently talked to this Russian businessman whose name I just
Speaker 1: cannot pronounce and I'm not going to trumpet find it.
Speaker 1: Russian businessman who explained to Cohen that these tapes were
Speaker 1: compromising tapes of Trump's Trump rumored to be held by
Speaker 1: persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group,
Speaker 1: which had helped host the two Miss Universe pageant in Russia.
Speaker 1: Uh this guy insisted that the tapes were fake when
Speaker 1: he was talked to by the Special Council, so he
Speaker 1: told the Muhler investigation that the p tapes were faked,
Speaker 1: but Cohen did not know that at the time. So
Speaker 1: that that's the most seeing stuff up front. The rest
Speaker 1: of what we have to talk about. It's going to
Speaker 1: be a lot less organized because we're basically just going
Speaker 1: through my raw notes, some of which will be sensible
Speaker 1: and some of which may not be, since by the
Speaker 1: end of the read I was pretty stir crazy and
Speaker 1: also very very inebriated. So this will this will get
Speaker 1: less logical as we go along. All right, Yeah, looking
Speaker 1: at that doc, we're using wing dings or web dings.
Speaker 1: Are there other thoughts, Oh wow, and you know what,
Speaker 1: just go on ahead, man. So, uh, the the report
Speaker 1: starts off with what, under normal, sane circumstances would be
Speaker 1: a pretty damning sentence, the Russian government interfered in the
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.
Speaker 1: Um Again, like that's one of the first lines. But
Speaker 1: compared to based on everything else, it almost doesn't even
Speaker 1: make an impact if we're living in a rational universe
Speaker 1: where the Trump administration was treated like other presidential administrations.
Speaker 1: The fact that that is the beginning of the report
Speaker 1: and the President has been saying for years, we don't
Speaker 1: know if Russia. Clue, we don't know if it was Russia,
Speaker 1: and just constantly equivocating and you know, just standing for Russia. Basically,
Speaker 1: that would be a big story. People would be like,
Speaker 1: huh so now he knows, Like, now we know he
Speaker 1: was wrong. And the MULTA report clearly says that they
Speaker 1: intervened on his behalf and he's still lying on their behalf.
Speaker 1: That's just weird. Yeah, the most the question I had
Speaker 1: most going through this first part of the report that
Speaker 1: talks about Russian medaling is just like, this feels like
Speaker 1: an act of war. Like, not that I'm in favor
Speaker 1: of a war with Russia, but like this feels like
Speaker 1: a digital pearl Harbor. Um. And it's pretty pretty shocking.
Speaker 1: A lot of this stuff about the Internet Research Agency
Speaker 1: was out from pre prior subpoenas and whatnot, but seeing
Speaker 1: it all put together here is um, it's really shocking.
Speaker 1: The report makes it clear that the Russians definitely wanted
Speaker 1: Trump to win and that they took substantial effort to
Speaker 1: ensure that he did. Describes the social media campaign that
Speaker 1: they ran as have favored Trump and disparaged Hillary Clinton. However, quote,
Speaker 1: the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump
Speaker 1: campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its
Speaker 1: election interference activities. Um. So the the reports are still
Speaker 1: care for to note that in a statement that the
Speaker 1: investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean that
Speaker 1: there was no evidence of those facts. So he's saying,
Speaker 1: we didn't find hard proof that they conspired with the
Speaker 1: Russian government. However, we did find some evidence that they
Speaker 1: conspired with the Russian government, just not enough to make
Speaker 1: it a chargeable offense. He says that, specifically in reference
Speaker 1: to the collusion immediately after. Yeah, yeah, well and he
Speaker 1: okay taught speaking about collusion. Um. In making the report,
Speaker 1: Muller applied the framework of conspiracy law to determine whether
Speaker 1: quote collective action of multiple individuals constituted a crime rather
Speaker 1: than collusion, because, as he notes, collusion is not actually
Speaker 1: a crime with the definition under federal criminal law. It's
Speaker 1: just a word people have been using. But like, as
Speaker 1: in terms of the FBI's job, it's an irrelevant term.
Speaker 1: Is like, there's no way legally to determine it. Uh.
Speaker 1: Muller notes, in connection with that analysis, we address the
Speaker 1: factual question of whether members of the Trump campaign coordinated,
Speaker 1: a term that appears in the appointment Order, which is
Speaker 1: the order that established a special counsel's investigation with Russian
Speaker 1: election interference activities. Now kind of confusingly, the report notes
Speaker 1: that coordination doesn't have a definition under federal criminal law either,
Speaker 1: but they defined coordination is requiring an agreement tacit or
Speaker 1: express between the campaign and the Russian government. So like
Speaker 1: that's sort of the framework under which Mueller is trying
Speaker 1: to analyze. The goal posts are pretty far out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the goalpost far out, And it's surprising how many field
Speaker 1: goals they still kick. Does that make Does that make sense? Okay,
Speaker 1: good job man, I don't go Uh yeah, no, nice,
Speaker 1: well done. My favorite squad running. Uh. And it's how
Speaker 1: many h field goals they kick and make and they
Speaker 1: have to actually successfully the field goals, not just kick
Speaker 1: them in their landing thirty yards short. Anyways, let's talk
Speaker 1: about the sports analogy a little bit. Um So, under
Speaker 1: this definition, they did not find coordination between the campaign
Speaker 1: and the Russian government. In other words, Russia helping the
Speaker 1: Trump campaign win and the Trump campaign knowingly taking their help,
Speaker 1: which is documented, did not count as coordination because there
Speaker 1: was no tacit or express agreement to interfere with the
Speaker 1: election behind it. Right. It's one of those things where
Speaker 1: it's like they're not saying at Putin, Putin at Russia,
Speaker 1: dot gov or dot are you sorry? I have more respect? Uh?
Speaker 1: With subject headline, Hey, when do we want to drop
Speaker 1: the emails? This is what I'm thinking, because yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really tough when more more or less, it was just
Speaker 1: sort of like, I think the Russians are kind of
Speaker 1: help hooking it up. Yeah, And it was it was
Speaker 1: just like about it. We know that these documents were
Speaker 1: hacked by someone. We know they're going to be released
Speaker 1: through wiki leaks. A lot of people are saying it's Russia.
Speaker 1: Trump just keeps saying, I don't think it's Russia. But
Speaker 1: we know the documents are going to release, and we're
Speaker 1: planning weeks ahead of time how we're going to exploit
Speaker 1: what we know is going to come out in the releases.
Speaker 1: But because it's it's not, it's not Vladipoop picking up
Speaker 1: the phone and being like, hey guys, got some documents,
Speaker 1: Like it's there's there's additional layers of of of obscurement
Speaker 1: to it. Um Now, there are a couple of cases
Speaker 1: where it is almost that direct, which we'll get to.
Speaker 1: Um So, Russia's efforts to influence the election, we're focused
Speaker 1: mostly around either the g r U, which is Russian intelligence,
Speaker 1: or the Internet Research Agency, which is essentially a private
Speaker 1: company that's also part of the Russian intelligence infrastructure. Now
Speaker 1: the i RA, which I will be referring to, even
Speaker 1: though it's kind of confusing because it's not the RA
Speaker 1: just killed a lady up in dairy. Uh. The IRA
Speaker 1: started its infiltration of the US by sending agents over
Speaker 1: in two thousand fourteen. This is implied to be the
Speaker 1: beginning of their election infiltration efforts, but the details are
Speaker 1: all redacted out of harm to ongoing matter. Um, so
Speaker 1: there's a lot that's redacted in like relation to the
Speaker 1: i RA uh and it's later in the document quote.
Speaker 1: IRA employees traveled to the United States in mid two
Speaker 1: thus fourteen on an intelligence gathering mission to obtain information
Speaker 1: and photographs for use in their social media posts. So
Speaker 1: they were taking pictures of Americans and locations that they
Speaker 1: could make more compelling fake people on the Internet to
Speaker 1: pretend to be American activists. That's interesting that actually happened.
Speaker 1: Like they didn't just use Google image search. They went
Speaker 1: and took pictures because they knew that it would be
Speaker 1: possible to trace the images back. And Yeah, when I
Speaker 1: think about what I do online, when I suspect someone
Speaker 1: is like a fake person, it's like the first thing
Speaker 1: you do is do a reverse Google image shirts. So
Speaker 1: they didn't want that to be possible. Yeah uh quote IRA.
Speaker 1: The ai AS operation also included the purchase of political
Speaker 1: advertisements on social media and the names of US persons
Speaker 1: and entities, as well as the staging of political rallies
Speaker 1: inside the United States To organize those rallies, ira A
Speaker 1: employees posed as US grassroots entities and persons and made
Speaker 1: contact with Trump supporters and Trump campaign officials in the
Speaker 1: United States. The investigation did not identify evidence that any
Speaker 1: US persons conspired or coordinated with the i RA. So
Speaker 1: they definitely worked with the ira and supported their efforts,
Speaker 1: but they thought they were there. There's no evidence they
Speaker 1: thought they were anything but US based activists, because there
Speaker 1: were there were even examples of like Trump retweeting through
Speaker 1: some social media site like one of the IRAS protests
Speaker 1: that they were like a pro Trump thing that they
Speaker 1: were gathering. But there's no necessary way that Trump would
Speaker 1: have owned that they weren't just a normal group of supporters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would have required him to do more more research
Speaker 1: into that than anything he's ever done. Yeah, which of
Speaker 1: course he didn't like. Yeah, but I mean, at that point,
Speaker 1: they're operating in a way that's supposed to come off
Speaker 1: as sincere as possible. Um, so we get even like,
Speaker 1: I don't think we needed any more confirmation that Goose
Speaker 1: offer two point oh was the g r U and
Speaker 1: that the d n C leaks were part of a
Speaker 1: Russian government operation. But what, oh, Miles, are you serious? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry man, if you even I thought he was
Speaker 1: some hacker dude in his basement, Yeah, and his mom's
Speaker 1: basement with his blood type of mountain dew blah blah blast. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean they the g r U are big fans
Speaker 1: of Baja blast. That's very well documented. Uh so um.
Speaker 1: It notes that Wiki leaks made its first releases in
Speaker 1: July of two thousand and sixteen, like within days of
Speaker 1: candidate Trump announcing that he hoped Russia would recover emails
Speaker 1: described as missing from a private server. So it like
Speaker 1: essentially it states very clearly that the g r U
Speaker 1: a lot of their hacking efforts to try to get
Speaker 1: her emails started within a couple of days of Trump saying, uh,
Speaker 1: I hope that the Russians get her emails, like he
Speaker 1: said that, and they started certain like spear fishing attempts
Speaker 1: to break into Clinton email accounts. That's new. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is new. It started days after he said that
Speaker 1: was you know, And I didn't take down the exact
Speaker 1: length of time, but I think it was within like
Speaker 1: forty eight hours. It was very close. So it's not
Speaker 1: like so yeah, yeah, before you could have thought, well,
Speaker 1: this is probably ongoing. Rather yeah, he literally said hey,
Speaker 1: I hope you should do that, and they started spearfish.
Speaker 1: I've always thought people pointing to that part, like him
Speaker 1: saying that in his speech, as like evidence that he
Speaker 1: was coordinating or trying to coordinate with Rush. I've always
Speaker 1: taken that as like, yeah, but he was like clearly
Speaker 1: just doing his Trump thing and up there riffing and
Speaker 1: ship like that. But it seemed like that's crazy that
Speaker 1: they were like yes, yes, sir, yes, your honor. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was like, uh yeah, it was. It was pretty nuts.
Speaker 1: Um well I think yeah, I guess even if there
Speaker 1: isn't if you don't think it's they were in direct contact.
Speaker 1: It was definitely that like that was information they needed
Speaker 1: to be like, oh okay, this is this will help. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's It's worth noting that they had penetrated the d
Speaker 1: n C in June, so before Trump ever said anything,
Speaker 1: they had already started getting emails and stuff from the
Speaker 1: d n C. But they SUSPENSI they like specifically started
Speaker 1: spear fishing, which is essentially when you send out a
Speaker 1: bunch of emails to like people whose accounts you want
Speaker 1: to compromise that have things that if they click like
Speaker 1: it might, it'll be like, oh, log in because your
Speaker 1: bank account and then it's a website I created. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they started targeting Clinton aids and people like associated
Speaker 1: with Hillary Clinton UM on a wider scale immediately after that. So, like,
Speaker 1: that's one of the more damning things that's in the
Speaker 1: whole report. UM, even though that's obviously not necessarily evidence
Speaker 1: of coordination, because it's possible and in fact probably that
Speaker 1: what happened is Trump speaking out of his ass because
Speaker 1: it sounded good and tough, and the Russians being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we we can do more of that. Why not? Um,
Speaker 1: But is also pretty damning in a normal political environment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't care about stuff like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's very easy for him to say that, speaking out
Speaker 1: of his ass, because he was just in three meetings
Speaker 1: where people were like, damn it, it would be really
Speaker 1: great for our campaign if we had the Clinton emails.
Speaker 1: And he just goes out there and like says it
Speaker 1: out of his ass and they're like, oh, we probably
Speaker 1: shouldn't say that, but he can because he's a fucking clown,
Speaker 1: and the Russians are like, got it. Like yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's the core. It is effectively coordinating, even if
Speaker 1: it's not like the legal definition of them like getting
Speaker 1: on the phone or like legally uh you know something
Speaker 1: that we can prove. Yeah, well, but he would have
Speaker 1: to know that the Russians were going to do that,
Speaker 1: and that was all part like that it was all
Speaker 1: coming from there, right, rather than like sort of subconsciously
Speaker 1: expressing a desire that they could pick up on. And
Speaker 1: I guess the reason coordinating is so dangerous is because
Speaker 1: you're you know, bringing like one person's illicit like planned
Speaker 1: to attack the Democrats into like alongside yours. That's why
Speaker 1: the like sharing, pulling information and like strategic information that
Speaker 1: Manifort did is so you know that is so significant
Speaker 1: because that's what makes it particularly effective is you're you know,
Speaker 1: targeting the same areas, the same types of people. And
Speaker 1: I mean obviously Trump wanted her email, so it's just yes,
Speaker 1: like it doesn't technically rise to the level, but like
Speaker 1: when you're looking at like what we need to keep
Speaker 1: a sane electoral process, like not being able to jokingly
Speaker 1: tell somebody to help your campaign by doing an illegal thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is probably should be something we take into account. We
Speaker 1: should we should make that be uh illegal in the future.
Speaker 1: It seems like a gap in our current because sixty
Speaker 1: years ago that wouldn't have really been a thing people
Speaker 1: could do, and now it is. Yeah anyway, Um, Sophie's
Speaker 1: giving me the two fingers sign, which means it's time
Speaker 1: for you. Guys are better at transitions. That was amazing one.
Speaker 1: I actually got freaked out when you did that. Haunted. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: by these ghosts. We're back. So uh. One of the
Speaker 1: things that report makes really clear is what a staggering
Speaker 1: success the Internet Research Agency's influence campaign was. Uh Facebook
Speaker 1: at all were no in no way prepared for this,
Speaker 1: and we're essentially perfect victims. Quote. Instagram accounts had hundreds
Speaker 1: of i RA Instagram accounts had hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: US participants. Ira A controlled Twitter accounts separately had tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of followers, including multiple US political figures who
Speaker 1: retweeted ira created content. In November two thousand seventeen, a
Speaker 1: Facebook representative testified that Facebook had identified four hundred seventy
Speaker 1: ira A controlled Facebook accounts that collectively made eighty thousand
Speaker 1: posts between January two thousand fifteen August two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: Facebook estimated the ira A reached as many as a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty six million persons through its Facebook accounts,
Speaker 1: and sixth of January two thousand eighteen, Twitter announced that
Speaker 1: it had identified three thousand, eight hundred fourteen ira A
Speaker 1: controlled Twitter accounts and notified approximately one point four million
Speaker 1: people Twitter believed may have been in contact with an
Speaker 1: ira A controlled account. UM. So, in just keeping all
Speaker 1: that in mind, the hundred and twenty six million people
Speaker 1: who were reached by Facebook like iri controled Facebook accounts alone,
Speaker 1: I want to note that according to Vanity Fair, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a great Vanity Fair article titled you could feed
Speaker 1: all the voters who cost Clinton the election in a
Speaker 1: mid size stadium. Um noting that the three states that
Speaker 1: cost Clinton the victory, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania were lost
Speaker 1: by a margin of seventy nine thousand votes. So when
Speaker 1: we're talking about whether or not Russian influence pedaling could
Speaker 1: have had a significant impact on the outcome of the election,
Speaker 1: that they reached a hundred and twenty six million people
Speaker 1: through Facebook, the election came down to seventy nine thousand votes, right,
Speaker 1: And that's where the part where Manafort exchanging information with
Speaker 1: Constant and Colimnik is so damning too because they go, oh,
Speaker 1: no collusion. Well you have this person that is the
Speaker 1: most damning thing in terms of the campaign. He is
Speaker 1: the manager of the campaign at the time, right, sharing
Speaker 1: internal polling data and strategy and also saying these are
Speaker 1: the battle ground states were really focusing on because we
Speaker 1: think the Clinton campaign is actually taking some of these
Speaker 1: states from for granted, or as the media said, or
Speaker 1: just not putting as much investment in those states and
Speaker 1: the like. Oh and we've also like and from there
Speaker 1: identifying the Clinton defect or demographic of voter who they
Speaker 1: especially needed to get to because once you get those
Speaker 1: people to vote third party or for Trump, great, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've actually whittling down the margins. And again, like you say,
Speaker 1: when it comes to something as just under eighty thousand people,
Speaker 1: uh Rebevans, I have a question for you the um
Speaker 1: why why does he Why would Muller like he acknowledges
Speaker 1: the thing that we're talking about, right, the Constant clinic
Speaker 1: maniport like connections. Yeah, he's very explicit about that. So
Speaker 1: why did that? Because one of the critiques that I've
Speaker 1: seen the likes of Glenn Greenwald bring is that, how
Speaker 1: like do you believe that they didn't come up with
Speaker 1: one single indictment of somebody for Russia Russian collusion? Why
Speaker 1: does that not rise to the level of collusion? Well
Speaker 1: because siractic criminal term? Sorry, why does that not rise
Speaker 1: to the level of criminal conspiracy with Russia? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's a great question. I guess some of
Speaker 1: it is because, like, is it it's not illegal to
Speaker 1: share polling data somebody like he wasn't Manafort was giving
Speaker 1: this guy polling data. He was not in return getting
Speaker 1: a promise We're going to have this agency that you
Speaker 1: may not even know exists at this point attack these
Speaker 1: battleground states to try to shift voters. There's nothing illegal
Speaker 1: about a guy giving like information as the campaign had
Speaker 1: he had control over, he can share that with whoever
Speaker 1: conscting clinic was not like next door to Vladimir Putin
Speaker 1: at the time, working for him or whatever, so that
Speaker 1: maybe did did they have a direct connection between the clinic?
Speaker 1: Clinic and Putin had a direct connection enough to be
Speaker 1: like we can ssider this person to be part of
Speaker 1: the intelligence. Intelligence part of what Manafort is in jail
Speaker 1: for is related to this the acting as an unregistered
Speaker 1: foreign agent UM. Now that's not as a result of
Speaker 1: him sharing data with Colmnic, but as other results of
Speaker 1: things he did with Colimnic, because he was also talking
Speaker 1: with Colimnic about essentially establishing a peace plan that would
Speaker 1: have given Russia backdoor control of eastern Ukraine. So one
Speaker 1: of the things Manafort was doing while he was giving
Speaker 1: the stat at a Colimnic was being like, and we'll
Speaker 1: establish a peace program that gives Russia a large chunk
Speaker 1: of Ukraine, uh in exchange for better relations with Russia.
Speaker 1: Like that was the thing he was working on at
Speaker 1: this time. And that's a lot legally shadier ground to
Speaker 1: stand on, but some of that still ongoing in terms
Speaker 1: of like the the investigation and whatnot. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that man or that Muller repeatedly notes is that, uh,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say exactly what crimes Manafort did or
Speaker 1: didn't commit because he lied about everything and deleted all
Speaker 1: of his text messages and we didn't get them all.
Speaker 1: Like that's a repeated comment that Mueller makes, is that, like,
Speaker 1: there might be more here, but we just don't have
Speaker 1: all of the information from Manafort because he lies constantly
Speaker 1: and deleted everything. Yeah, based on beans based on your
Speaker 1: reading of the Mueller report, do you would you guess
Speaker 1: that Mueller thinks that Russian intervention swung the election or
Speaker 1: is he taking that idea fair seriously enough to say
Speaker 1: that he definitely thinks that's possibility. I would say that
Speaker 1: everything that's in the report says it's definitely a possibility.
Speaker 1: He does not go as far as saying this one
Speaker 1: like that, and that's outside of the scope of his investigation.
Speaker 1: But he spent probably like a good quarter maybe if
Speaker 1: if it's lower of the of the whole report, talking
Speaker 1: about Russian influences actions to swing the election, going in
Speaker 1: detail about them, about what Manafort did, about what the
Speaker 1: Internet Research Agency did, about what Wiki Leaks did. Wiki
Speaker 1: he very makes a very clear case that Wiki Leaks
Speaker 1: coordinated directly with the Russian government to release a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff, Like he goes into exhaustive detail about
Speaker 1: like that. Like one of the first half of the
Speaker 1: Muller Report, Part one is essentially a detailed outline of
Speaker 1: Russian efforts to influence the two thousand and sixteen election. Um,
Speaker 1: And I don't see how you can walk away from
Speaker 1: it thinking anything but that they put a lot of
Speaker 1: work and money into this, and some of them at
Speaker 1: least believe. There's even a statement from some guy close
Speaker 1: to Putin saying Putin one after Trump won the election. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I would say, and I you know, I can't
Speaker 1: get inside Bob Mueller's head, but he definitely takes the
Speaker 1: possibility seriously because he spent like a hundred pages talking
Speaker 1: about it, right. Yeah, so I do want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about the Internet Research Agent. Say,
Speaker 1: there's another little line a little bit further down that
Speaker 1: talks about how those four IRA employees snuck into the country. Uh,
Speaker 1: they lied and pretended to be four friends who had
Speaker 1: met at a party. I just wanted to visit the
Speaker 1: U S Which I'm sorry that was cute. Have you
Speaker 1: have you actually seen times when like Russian spies have
Speaker 1: gone abroad to like do recon and stuff. How obvious
Speaker 1: they look. Well, some people just want to look at
Speaker 1: some cathedrals. Remember those guys in England who were like
Speaker 1: had the most guys who poisoned for the for the listeners.
Speaker 1: You guys who poisoned several people in Russia when they
Speaker 1: were tracked down by members of the site that I
Speaker 1: write for a Belling Cat, and we're found to have
Speaker 1: been agents of the g r U. They claimed to
Speaker 1: be tourists who were just there to look at cathedrals,
Speaker 1: and they looked like comic book versions of like Russian
Speaker 1: like goon like like like the most just like chiseled faces.
Speaker 1: They their expressions were so like angry, and you couldn't
Speaker 1: for a second be like, oh these are cathedral enthusiasts,
Speaker 1: like these are these people just with their scowls look
Speaker 1: like they were either Russian spice or soccer hooligans and
Speaker 1: nothing else. Yeah, yeah they were not, Mike, So I
Speaker 1: can't believe like coming here, they're like, uh in your
Speaker 1: purpose for your visit, we are friends at the United States, Um,
Speaker 1: what's in your backpack? Camera? And sweat those look like
Speaker 1: chair legs is for my marionette class. I must make here.
Speaker 1: I must go uh yeah, just like a wild Because
Speaker 1: that was the one thing that really surprised me about
Speaker 1: the because it was with Sergey scrup all right, that
Speaker 1: was those guys when he saw those photos like they're
Speaker 1: not even trying. They're actually not even trying. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you feel I feel like the people at the border
Speaker 1: could like, I don't know, I guess this gets into profiling,
Speaker 1: but like, so you guys are clearly Russian spy. I'm like,
Speaker 1: why is your friend folding up a frying pan with
Speaker 1: his bare hands behind? Look at me like like they
Speaker 1: like they if there was a shooting and I was
Speaker 1: near one of those guys, I would dive behind their
Speaker 1: forehead for cover because it was clearly thick enough to stop.
Speaker 1: Both gods, it's freaky, yeah, you know, and easy, you think,
Speaker 1: like with the way some people finesse things, like with
Speaker 1: the way Kim Jong UN's brother was taken out, like
Speaker 1: they had those people warm more women with poison needles.
Speaker 1: Good plan, right, or just like trying to bring in
Speaker 1: weird people to be like, oh, it's a prey ink
Speaker 1: show or whatever. I don't know if they actually still
Speaker 1: believe that or they'll cover or whatever. But if you
Speaker 1: just need photos, right, you could easily just send your like, oh,
Speaker 1: my cousin studying abroad, just make sure you get all
Speaker 1: the pictures off the SD card when you get back.
Speaker 1: But you know, why am I trying to do their
Speaker 1: job better? For? I mean, you know, Miles, when this
Speaker 1: when this whole podcasting game falls apart. I do think
Speaker 1: you have a future as a Russian contracting spy agents.
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, Boots, babe, let's talk. Man. I'm like, Bobby,
Speaker 1: you got this thing all the way it turned around. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm mature as a Russian spy. You should see his
Speaker 1: pass and to hire this guy. Yeah right, hey, but
Speaker 1: it stopped the flow of tapes, didn't it. It did
Speaker 1: stop the flow of tapes, the fake tapes. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm yeah, the tapes of flow. Um, okay, so not
Speaker 1: the progressive she was my improv teacher. Hey, so uh
Speaker 1: there's a there's fun lines in the report that are
Speaker 1: partially acted. One that says the focus on the US
Speaker 1: presidential campaign continued through two a thousand sixteen and redacted
Speaker 1: two sixteen internal redacted. Reviewing the ira A controlled Facebook
Speaker 1: group Secured Borders, the author criticized the lower number of
Speaker 1: posts dedicated to criticizing Hillary Clinton and reminded the Facebook specialist,
Speaker 1: it is imperative to intensify criticizing Hillary Clinton. UM, just
Speaker 1: very direct. A lot of It's interesting to me how
Speaker 1: much information the Mulla report has on what's going on
Speaker 1: here and a lot of it's redacted, So once we
Speaker 1: get a full version, I expect we're going to like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot in here about the journalists who worked
Speaker 1: with Wiki leaks um and I'm really interested to see
Speaker 1: some of those conversations when they're inevitably revealed, because that's
Speaker 1: one of the things. Yeah, I think, I mean, we
Speaker 1: don't know what's redacted, but it talks about at other
Speaker 1: points that journalists, American journalists worked with Wiki leaks, and
Speaker 1: we're given access to the leaks ahead of time. Wiki
Speaker 1: leaks was getting the leaks directly from the g r
Speaker 1: u um and from you know, as goose Afer. So
Speaker 1: like as I'm interested in in the form those conversations
Speaker 1: took because I suspect some of those journalists kind of
Speaker 1: knew what was going on. So who was coordinating with
Speaker 1: a Facebook expert there that was a that was a
Speaker 1: IRA agent like talking with one of their Facebook experts,
Speaker 1: one of the Facebook Yeah, that's an internal conversation where
Speaker 1: they're talking about you know, we have to intensify criticizing that.
Speaker 1: Funny when your job is that you get an email
Speaker 1: from your manager it's like, hey, we talked about this man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we gotta ramp up the Hillary Clinton stuff, and then
Speaker 1: your job is to go back and be like, oh man,
Speaker 1: she sucks. I mean, I can't believe you're destroying this country. Now.
Speaker 1: Such a bizarre sitcom. Most of the IRAS groups were
Speaker 1: like pretty pretty hardline conservative pro Trump, but they actually
Speaker 1: kind of spun the gamut. There was everything from being
Speaker 1: like their Facebook groups had names like being Patriotics, Stop
Speaker 1: All Immigrants, Secured Boarders, and Tea Party News, but also
Speaker 1: had names like black Matters, Blacktivist, and don't Shoot us. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was an lb LGBT United Group, and then like
Speaker 1: religious groups like United Muslims of America all were actually
Speaker 1: I ray. Facebook groups was pretty big. Yeah, Blacktivist was
Speaker 1: very big. He and they they carried out rallies and
Speaker 1: stuff and got sizeable numbers of people, and they were
Speaker 1: pushing the anti Hillary, like Hillary Clinton's racist line to
Speaker 1: try to get black voters to stop supporting her. UM.
Speaker 1: Now it's noted in here like there was a lot
Speaker 1: of ship last year. I think when it came out
Speaker 1: to the Internet Research Agency, it's been a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars on thirty Facebook advertisements. UM. One of the things
Speaker 1: that's really clear from the Malar report is that they
Speaker 1: really didn't need to do that. Uh, most of their
Speaker 1: engagement seems to have occurred organically without the need to
Speaker 1: put any money down to amplify things at all. Like
Speaker 1: that was almost more icing on the cake, Like just
Speaker 1: the way that social media is structured, they didn't need
Speaker 1: to spend money because they were creating fake news and
Speaker 1: that was that. Well, like they it's easy to if
Speaker 1: you just get to write fiction and pretend it's fact,
Speaker 1: you can create viral something that's gonna go viral because
Speaker 1: you just say the Pope said fun Hillary Clinton. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people Catholics are gonna want to read about Hillary Clinton's
Speaker 1: going to kill your babies. It's controversial. It's something that
Speaker 1: gets people angry, and then like, your job's already done
Speaker 1: for you. You don't need to spend that money like
Speaker 1: they did in some cases, But it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: it was that. That is one of the top rebuttals
Speaker 1: I hear from conservatives or even moderate people who are like,
Speaker 1: this whole thing is a witch hunt. Is well, you're
Speaker 1: telling me thirty something thousand dollars of Facebook money is
Speaker 1: what swung this election, And it's like, no, it was
Speaker 1: the constant churn of like fake stories that were wish
Speaker 1: fulfillment for anybody who like thought about supporting Trump. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing that's really clear is that the IRA was
Speaker 1: a big push behind Hillary Clinton for prison. That hashtag
Speaker 1: like that was one of the big prison. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was one of the big things they pushed started it.
Speaker 1: But like they really they really pushed it. Um, that's
Speaker 1: one of the things they spend money to push, especially
Speaker 1: around the the RNC and the d n c UM.
Speaker 1: So the IRA efforts were two pronged, and they created
Speaker 1: a number of fake persons in groups obviously to like
Speaker 1: act as American citizens who are activists, but they also
Speaker 1: operated a sizeable bot net which would give these fake
Speaker 1: people the impression of being real. Uh. It notes that
Speaker 1: numerous high profile US persons, including former Ambassador Michael McFall,
Speaker 1: Roger Stone, Sean Hannity, Michael Flynn Jr. Retweeted or responded
Speaker 1: to treats tweets posted by IRA controlled accounts. So again, um,
Speaker 1: they had a lot of success holding rallies. Uh. They
Speaker 1: would put US media in touch, like they would basically
Speaker 1: start a rally, get dozens or hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: people to confirm that they were attending. Then they would
Speaker 1: find an actual American volunteer to act as a coordinator
Speaker 1: and make an excuse about how they had to be
Speaker 1: out of the state during the rally, and then they
Speaker 1: would put media in touch with the person who'd volunteered
Speaker 1: to be the coordinator to make it seem like it
Speaker 1: was legitimate grassroots effort. Um. The first rally they executed
Speaker 1: was actually in November of fifteen, and it was a
Speaker 1: Confederate rally. That was the name of the the event. Um.
Speaker 1: These rallies continued after the two sixteen election. There's one
Speaker 1: example of one of the posters here which I actually
Speaker 1: think I saw during the election. It's the Miners for
Speaker 1: Trump ad for a Miners for Trump rally and that
Speaker 1: was an IRA rally. Wow, yeah, I definitely saw that.
Speaker 1: Add not children, no, no, no, like coal mines. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's It's it's pretty wild. One of their groups was
Speaker 1: black or one of their fake people was named black Fist,
Speaker 1: which was purportedly an African American like trying to teach
Speaker 1: other black people how to protect themselves from law enforcement. Um.
Speaker 1: They were really focused on BLM because it was controversial
Speaker 1: because it was something people argued about and thought about
Speaker 1: on the Internet. And I knew if they created one
Speaker 1: like incident that involved Black Lives matter, like the right
Speaker 1: wing media would do the rest. Yeah. That seems to
Speaker 1: have been a huge part of their goal. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so, I'm not gonna go into detail. And every
Speaker 1: time the Trump campaign promoted IRA created material, but the
Speaker 1: report notes that in total, Trump campaign affiliates posted promoted
Speaker 1: dozens of tweets, posts, and other political content created by
Speaker 1: the IRA. So that's cool and again not coordination, not
Speaker 1: coordination in the legal sense. Synergy. Yeah, there's two people
Speaker 1: working at parallel purposes. And that's the thing with conspiracy,
Speaker 1: like you need that agreement ahead of time, you know,
Speaker 1: so it's like it's defined what it is rather than
Speaker 1: being like, yeah, we want the same thing. Well everything happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now that's one chunk of Russia's efforts. The other chunk
Speaker 1: were carried out by the g r U, which is
Speaker 1: again Russian intelligence. Um, and those are the people who
Speaker 1: did the DNC hacks. They did the spear fishing that
Speaker 1: got them access to like a bunch of Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: related emails and stuff. Um, so they had there are
Speaker 1: a couple of different GRU departments that did this. One
Speaker 1: of the things I found interesting is that the g
Speaker 1: RU carried out a moderate size bitcoin mining operation in
Speaker 1: order to buy the computer infrastructure they used to hack
Speaker 1: the d n C. So that's cool. Yeah neat. Oh
Speaker 1: so they were just like had a bunch of computers running.
Speaker 1: They get as much bitcoin to fund their other computer. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was bitcoin. Wasn't bitcoin like a penny stock at
Speaker 1: that time? Like, wasn't it really low? It was? It
Speaker 1: was worth more than that. It was in the hundreds
Speaker 1: I think at least. Yeah. Um so yeah. The the
Speaker 1: spearfishing campaign was incredibly successful in letting the g r
Speaker 1: U access to John Podesta's emails, as well as tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of other messages from other campaign staffers. The
Speaker 1: g RU began planning the releases of this content at
Speaker 1: least as early as April nineteen sixteen, which is when
Speaker 1: one g r EU unit registered the domain d c
Speaker 1: leaks dot com uh and then anonymize the registrant. They
Speaker 1: paid for the registration using bitcoin that they had mined. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's cool. Um yeah, so we'll get we'll get
Speaker 1: into the rest of this, but first you know what's
Speaker 1: better than bitcoin products services? Money is better than no
Speaker 1: no spending? Yeah, uh huh, yes, where am I? Uh capitalism?
Speaker 1: I'm not as good at answer to that a capitalism no. See,
Speaker 1: this is why I was. I was trusting what you
Speaker 1: all to do. The ad plug. But hey, guys, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break to tell your sickle of
Speaker 1: our ads real quick. Okay, uh one of our ads.
Speaker 1: Hey Miles Jack from work? Yeah, alright, uh go go
Speaker 1: listen to the man. We're gonna take a quick break.
Speaker 1: We'll be your bad and we're back. Great ads. That
Speaker 1: was great lead into the ads. Let's talk about Roger Stone.
Speaker 1: So Roger Stone is notable in the Malari for his
Speaker 1: absence because he's not really in the Moulder report, but
Speaker 1: he clearly is because there's a bunch of redacted stuff like, oh,
Speaker 1: y'all are talking about Roger Stone. Now. One of those
Speaker 1: places is talking about the communication between the g r
Speaker 1: u uh in the persona of goos Off two point
Speaker 1: oh with a Trump campaign member while a former Trump
Speaker 1: campaign member who's again clearly Roger Stone. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read a selection of that, which is again in the
Speaker 1: middle of a bunch of very redacted stuff. In early
Speaker 1: August two thousand and sixteen, redacted Twitter suspension of the
Speaker 1: goose off two point oh to Twitter account after it
Speaker 1: was reinstated, JRU officers posing his goose for two point
Speaker 1: oh wrote, redacted via private message, thank you for writing back.
Speaker 1: Do you find anything interesting in the docks I posted
Speaker 1: on August sixteen the jar you added. Please tell me
Speaker 1: if I can help you anyhow, It would be a
Speaker 1: great pleasure to me. On September sixteen, the GRU, again
Speaker 1: posing his goose off two point oh, referred to a
Speaker 1: stolen Democratic campaign document posted online and asked Roger Stone, probably,
Speaker 1: what do you think about the info on the term
Speaker 1: an out model for the Democrats entire presidential campaign? Roger
Speaker 1: Stone probably responded pretty standard. The investigation did not identify
Speaker 1: evidence of other communications between probably Roger Stone and goose
Speaker 1: it for two point out. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: talk between Roger and goosef um. But he's saying the
Speaker 1: information you got us is pretty standard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it ain't ship it ain't ship um. But there's still
Speaker 1: an ongoing investigation there, which that's the stuff they could
Speaker 1: show you. Yeah, yeah, that's the stuff that they were
Speaker 1: able to show you. Um, now, if there's any chance
Speaker 1: she still thought Julian Assange was anything but a partisan hack.
Speaker 1: Here's something he wrote to his colleagues in November two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen. That's in the Mullar Report. We believe it
Speaker 1: would be much better for Goop to win. DIM's plus
Speaker 1: media plus liberals would then form a block to rain
Speaker 1: in their worst qualities. With Hillary in charge, Geop will
Speaker 1: be put pushing for her worst qualities. DIMS plus media
Speaker 1: plus neoliberals will be mute. She's a bright, well connected,
Speaker 1: sadistic sociopath Juliana Sange talking about Hillary Clinton talking about
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton, which might be an accurate description of Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 1: but uh, statistics seems weird because She's would be more interesting. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably I'm going to guess anyone who rises to
Speaker 1: her level in politics has a little bit of sociopath
Speaker 1: in him. But I feel like any career politician, yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta have a little bit. I just yeah, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be shocked if she had like some small German
Speaker 1: children tied up in her basement that she just like
Speaker 1: stuck pins in every once in a while, just to
Speaker 1: gate on us here just saying like, probably not in
Speaker 1: her basement, but maybe like a secret bunker that she
Speaker 1: walks to in the woods. But yeah, I don't, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, I don't. I don't want to say that.
Speaker 1: But I can see where I can see where her
Speaker 1: like dislike for Hillary Clinton. Yea, yeah, where where that
Speaker 1: can come from? I mean, he also hated Obama, and
Speaker 1: but the fact that he's like, yeah, but we want
Speaker 1: GOP doesn't really make sense because they seem to violate
Speaker 1: everything that he and he was fairly about their worst
Speaker 1: excess as being reined in. That's part of what I
Speaker 1: find interesting there, is like, yeah, that's not how that
Speaker 1: worked out. You think he convinced himself of that or
Speaker 1: was just lying to commence others of that. I think
Speaker 1: he might have. It's hard to say. With Julian Assange. Um,
Speaker 1: we we do know from the document that wiki leaks
Speaker 1: and goose for two point oh cooperated consistently and effectively
Speaker 1: to derail the Clinton campaign. Um. They were in constant conversation.
Speaker 1: Wiki Leaks sent them a message on July six thousand
Speaker 1: sixteen through Twitter saying, if you have anything Hillary related
Speaker 1: we would want in the next TWEO, which is he
Speaker 1: misspelled to days prefab preferably because the DNC is approaching
Speaker 1: and she will solidify Bernie supporters behind her. After Goose
Speaker 1: for two point oh responded, Okay, I see Wiki Leaks explained.
Speaker 1: We think Trump has only a chance of winning against Hillary,
Speaker 1: so conflict between Bernie and Hillary is interesting. So again
Speaker 1: Julian Assange coordinating directly with Russian intelligence to try to
Speaker 1: drive a wedge between Bernie voters and Hillary Clinton. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: Now the seth Rich stuff is by far the most
Speaker 1: disgusting thing in here, and yet another reason that I
Speaker 1: am very angry at Julia sange Um. The report makes
Speaker 1: it incredibly clear that after seth Rich had died, when
Speaker 1: he was receiving documents on the d n C leaks,
Speaker 1: he was lying in public press announcements and essentially saying
Speaker 1: it might have been seth Rich. Um. So again this
Speaker 1: is and again he's getting all of his information after
Speaker 1: seth Rich is already dead, so he knows it can't
Speaker 1: be seth Rich. So on August nine, sixteen, the Wiki
Speaker 1: Leaks Twitter account posted announced WikiLeaks has decided to issue
Speaker 1: a US twenty award for information leading to conviction for
Speaker 1: the murder of DNC staff or Seth rich On August,
Speaker 1: Assange was asked in an interview, why are you so
Speaker 1: interested in Seth Riches killer? He responded, We're very interested
Speaker 1: in anything that might be a threat to alleged Wiki
Speaker 1: leaks sources. The interviewer responded to a Sange by saying,
Speaker 1: I know you don't want to reveal your source, but
Speaker 1: it certainly sounds like you're suggesting a man who leaked
Speaker 1: information to wiki leaks was then murdered. Sang replied, if
Speaker 1: there's someone who's potentially connected to our publication and that
Speaker 1: person has been murdered in suspicious circumstances, it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that two are connected, but it's a very serious matter.
Speaker 1: That type of allegation is very serious and it's taken
Speaker 1: seriously by us. So just to give everybody context, this
Speaker 1: is referring to right wing conspiracy theory that this h
Speaker 1: d n C staffer who was murdered in d C
Speaker 1: during the election. Uh, they started the conspiracy theory that
Speaker 1: he was the one who Wiki leaked the documents. He
Speaker 1: was the d n C leaguer and was murdered by
Speaker 1: Hillary's murdered by Hillary Clinton, and as San stoked that
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory, which is number one and fathomily cruel to
Speaker 1: seth Rich's family at a point at which he knew
Speaker 1: it was not seth Rich, because he was getting he
Speaker 1: was communicating with these people and getting these documents well
Speaker 1: after seth Rich was dead, very obvious to him where
Speaker 1: this had all come from. We know that for a
Speaker 1: point of fact, he was lying and stoking a bullshit
Speaker 1: about the the murder of seth Rich in order to
Speaker 1: hurt Hillary Clinton. That seems to have been the primary
Speaker 1: Even more, Yeah, which is the most in a document
Speaker 1: full of despicable things, might be the most despicable thing
Speaker 1: in the entire mold the report. Yeah, especially with Rat's Julian,
Speaker 1: what his family has gone through. And Yeah, just becoming
Speaker 1: this like business like just taking this person's murder for
Speaker 1: this political narrative and almost unspeakably evil. Yeah. With regards
Speaker 1: to um the Trump campaigns or uh conspiring with coordination
Speaker 1: coordination with Wiki leaks. So one of the details that
Speaker 1: we talked about on The Daily Zeitgeist last week or
Speaker 1: a few days ago was that if the Trump campaign
Speaker 1: had been coordinating with Wiki leaks and wiki leaks like
Speaker 1: or if they have been doing what they did with
Speaker 1: wiki leaks to Goose of Forer, like, if they weren't
Speaker 1: that one step removed, then it would have been a
Speaker 1: criminal conspiracy. Like do you think they were working with
Speaker 1: wiki leaks knowing that wiki leaks was one step removed
Speaker 1: and that protected them politically, And that's why they were
Speaker 1: going through wiki leaks as opposed to just going directly
Speaker 1: to the source. I don't think that they knew. I
Speaker 1: don't think they ever I don't even know if they
Speaker 1: ever thought about it. They just knew that wiki leaks
Speaker 1: had this stuff like in in you know, in defense
Speaker 1: of the Trump campaign. Uh, it's entirely possible. They just
Speaker 1: thought Wiki leaks had damning information that they had gotten
Speaker 1: from one of their usual sources and no idea. Now
Speaker 1: later on, especially in the after election period, it becomes
Speaker 1: very clear that it was the Russians, and Trump continues
Speaker 1: to deny that it was the Russians, even as his
Speaker 1: advisors are being like, it was definitely the Russians. Um,
Speaker 1: but they were like they didn't like, the Trump campaign
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily know that wiki leaks was getting all their
Speaker 1: stuff from the Russian government Wiki leaks almost certainly knew
Speaker 1: what was going on. Lionissange is not a dumb dumb dummy.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, And just since you bring it up, and
Speaker 1: maybe we'll get to this later. But the Trump continuing
Speaker 1: to deny that it was the hack was Russia? Does
Speaker 1: that fall within the scope of Mueller's report? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's in there. And they continued to deny,
Speaker 1: like even after it became very clear that there was
Speaker 1: Russian involvement. Yeah, that that's included from what Hope Picks
Speaker 1: told him. It was because he just could not stay
Speaker 1: the idea of people trying to delegitimize the election, and
Speaker 1: because you know, because everything about him is fake. So
Speaker 1: his wealth, he can't show you his tax returns because
Speaker 1: he's not actually wealthy, and he doesn't want to get
Speaker 1: into it because then that will expose him if he
Speaker 1: even acknowled. I don't think out of self preservation, he
Speaker 1: might not even being able to acknowledge that's what it is,
Speaker 1: because it's like I didn't know. Of course, I didn't
Speaker 1: get help from the Russians. I did it myself. Oh,
Speaker 1: I found the quote that I had from after Trump
Speaker 1: made his open call for to the Russian government to
Speaker 1: hack uh, Hillary Clinton's email. We said, Russia, you know,
Speaker 1: please get us her emails. This is what the Mueller
Speaker 1: report says, word for word. Within approximately five hours of
Speaker 1: Trump statement, GRU officers targeted for the first time Clinton's
Speaker 1: personal office after candidate Trump's remarks. Unit to six five,
Speaker 1: which is the unit of the g RU that was
Speaker 1: doing this, created and sent malicious links targeting fifteen email
Speaker 1: accounts that the domain, including an email account belonging to Clinton.
Speaker 1: To Clinton aid, the investigation did not find evidence of
Speaker 1: earlier GRU attempts to compromise accounts hosted on this domain.
Speaker 1: Holy shit. Yeah, yeah, the Muller report is incredibly direct
Speaker 1: about that, right, Um, so that's why it's total bullshit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is so funny. Yeah, we went from total exoneration
Speaker 1: to total bullshit. Now. The contacts with campaign Trump campaign
Speaker 1: about Wiki leaks section of the Mullar report is heavily redacted. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a section in there that's literally In debriefing with office,
Speaker 1: former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates said that a whole
Speaker 1: paragraph of redacted from harm to ongoing matter, and then
Speaker 1: Gates are called candidate Trump being generally frustrated that Clinton
Speaker 1: emails had not been found. Paul Manafort, who had later
Speaker 1: become campaign chairman, an entire paragraph of things is redacted.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's again they may the Trump campaign very
Speaker 1: well may have known who was behind the DNC leagues
Speaker 1: and stuff. There's a lot that's redacted there, Like who
Speaker 1: knows what's going on there? Right? Um, I mean with
Speaker 1: regards to Trump saying he doesn't know that it's Russia,
Speaker 1: like he's acknowledging that he got help from somebody. He
Speaker 1: just doesn't want it to be Russia for some reason. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he denied that. And he definitely had contact with
Speaker 1: the PETE like in colluded with the people who had
Speaker 1: the Russian hacked documents, but it wasn't directly with the
Speaker 1: Russian government. Yeah. The footnotes about Manafort in the in
Speaker 1: the in the in the mular report are pretty pretty great. Uh, this,
Speaker 1: this version of it appears like versions of this paragraph
Speaker 1: appear in multiple times. Manafort entered into the police pleagreement
Speaker 1: with our office. We determined that he breached the agreement
Speaker 1: by being untruthful in proper sessions and before the grand jury.
Speaker 1: We have generally recounted his version of events in this
Speaker 1: report only when his statements are sufficiently corroborated to be trustworthy,
Speaker 1: to identify issues on which Manaforts untruthful responses made themselves
Speaker 1: be of evidentiary value, order to provide Manaforts explanations for
Speaker 1: certain events, even when we were unable to determine whether
Speaker 1: that explanation was credible. So basically, Manafort lied so much
Speaker 1: that we couldn't include a lot of what he said because,
Speaker 1: like he there's just nothing you can take out of
Speaker 1: what he Yeah, he's a pro. He's a pro. You know,
Speaker 1: he's a great. Lot's amazing when you're so full of ship,
Speaker 1: like someone who's even trying to investig I honestly don't
Speaker 1: even know this motherfucker said so much bullshit. The former
Speaker 1: head of the FBI is like, he's so full of ship.
Speaker 1: I'm almost impressed that he's still breathing. He did a
Speaker 1: Yoda voice for an entire session and completely fucked with me, asshole.
Speaker 1: You get it. You really get the feeling that Bob
Speaker 1: Mueller might hate Paul Manafford as much as I do. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. Uh, it's it's pretty great. Now. Much of
Speaker 1: the stuff that Trump said to Cohen about Wiki leaks
Speaker 1: is redacted due to ongoing investigations, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: did to the stuff that Maniford said. Cohen and Trump
Speaker 1: both seems to have talked at length about their communications
Speaker 1: with Trump about Wiki leaks, but that ship is all
Speaker 1: black barred. So here's another heavily redacted paragraph. According to Gates,
Speaker 1: by the late summer two thousand and sixteen, the Trump
Speaker 1: campaign was planning a press strategy, a communications campaign, and
Speaker 1: messaging based on the possible release of Clinton emails by
Speaker 1: Wiki leaks. Three or so sentences of redacted stuff, and
Speaker 1: then in the middle of a sentence, while Trump and
Speaker 1: Gates were driving to Laguardi Airport, fully redacted sentence comma.
Speaker 1: Shortly after the call, candidate Trump told Gates that more
Speaker 1: releases of damaging information will be coming. So again, might
Speaker 1: be some direct ship. This might be some of that
Speaker 1: evidence he was said that that they had of direct cooperation,
Speaker 1: or it might be like I don't know, or yeah,
Speaker 1: or that's it went through too many channels to get there,
Speaker 1: or it's like, well, yeah, it was this person. Too
Speaker 1: much was deleted, you know. Yeah, But what Michael Cohen
Speaker 1: didn't He says like I'll come to the hill and
Speaker 1: I'll tell I'll tell you everything that I can tell
Speaker 1: you that what was probably redacted in there. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: Mr Messy, Mr Messy. Well, I mean, look, maybe he
Speaker 1: can get a couple of years knocked off his sentence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe he can. Um, and maybe his daughter will
Speaker 1: show up to court with three crutches. Um. There's stuff
Speaker 1: about the Trump Tower in Moscow. UH. Most of it's
Speaker 1: not super interesting. It seems like it was pretty haphazardly pursued,
Speaker 1: although it is interesting how directly the Russians wanted to
Speaker 1: tie the Trump Tower deal to the election. That part
Speaker 1: is interesting. The carrot was that. That's the carrot on
Speaker 1: the stick. I mean yeah, they seem to have tried to. UH.
Speaker 1: On November three, the day after the Trump Organization transmitted
Speaker 1: the letter of intent, Felix Sayer emailed Cohen suggesting that
Speaker 1: the Trump Moscow project could be used to increase candidate
Speaker 1: Trump's chances at being elected, writing, Buddy, our boy can
Speaker 1: become president of the USA, and we can engineer it.
Speaker 1: I will get all of Putin's team to buy in
Speaker 1: on this. I will manage the process. Michael Putin gets
Speaker 1: on stage with Donald for ribbon cutting for Trump Moscow
Speaker 1: and don to owns the Republican nomination and possibly beats Hillary.
Speaker 1: And our boy is in. We will manage this process
Speaker 1: better than anyone. You and I will get Donald and
Speaker 1: Vladimir on a stage together very shortly that the game changer.
Speaker 1: Later that day, sat Up followed up. Donald doesn't stare down,
Speaker 1: He negotiates and understands the economic issues in. Putin only
Speaker 1: wanted to deal with a pragmatic leader. A successful businessman
Speaker 1: is a good candidate for someone who knows how to
Speaker 1: negotiate business politics, whatever it is, all the same for
Speaker 1: someone who knows how to deal. So that's really direct
Speaker 1: offers from Felix Sayer. But Cohen does not appear to
Speaker 1: have said, yes, let's crime in those explicit words. But
Speaker 1: again there's like a bunch of offers directly from people
Speaker 1: connected to Putin to help with the campaign. We can
Speaker 1: engineer this, Yeah, we can engineer this, because I mean
Speaker 1: it's you know, they if you invite it, if you
Speaker 1: make it clear that you don't know that this is wrong,
Speaker 1: they're just gonna keep making offers, keep going like it's
Speaker 1: it's just gonna be NonStop. It's like, you know, have
Speaker 1: a termites and not taking care of it. It's just
Speaker 1: gonna They're gonna keep feeding on on the rot until uh,
Speaker 1: your house falls down around you and your wife gets
Speaker 1: mad at you. Yeah, and you're on the toilet, but
Speaker 1: luckily the house collapse neatly around you. Yeah, now in
Speaker 1: there an there, right. Guess I did have a shower
Speaker 1: collapse on me once, like the structure. Yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 1: roof of the shower fell on me while I was
Speaker 1: taking a shower. This isn't like a slum I used
Speaker 1: to live. I was about to say, like, knowing you,
Speaker 1: you're like, well, it was the shower very late. It
Speaker 1: was great that we didn't have a roof in the
Speaker 1: shower for weeks, which was actually okay because it's a
Speaker 1: shower so when it's raining, it's not the biggest deal
Speaker 1: in the world. So it was bombay. How are you alive? Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm a highlander. India just gained independence alright. So Cohen
Speaker 1: does not recall Trump talking directly about the potential impact
Speaker 1: the tower project would have have on the election, so
Speaker 1: he apparently he says he didn't bring that to Trump,
Speaker 1: But Cohen does recall conversations with Trump in which the
Speaker 1: candidates suggested that his campaign would be would be or
Speaker 1: that the tower would be an infomers or that they sorry.
Speaker 1: Cohen recalled conversations with Trump and which Trump suggests that
Speaker 1: the camp the political campaign would act as an infomercial
Speaker 1: for his properties, which is some evidence to the idea
Speaker 1: that Trump never expected to win. Yeah, I fully believe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who knows, but that does make me think that might
Speaker 1: have been part of it. Um. There was repeated talk
Speaker 1: of Cohen and candidate Trump visiting Russia, but the trip
Speaker 1: never panned out, possibly do in large part of the campaign.
Speaker 1: Outside of the Tower deal, they were numerous attempts made
Speaker 1: by Russians to get Trump to attend or speak out
Speaker 1: the St. Petersburg economic form. He turned them all down
Speaker 1: due to time constraints. Joseph Miffsud is a Multese national
Speaker 1: and a professor at the London Academy of Diplomacy. He
Speaker 1: has connections to employees of the Internet Research Agency. Miff
Speaker 1: Sud met our old buddy George Papadopoulis in the spring
Speaker 1: of two thousand and sixteen, after Papadopolis had become a
Speaker 1: policy advisor to the Trump campaign. The two discussed myth
Speaker 1: subs mith Sud's European and Russian connections and had a
Speaker 1: discussion about Russia. Mifsud offered to introduce Papadopolis to European
Speaker 1: leaders and leaders with contact in the Russian government UH
Speaker 1: and essentially, Papadophoulis went on to repeatedly try to set
Speaker 1: up a meeting between Donald Trump and the Russian government. UM.
Speaker 1: After these meetings with myth set, he continuously tried to
Speaker 1: do that. It seems that for the most part, he
Speaker 1: was just trying to increase his value to the campaign
Speaker 1: by brokering a meeting between the two, like, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of that in here, where like the most
Speaker 1: direct collusion is individual members of the campaign trying to
Speaker 1: get Trump in the room with somebody so that they
Speaker 1: can increase their value to the campaign. UM. Which is again,
Speaker 1: the only person associated with Trump during the election who
Speaker 1: actually was loyal to him was Michael Flynn. That that
Speaker 1: is made repeatedly clear. Papadopolis is just trying to get
Speaker 1: a job after the election. Yeah, it's pretty pretty fascinating.
Speaker 1: The most damning evidence of this is Carter Page. He
Speaker 1: worked for the Trump campaign from January to September sixteen,
Speaker 1: becoming a foreign policy advisor in March. He had worked
Speaker 1: in Russia and lived in Russia before, and had direct
Speaker 1: contact with Russian intelligence officers. Um. He continuously attempted to, uh,
Speaker 1: basically push the Russian government, lying on things like Ukraine
Speaker 1: and meetings with the Trump campaign and get the Trump
Speaker 1: team to adopt plans that would be like like reducing
Speaker 1: sanctions and stuff the Russian government would like. Again, not
Speaker 1: direct collusion, other than like you could say carter Page
Speaker 1: was colluding, but like not the campaign itself colluding. Um.
Speaker 1: This is the guy that Republicans are like, they illegally
Speaker 1: looked into carter Page and they had no right to
Speaker 1: do that. Essentially, those PISO warrants, they were right. He
Speaker 1: was like overtly criming and working on clearly working on
Speaker 1: behalf of Russia. And the fact that intelligence looked into
Speaker 1: him doesn't seem that suspicious. No, it seems like you
Speaker 1: would be not doing your job if you didn't look
Speaker 1: into carter Page. But that's what's so mind blowing about conservatives,
Speaker 1: Like they're actually not They're just ignoring the biggest factual
Speaker 1: thing to start with is that a foreign government tried
Speaker 1: to meddle in the way that we elect our president. Yeah,
Speaker 1: regardless of what side. Yeah, and I think that's they're
Speaker 1: they completely blow by that to then get it lost
Speaker 1: in the weeds of like, oh, Carter Page was really
Speaker 1: really unfairly targeted or whatever, rather than like, rather than saying,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is terrible. What We're not even
Speaker 1: able to operate on our own as a country to
Speaker 1: choose our leaders. That's weird. Yeah, Okay, So the Trump
Speaker 1: Tower meeting, the actual meeting itself does seem to have
Speaker 1: really been a nothing burger. Like the Russians, there was
Speaker 1: absolutely corrupt intent and the planning of it. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: wanted to get information on the clampaign directly from the
Speaker 1: Russian government, but none of that was really communicated during
Speaker 1: the meeting. It was really just an attempt to get
Speaker 1: them to talk about the Magnetski actum And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of evidence that corroborates that they kind of got
Speaker 1: tricked into the meeting. Uh Kushner. We actually know that
Speaker 1: Kushner sent a message to Manifort during the meeting calling
Speaker 1: it a waste of time, and then message too of
Speaker 1: his assistants to try to get them uh to like call,
Speaker 1: so he had an excuse to leave. I love that.
Speaker 1: Our move, yeah, power move. But again there's Donald Trump
Speaker 1: Junior might get in criminal trouble for this. This might
Speaker 1: be one of the things. There are fourteen ongoing investigations
Speaker 1: as a result of the Mulder Report. We only know
Speaker 1: what two of them are, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff is redacted around the meaning that might be like
Speaker 1: some of it might be because Donald Trump Junior is
Speaker 1: being looked at for it. Um, there's other stuff in
Speaker 1: the report that makes it seems like Mueller is saying
Speaker 1: he doesn't think that. Like it's like Donald Trump Junior
Speaker 1: was committing a crime but can't be charged for it
Speaker 1: because he didn't really know what he was doing and
Speaker 1: there was no corrupt intent, innocent by way of stupidity,
Speaker 1: by way of stupidity by just like sheer incompetence, which
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like my Donald Trump Junior. No, he was
Speaker 1: like father calls him like too dumb to live, and
Speaker 1: he is he you know when you see the pictures
Speaker 1: of him when he's when he's out in the woods hunting,
Speaker 1: I just wish he never left the woods. You're like,
Speaker 1: there goes a dumb guy, and then you read about
Speaker 1: his actions and you're like, wow, Wow, it's even worse,
Speaker 1: Like how did he just not spontaneously catch fire? For
Speaker 1: how does not forgetting to keep breathing? Uh? The So
Speaker 1: the twelve investigations fourteen right, fourteen two that we know
Speaker 1: about twelve that we don't Yeah, quick maths for you,
Speaker 1: like who who are who is looking into those investigations?
Speaker 1: Who's in charge of that? We don't know specifically. Essentially,
Speaker 1: what the Muller report says is that while they were
Speaker 1: doing their investigations, because they were not making prosecutorial judgments here,
Speaker 1: so this was not about them saying like this document
Speaker 1: was not about them saying like, we found crimes here,
Speaker 1: but when they found evidence of crimes, um that we're
Speaker 1: outside of the scope of the investigation or that like
Speaker 1: they weren't pursuing for whatever, they would refer to other
Speaker 1: law enforcement agencies. And it happened fourteen times. So the
Speaker 1: Mueller investigation is over, but fourteen criminal investigations are ongoing
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the government as a result of things uncovered
Speaker 1: in the Muller investigation. We only know about two of them. Again,
Speaker 1: that would seem to be a big headline from this
Speaker 1: report that it kicked off four teen criminal investigations. But
Speaker 1: you know what, better than not that way, the right
Speaker 1: doesn't have time to try and figure out how to
Speaker 1: smear that. Yeah, I think we're fine, because William Barr
Speaker 1: said so. It's honestly, like some of this is kind
Speaker 1: of the opposite of a Nixon, where like Nixon is
Speaker 1: this guy who's orchestrating a vast web of crimes and
Speaker 1: then a cover up. And Trump may not have committed
Speaker 1: crimes during the election, but everyone around him did, and
Speaker 1: then he committed crimes covering it up. That that kind
Speaker 1: of seems like a lot of what happened here is
Speaker 1: that everyone around him was a gross criminal and he
Speaker 1: was a dumb guy. And then even though he wasn't
Speaker 1: at risk initially because like he wasn't initially under any
Speaker 1: investigation at all, and the only reason he personally became
Speaker 1: under investigation is because of the obstruction of justice, which
Speaker 1: is great presidenting. Yeah, isn't it funny? Like what if
Speaker 1: because it was around Michael Flynn, you know, and if
Speaker 1: that was the one guy who had his back, like
Speaker 1: to think like this romantic sense, Trump had Flynn's back
Speaker 1: and then causes all this other ship to go down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a little colonel of sweetness there, because you do
Speaker 1: get the feeling that Trump kind of likes guy. He's
Speaker 1: a good guy. I'm telling you he's a good guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I catch him crying in the bathroom
Speaker 1: and the only human emotion at the center of this
Speaker 1: camp between Trump and Michael Flynn. That's a really good
Speaker 1: I think about romance novel cover Gone with the Flynn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you what do you call your listeners? I
Speaker 1: don't your little sons of bitches zekegang in bastard lovers.
Speaker 1: Somebody make that art, yeah, somebody, huh yeah, please, someone
Speaker 1: make that romance art. Somebody make Gone with the Flynn,
Speaker 1: because I really, I mean not that it's totally like that,
Speaker 1: but if there is a version where Trump kind of
Speaker 1: gets there is some murky stuff, but really he just
Speaker 1: like he's like, he finally, this is his first friend.
Speaker 1: This is the first person he's ever done something selfless for. Right,
Speaker 1: he just thinks of all the times Michael Flinn like
Speaker 1: sincerely laughed at this and remembers everyone's fake laughter. We
Speaker 1: were going to go fishing in Montana well, and he
Speaker 1: is a general, so it does fall into the category
Speaker 1: of people Trump is capable of respecting. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: that's the only category that might be the only military generals. No,
Speaker 1: you know what, he really really fucking likes the attorney
Speaker 1: generals who committed uh crimes to protect their presidents. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. He did. A big fan of a big
Speaker 1: fan of well, I don't know about crimes, A big
Speaker 1: fan of Bobby Kennedy and Eric Holder. Yeah. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that he that the report repeats like four or five
Speaker 1: times that he's like, where's my Bobby Kennedy? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: That he says some variation of like Bobby Kennedy protected
Speaker 1: his brother, like Eric Holder protected Obama. Which also there's
Speaker 1: a part of it where I wonder if like he's
Speaker 1: kind of making uh like a like a brother's statement too,
Speaker 1: because he's like Kennedy hired his brother Eric or Obama
Speaker 1: hired Eric Holder, And it's like what are you what
Speaker 1: do you say? Are you get? Like you should have
Speaker 1: seen it. I was there. They're all brothers. Like the
Speaker 1: way he words it makes me think like there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of like a little on the way that
Speaker 1: he calls Tim Tim Apple brothers. It's weird. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh it should come as no surprise to that.
Speaker 1: Other than the heavily redacted Roger Stone, the most directly
Speaker 1: criminal member of the Trump campaign staff by far was
Speaker 1: Paul man Afford, who cannot avoid committing crimes. Um, Like,
Speaker 1: I think he would shut down if he had to stop. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of yeah, this is this is where
Speaker 1: we get to the stuff about Constantine clinic. Uh, like
Speaker 1: them sharing polling data and whatnot. A cigar bar right day,
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't say it was that. That was
Speaker 1: another one. I remember Rick Gates and Manafort went with
Speaker 1: somebody at a cigar. I think Paul Manafort has spent
Speaker 1: most of his waking hours and cigar bars. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And he's the most carcinogenic thing in he makes the
Speaker 1: cigars around him say yeah, like yeah. He keeps getting
Speaker 1: trouble in prisoner, like are you smoking in me? It's
Speaker 1: just like coming off his poise, Like I know, just
Speaker 1: s if he stops committing crimes, he would immediately catch cancer. First.
Speaker 1: He's like the bus from speed but with I have
Speaker 1: to break sixty laws a minute. Something has to be
Speaker 1: poisonous about me. It's either my actions or the way
Speaker 1: my cells are dividing. Yeah. Um, so we already got
Speaker 1: over a lot of the Paul Manafort stuff. There's a
Speaker 1: great quote in here that I want to read. The
Speaker 1: Office reviewed numerous Maniford email and text communications and ask
Speaker 1: President Trump about the plan in written questions. The investigation
Speaker 1: did not uncover evidence of Maniforts passing along information about
Speaker 1: Ukraine in peace plans to the candidate. This was the
Speaker 1: plan to give Russia control of Eastern Ukraine or anyone
Speaker 1: else in the campaign or administration. The Office was, however,
Speaker 1: not able to gain access to all of Manafort's electronic communications.
Speaker 1: In some instances, messages were sent using encryption applications, and
Speaker 1: while Manafort denied that he spoke to members of the
Speaker 1: Trump campaign or the new administration about the peace plan,
Speaker 1: he lied to the Office and the Grand Jury about
Speaker 1: the peace plan and his meetings with Columnic, and his
Speaker 1: unreliability on this subject was among the reasons that the
Speaker 1: district District judge found that he had breached his cooperation agreement.
Speaker 1: So we don't know that Paul Manafort went to the
Speaker 1: president and said, we we can work with Russia. They'll
Speaker 1: help us out if we give them eastern Ukraine. But
Speaker 1: Mully goes out of his way to say I can't
Speaker 1: say that that didn't happen because Paul Manafort lies about
Speaker 1: literally everything and deleted all of his communications with the campaign.
Speaker 1: And this goes back to the big question that I've
Speaker 1: always had that I think is one of the strangest details,
Speaker 1: is that, well, I'm sorry I got so much while
Speaker 1: Russia is, you know, intervening on behalf of the Trump campaign. Uh,
Speaker 1: the Republican platform for at the two thousand sixteen R
Speaker 1: and C suddenly adjust to and to incorporate a very
Speaker 1: pro Russian stands. But that was something in the report
Speaker 1: the language from lethal aid too. I forget exactly what
Speaker 1: they used, but they like soften the language of the
Speaker 1: aid we were providing the Ukrainian government against the Russian backs.
Speaker 1: But wasn't there something in the mother report that actually
Speaker 1: said that they couldn't find that strong connection between the
Speaker 1: platform change and some kind of direct like uh, stimulation
Speaker 1: prodding from the Russians. It doesn't say that it just
Speaker 1: like I think it's at least from my recollections, this
Speaker 1: didn't make it into my notes. But like they went
Speaker 1: into a lot of detail about how that changed, and
Speaker 1: they talk about maniforts communications with the campaign, but they
Speaker 1: don't have a smoking gun that's definitely clear. Oh, just more.
Speaker 1: I guess the way they summed it up was there
Speaker 1: are several prominent contacts but were innocuous. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: again one of those things where like a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff was deleted. We don't we don't know what was
Speaker 1: what was said there. But also it could have just
Speaker 1: been that Paul Manafort was pushing a pro Russian lying
Speaker 1: on Ukraine, so was uh what's named Carter Page. So
Speaker 1: we're other people in contact with the campaign, and like
Speaker 1: it may have been those people repeatedly stating their opinions
Speaker 1: that caused some of the softening of the campaign, which
Speaker 1: isn't illegal. Yeah, no, I mean it just sounds like
Speaker 1: there's also they did a good job of having many
Speaker 1: ways to create pressure around it to guide people in
Speaker 1: a certain direction, and they did a lot of good
Speaker 1: atmospheric pressure creating. So they're saying a lot of people
Speaker 1: provide like applied pressure and a lot of people were
Speaker 1: talking about it. They couldn't say that directly that there
Speaker 1: was a they could actually draw a line to that
Speaker 1: platform change in some kind of communication with somebody, aside
Speaker 1: from the fact that many people were kind of but
Speaker 1: innocuous is a very strong word, isn't It Doesn't that
Speaker 1: mean like not harmful or offensive? So I guess that
Speaker 1: could just mean legally not something. Yeah they just said,
Speaker 1: I couldn't really else something on like even though it
Speaker 1: looks like that on their service, like oh suddenly there
Speaker 1: aren't like the platforms changing, but they just there weren't
Speaker 1: those stronger connections. Points to the nature of this whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it, whether or not it's a
Speaker 1: conspiracy with with you know, Nixon, which is our other
Speaker 1: political touchdown of this kind of corruption. It was very
Speaker 1: much emanating from the center, whereas the corruption here was
Speaker 1: all pushing towards Trump, who appears to have just been
Speaker 1: kind of focused on improving his brand and shouting at
Speaker 1: people and like, whereas the Russians would were reaching to
Speaker 1: everyone around him, and a lot of those individual people
Speaker 1: did stuff that was unethical or straight up criminal as
Speaker 1: result of the Russians reaching out to them. Um, but
Speaker 1: it was not a coordinated effort between the campaign and Russia.
Speaker 1: So rather than one gigantic crime, it was a million
Speaker 1: kind of tiny half crimes that create one big that
Speaker 1: created and wouldn't have created a crime in regards to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, although again you know it's possible that he
Speaker 1: had some contact with Manafort, like which again the document,
Speaker 1: but like the crime was specifically started in large part
Speaker 1: when Trump was like started obstructing the hell out of
Speaker 1: some justice, which is why he wasn't under investigation until
Speaker 1: that point. Um, because of his love for Michael Flynn,
Speaker 1: because of his his deep and honestly they're bros to
Speaker 1: hear that, like, especially when everyone else is such a snake.
Speaker 1: That's Michael and so ship out of luck to all
Speaker 1: of this too, Like he's fucked, He's got no money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his like his son is like come on man, yeah,
Speaker 1: fucking dad. Like even Donald Trump's like he's a good man,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the great. You do hate Flynn
Speaker 1: less than everyone else involved in this. And I say
Speaker 1: that as someone who deeply dislikes Michael Flynn, Right, that's
Speaker 1: what's so odd about it all. There's at least a
Speaker 1: kernel of like redeeming human loyalty and Michael Flynn he
Speaker 1: was so direct talking to Russian studios like I'll do
Speaker 1: it I'll do it. I'll do the work I gotta do. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but he was also trying to get rich to so
Speaker 1: he he also was let off fairly easy for somebody
Speaker 1: who was like directly undermining. Yeah, Like he's not going
Speaker 1: to get anything close to the worst penalty that comes
Speaker 1: out of this that will hopefully be a manafort and
Speaker 1: ought to be manifort. Yeah. And like the thing is
Speaker 1: like Flynn wasn't involved long enough to get at that
Speaker 1: point much priming done because there's mostly all of his
Speaker 1: interactions with the ambassadors and like being a Turkish agent
Speaker 1: and those other things that he's mostly in trouble for
Speaker 1: and being just a good solid bro, good solid bro,
Speaker 1: you know. So uh, it's speaking of people who are
Speaker 1: caught committing crimes that are evident stuff in the Mular Report.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Eric Prince, my favorite. So, Eric Prince
Speaker 1: testified to Congress that he met with Kirol Dmitri of
Speaker 1: only once during his trip to the Seychelles, where they
Speaker 1: talked about stuff they wanted to do. Um. So uh
Speaker 1: he testified that I only met once. The Molar Report
Speaker 1: reveals that they met on two separate occasions, including one
Speaker 1: in which he attempted to get the Russian government to
Speaker 1: change the course of an aircraft carrier and send it
Speaker 1: away from Libya so that they wouldn't interfere with things
Speaker 1: that were going on in Libya, which is again evidence
Speaker 1: that Palm or that Erik Prince lied to Congress about
Speaker 1: the extent of his conversations with Karl dmitriev um, which
Speaker 1: I think is pretty cool. Also that Steve Bannon seems
Speaker 1: to have been the guy orchestrating the whole meeting, and
Speaker 1: that Bannon seems to have been giving Eric princes marching orders. However, Uh,
Speaker 1: Prince deleted all of his text messages and so we
Speaker 1: don't know the exact extent of what Bannon was ordering
Speaker 1: him to do or what they were asking to talk about. Um.
Speaker 1: So again, uh, probably something shady with Bannon there, um,
Speaker 1: although one part of it is that Bannon was just
Speaker 1: trying to get Prince something to do and didn't really
Speaker 1: care about what went on there, which is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you go go meeting the say shehells with this guy.
Speaker 1: He's like Eric, Eric loves just getting on both loves
Speaker 1: and stuff, having James Bond meetings and stuff, say shells.
Speaker 1: That sounds like it sounds like a James Bond place.
Speaker 1: Get him out there. Did you see that in Meddi
Speaker 1: Hassan interview? Oh god, yeah, that was so cringing. And
Speaker 1: he's like, so, what were you doing the stay show?
Speaker 1: I was like, ah, just meetings, meeting anyway. He liked
Speaker 1: the Congress. That's what you said. That's what you say.
Speaker 1: That's what you says. But I don't know what it's like. No,
Speaker 1: I'm reading the court transfer according to you. No, that's
Speaker 1: what you said transcript in what language? All right? Never mind?
Speaker 1: So their Portarso reveals that Rick Garrison, a hedge fund
Speaker 1: manager and friend of Jared Kushner, also worked with Karl
Speaker 1: Dmitriev to put together a plan for better relations between
Speaker 1: Russia and the US. One of the results of this
Speaker 1: was the meeting after Trump became president between him and
Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin. Uh. They put together a list of like
Speaker 1: things to talk about during the meeting that apparently seems
Speaker 1: to have been used as like the minutes for that meeting.
Speaker 1: Most of its pretty banal stuff like we're improving relations
Speaker 1: and like cooperation to fight terrorism and all that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. YadA YadA, YadA. Um. Garrison's interests seems to
Speaker 1: have disappeared after the financial deal he was working with
Speaker 1: Demitrio fell apart um, which again goes into the general
Speaker 1: pattern you see around like with the people who are
Speaker 1: around Trump, um, which is that, uh, everyone in Russia
Speaker 1: had a very specific set of goals with like in
Speaker 1: terms of lifting sanctions and in terms of Ukraine that
Speaker 1: we're trying to get people around Trump to push, whereas
Speaker 1: everyone on the Trump side of things was working on
Speaker 1: their own personal goals, like like Garrison didn't give a
Speaker 1: shit about what was discussed in the meeting. He wanted
Speaker 1: to set the meeting up because it would get him
Speaker 1: in good with Demitriovs that they could make like a
Speaker 1: financial transaction essentially. Um. So everyone on the Trump side
Speaker 1: of things had their own, very like niche personal interests
Speaker 1: at heart, and Russia was pushing a couple of very
Speaker 1: specific lines. You know, we want sanctions lifted, we went
Speaker 1: control of eastern Ukraine. Um, we don't want Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: to be president. Like, Russia was very focused the whole time.
Speaker 1: Everyone around Trump, except for Michael Flynn, was focused on
Speaker 1: like their own personal careers. Yeah, and Russia's that's how
Speaker 1: Russia uses people as they find out what your motivation is,
Speaker 1: what your fears are, and then you know, find ways
Speaker 1: to make you do what they want. And if you
Speaker 1: have enough people who are just so self serving, it's
Speaker 1: like it's like chumming the waters. And there's a hundred
Speaker 1: sharks tethered to Trump, so naturally that that's gonna d
Speaker 1: pull all these fucking creatures in one direction. A hundred
Speaker 1: sharks and one dolphin named Michael just gets. Also, one
Speaker 1: of Kushner's Russian contacts gave him a bag of dirt.
Speaker 1: I thought that was funny, like a literal bag, a
Speaker 1: literal sack of dirt from the town in Belarus where
Speaker 1: his family came from. Oh that's that's pretty fun He
Speaker 1: was like, here's dirt on see that Joe made. I
Speaker 1: should have brought the emails. I also like that if
Speaker 1: the sac of dirt the guy who rises just a
Speaker 1: total scum lords like just anything like, yeah it is
Speaker 1: from your town man, Yeah, yeah, that's from where your
Speaker 1: family comes from. One there by on foot, like is
Speaker 1: there an old fantom bottle cap in? So the explanation
Speaker 1: in the Mullar report for why the June ninth Trump
Speaker 1: Tower meeting probably wasn't a crime. It's really interesting to me. Quote,
Speaker 1: there are reasonable arguments that they offered information would constitute
Speaker 1: a thing of value within the meaning of these provisions,
Speaker 1: which is the provision that determines whether or not the
Speaker 1: law was broken and setting up this meeting. But the
Speaker 1: Office determined that the government would not be likely to
Speaker 1: obtain and substain a conviction for two other reasons. First,
Speaker 1: the Office did not obtain a missible evidence likely to
Speaker 1: meet the government's burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt
Speaker 1: that these individuals acted willfully i e. With general knowledge
Speaker 1: of the illegality of their conduct. And second, the government
Speaker 1: would likely encounter difficulty improving beyond a reasonable doubt that
Speaker 1: the value of the promised information exceeded the threshold of
Speaker 1: a criminal vi elation. How do you monetarily attach the
Speaker 1: value to Hillary damaging internation on Hillary Clinton? That's why
Speaker 1: we don't know if Donald Trump Junior and Kushner committed
Speaker 1: a crime and organizing emmy. I would say, just if
Speaker 1: someone told me you'll have a I have a hard
Speaker 1: drive full of hacked Hillary Clinton emails, I would imagine
Speaker 1: that the price tag just to start off, you'd be
Speaker 1: like ten grand Tim Grant at the low end. The
Speaker 1: low end, I mean, I know people who do dift
Speaker 1: for less. But like I think, all right, well, I
Speaker 1: guess realistically, if I wonder if there is a way
Speaker 1: you could, it's too abstract a trends. And also you
Speaker 1: don't so you're going blind. You don't know what's on
Speaker 1: the emails, what's in the emails. The look, bro, I
Speaker 1: got these emails, any one them or not? And Grant
Speaker 1: it could because it could just all be Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: talking about her charity if prints for me. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what a lot of her emails were. It is Prince Princess,
Speaker 1: I don't like to read on my computer screen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's an old lady who doesn't like computers. Um. So,
Speaker 1: the Mueller report states, after that paragraph I just read,
Speaker 1: the Special Counsel's office decided not to charge Donald Trump
Speaker 1: Junior or other campaign officials for the meeting. But then
Speaker 1: the next three pages are redacted due to an ongoing investigation,
Speaker 1: which again seems to suggest that someone else might charge
Speaker 1: Trump Junior for what he was doing in that meeting
Speaker 1: at some other point. Um, because the investigation is still ongoing. Um.
Speaker 1: The two of like of the fourteen allegations of potential
Speaker 1: crimes that the Mueller investigation headed off handed off to
Speaker 1: other departments. The only two we know of are Michael
Speaker 1: Cohen and Greg Craig, who was a former Obama Council
Speaker 1: like White House counsel to President Obama. But Craig was
Speaker 1: not charged for his work during the Obama administration. He
Speaker 1: was charged for acting as an unregistered agent of the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian government in the past before he came to work
Speaker 1: for Obama. Um. So those are the two of the
Speaker 1: fourteen that we know what they are. And this is
Speaker 1: the end of part one because Part two of the
Speaker 1: Mueller Report is what comes up next. And so now
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about struct in prove it. But
Speaker 1: Sophie says it's time for an ad break. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: So first off, Sophie, Yeah, whoa, I threw the bagels.
Speaker 1: Robert just threw Sophie across the room and into the wall.
Speaker 1: Holy ship. Stop calling her a bag of bagels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty pretty hard, pretty harsh. Um. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: you're gonna you're moving product in this episode. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what I am moving product as well as tossing bagels. Um.
Speaker 1: Buy things. Here we go, guys, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break and we'll be right back. And we're back
Speaker 1: and we're back. Sorry, Jacket is really trying to take
Speaker 1: over this podcast. Where can people find you? That later?
Speaker 1: But first, Robert, what's something from your search history? Good question?
Speaker 1: What is instruction of justice one of the many things
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and I actually have in common? We have
Speaker 1: a surprising number of things a common. Yeah, he and
Speaker 1: I had the same literary agent one point. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Trump's literary Yeah, he's thanked in one of his books,
Speaker 1: Bird Bird and Waxman. Well, like, no, it's just what happens.
Speaker 1: You work, you work with whoever. He wasn't president yet,
Speaker 1: you have to say that. Uh? And then would he
Speaker 1: got three? Wrote songs about our relatives. Yeah, he wrote
Speaker 1: a song about what do You Got Through? Wrote a
Speaker 1: song about how Donald Trump's dad refused to uh let
Speaker 1: black people stay in his buildings? Uh? And what do
Speaker 1: You Got Through? Wrote a song about my relative, pretty
Speaker 1: boy Floyd, for beating a cop to death with a
Speaker 1: log chain for cursing at his wife. Wow, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool man. Pretty boy grabbed a log chain and
Speaker 1: the deputy grabbed his gun, and in the fight that followed,
Speaker 1: he laid that deputy down dozens sort of a cross rhyme.
Speaker 1: But uh yeah, hey, look when you're pretty clear, abou
Speaker 1: a guy who beats somebody to chain the rhyme? Um,
Speaker 1: I like your uncle's story better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shouldn't
Speaker 1: be cursed in front of pretty boy Flood's wife. I've
Speaker 1: always said that you have now. The second part of
Speaker 1: the Mueller report opens by noting that it is specifically
Speaker 1: not ruling on whether or not there was obstruction of
Speaker 1: justice because to do so, among other things, undermine the
Speaker 1: president's ability to be president. Uh and also in general,
Speaker 1: because the Special Council can't make rulings on such things
Speaker 1: because it would be like a separation of powers. Thing.
Speaker 1: One thing I've seen people say is that this is
Speaker 1: essentially Mueller's argument as to why Congress should impeach Um.
Speaker 1: And that's a pretty fair summation of things, because Mueller
Speaker 1: is essentially saying, I can't declare the president guilty of
Speaker 1: a crime. And there's a number of reasons that are
Speaker 1: more complicated that I that I I'm just not competent
Speaker 1: to get into um. But it's not my job it's
Speaker 1: not the special counsel's job, it's not the FBI's job.
Speaker 1: Congress needs to look like, make a decision. And here's
Speaker 1: my case for why. There's a lot of evidence of
Speaker 1: obstruction of justice. And I do think that is the
Speaker 1: fairest way to sum up Part two as saying, here's
Speaker 1: a bunch of evidence the president obstructed justice. Congress, do
Speaker 1: your job. I'm handcuffed, so just you know, but here's
Speaker 1: this whole instruction manual. Yeah. I've seen some articles from
Speaker 1: more right wing publications where they're like Mueller dropped the
Speaker 1: ball by not saying that Trump didn't obstruct justice. He
Speaker 1: should have like made a decision one way or the other.
Speaker 1: It's about two hundred pages of that are basically like,
Speaker 1: I can't say that he committed obstruction of justice, but
Speaker 1: if I could say that, I would. But here's a
Speaker 1: description of him obstructing justice. Here's about how he obstructed justice.
Speaker 1: Huh yeah, alright, let's say murder. But he said beat
Speaker 1: a guide to death with a change change, So all right, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it's not a murder. I'm gonna quote from the
Speaker 1: Mueller report here. Quote. Uh. First, traditional prosecution or delineation
Speaker 1: decision entails a binary determination to initiate or decline a prosecution,
Speaker 1: but we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment.
Speaker 1: The Office of Legal Counsel has issued an opinion finding
Speaker 1: that the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting president
Speaker 1: would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to
Speaker 1: perform its constitutionally assigned functions and violation of the constitutional
Speaker 1: separation of powers. So again, that's Mueller's explanation for why
Speaker 1: he's not going to say whether or not a crime
Speaker 1: was committed. Um, But he does go out of his
Speaker 1: way to say that the president can still be charged
Speaker 1: with the crime after leaving office and dicted after leaving office. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then he notes this, if we had confidence, after
Speaker 1: a thorough investigation of the facts, that the president clearly
Speaker 1: did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state,
Speaker 1: which is the second time in the report that he
Speaker 1: says accordingly, Well, this report does not concluded the president
Speaker 1: committed a crime. It also does not exonerate him. Repeated
Speaker 1: word for word on three different times, says this does
Speaker 1: not exonerate the president. So that's cool. It's like he's
Speaker 1: trying to tell us, the evidence we obtained about the
Speaker 1: president's actions and intent presents difficult issues that present prevent
Speaker 1: us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. The
Speaker 1: evidence we found of crimes makes it difficult to say
Speaker 1: that there were no crimes. Yeah, uh cool, so yeah,
Speaker 1: so I mean, you know, Congress can look into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's what's so also frustrating about just
Speaker 1: how conservative media chooses to just ignore these things for like,
Speaker 1: just I think all they can do is point to
Speaker 1: the fact that Donald Trump isn't in jail and saying like, well,
Speaker 1: if he did something wrong, be in jail. So even
Speaker 1: though there's all this stuff like no, but you're also
Speaker 1: ignoring the fact that I'd imagine if Robert Mueller was
Speaker 1: brought up to the Hill and asked, like, if this
Speaker 1: were a private citizen, does this look like regular straight
Speaker 1: up crime to you, Like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: it's crime. Yeah. The Mueller investigation makes a lot, says
Speaker 1: a lot about the anger President Trump felt when Jeff
Speaker 1: Sessions recused himself. Talks repeatedly about his multiple, multiple constant
Speaker 1: attempts to get Jeff Sessions to unrecuse himself. A word.
Speaker 1: I don't know if existed. It's always in quotation marks,
Speaker 1: and I'm not I think he might have coined that
Speaker 1: to which it's a word. Now, well, why can't why
Speaker 1: can't my dog undie daddy? Yeah, he's never had a dog, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, but I had yeah yea. Uh. Now, the
Speaker 1: President's remediately made all of his problems worse by trying
Speaker 1: to co worse people into saying he wasn't in trouble.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read this next paragraph, which is about sort
Speaker 1: of him trying to get Comy to to uh go
Speaker 1: after or to stop going after Michael Flynn because there's
Speaker 1: some there's some beautiful shade in there. In the following days,
Speaker 1: the President reached out to the Director of National Intelligence
Speaker 1: and the leaders of the Central Intelligence Agency and the
Speaker 1: National Security Agency to ask them what they could do
Speaker 1: to publicly dispel the suggestion that the President had any
Speaker 1: connection to the Russian election effort or Russian election interference effort.
Speaker 1: The President also twice called Comy directly, notwithstanding guidance from
Speaker 1: again his lawyer to avoid direct contacts with the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice. It goes out of its way to be
Speaker 1: like the law President's lawyer said don't do this, and
Speaker 1: the president did this. Um. There's a lot of fascinating
Speaker 1: information and here about how Trump manages a team during
Speaker 1: a crisis. UM. And honestly, this chunk of the report
Speaker 1: is worth everyone reading in full. I am going to
Speaker 1: read another quote about a meeting he had with Lewandowski.
Speaker 1: The president asked about the status of his message for
Speaker 1: Sessions to limit the Special Council investigation to future election interference. Lewandowski, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wanted to limit the Muller investigation to future Russian
Speaker 1: in Yeah, exactly. I just saw this movie with Vandam
Speaker 1: Time Cop. Yeah, like any Time Cop it to the
Speaker 1: next lection. But that doesn't make I don't think was
Speaker 1: that known that he was trying to get it to be.
Speaker 1: I think this might be one of the new things
Speaker 1: that we learned in the investigation. What does that even
Speaker 1: mean that he wanted to me investigate if they can
Speaker 1: do it in the future. Don't talk about what they
Speaker 1: did in just talk about what they might do in
Speaker 1: very specific request for someone who committed no crist That's
Speaker 1: one of the things that makes me think he did
Speaker 1: commit direct crimes. I'm kind of on the fence about
Speaker 1: like whether or not his behavior inten prior to the
Speaker 1: obstruction of justice was like direct cooperation because it's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to say, um, or maybe they don't realize
Speaker 1: that this is something that was happening way four like
Speaker 1: like well five years. We might want to look at
Speaker 1: making your president. Yeah, like it's entirely possible, Like I
Speaker 1: I just don't I just don't know. But it's none
Speaker 1: of us, none of us. It seems like, just just
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, uh so, um, yeah, this is great.
Speaker 1: Further attempts to have the Attorney General take control of
Speaker 1: the investigation. Uh In early summer two seventeen, the President
Speaker 1: called Sessions at home to again ask him to reverse
Speaker 1: his recusal from the Russia investigation. Sessions did not reverse
Speaker 1: his recusal. In October two seventeen, the President met privately
Speaker 1: with Sessions in the Oval Office and asked him to
Speaker 1: take a look at investigating Clinton. In December two seventeen,
Speaker 1: shortly after Flynn pleaded guilty pursuant to a cooperation agreement,
Speaker 1: the President met with Sessions in the Oval Office and suggested,
Speaker 1: according to notes taken by a senior advisor, that if
Speaker 1: Sessions unrecused and took back supervision of the Russia investigation.
Speaker 1: He would be a quote hero, the President told Sessions,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do anything or direct you to
Speaker 1: do anything. I just want to be treated fairly. In response,
Speaker 1: Sessions volunteered that he had never seen anything improper on
Speaker 1: the campaign and told the president there was a whole
Speaker 1: new leadership team in place. He did not unrecuse, So
Speaker 1: it's like four times just there. The Special Council notes
Speaker 1: that it did not make a traditional prosecutorial judgment again
Speaker 1: about the President's behavior, but states that the evidence they
Speaker 1: found supports a few general statements about him, most of
Speaker 1: which boiled down to he may have obstructed justice, but
Speaker 1: it's hard to say since the evidence suggests he doesn't
Speaker 1: commit he didn't commit the underlying crime, but actively, you know,
Speaker 1: did act to damage the investigation. UM. So yeah, that
Speaker 1: that that's repeatedly stated. Um. The President ultimately refuses to
Speaker 1: be interviewed as the result of investigation, but provided some
Speaker 1: written answers. H Muller gives an explanation as to why
Speaker 1: the or he did not choose the subpoena the president
Speaker 1: to force the investigation. Ultimately, while we believe that we
Speaker 1: had the authority and legal justification to issue a grand
Speaker 1: jury subpoena to obtain the president's testimony. We chose not
Speaker 1: to do so. We made that decision and view of
Speaker 1: the substantial delay that such an investigative step likely produced
Speaker 1: at a late stage in our investigation. We also assessed that,
Speaker 1: based on the significant body of evidence we had already
Speaker 1: obtained on the president's actions and his public and private
Speaker 1: statements describing or explaining those actions, we had sufficient evidence
Speaker 1: to understand relevant events and to make assessments without the
Speaker 1: president's testimony. Yeah. Uh, there's a lot of really heavily
Speaker 1: redacted paragraphs in this part, the most interesting of which
Speaker 1: is this one. Uh. Within the Trump campaign aids, this
Speaker 1: is about the DNC hacks. AIDS reacted with enthusiasm to
Speaker 1: reports of the hacks. Sentence redacted. Discussed with campaign officials
Speaker 1: that Wiki Leaks would release the hacked material. Some witnesses
Speaker 1: said that Trump himself discussed the possibility of upcoming release
Speaker 1: releases a couple of words redacted. Michael Cohen, then executive
Speaker 1: vice president of the Trump Organization and special counsel to Trump,
Speaker 1: recalled hearing two or three sentences redacted. Cohen recalled the
Speaker 1: Trump responded, oh good, all right, and sentence redacted. Manafort
Speaker 1: said that shortly after Wiki leaks July two thousand sixteen
Speaker 1: release of hacked documents, he spoke to Trump. Sentence redacted,
Speaker 1: man fort and these are all redacted due to an
Speaker 1: ongoing case. Manafort recalled that Trump responded that Manafort should
Speaker 1: sentence redacted, keep Trump updated. Deputy campaign manager Rick Gates
Speaker 1: said that Manafort was getting pressure from a couple of
Speaker 1: words redacted information, and that Manafort instructed Gates a couple
Speaker 1: of words redacted, uh status updates on upcoming releases. Around
Speaker 1: the same time, Gates was with Trump on a trip
Speaker 1: to an airport. Sentence redacted, and shortly after the call ended,
Speaker 1: Trump told Gates that more releases of damaging information will
Speaker 1: be coming. Sentence redacted. We're discussed within the campaign and
Speaker 1: the summer of two sixteen, the campaign was planning a
Speaker 1: communication strategy based on the possible release of Clinton emails
Speaker 1: by Wiki leagues. There it seems to be that sounds
Speaker 1: like cooperating crime happening. Just the number of redactions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's some That's the sketchiest paragraph in the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Um At least that to my eyes, we should make
Speaker 1: a mad Libsler report. We should make a mad Lives
Speaker 1: of the Muller Report. I'm just gonna use the word
Speaker 1: but yeah, but far yeah, most fartu Gate was Gates
Speaker 1: with was with Trump on a trip to the airport.
Speaker 1: Far far far far far fart fart, and shortly after
Speaker 1: the call end, Trump told Gates that more releases of
Speaker 1: damaging information will be coming. Fart fart, fart, fart. We're disgusted.
Speaker 1: Yeah that works, no or just but no, just make
Speaker 1: a sentence. So it's the most damning because he speaks
Speaker 1: knowledgeably about what wicked Leaks is about to do, basically
Speaker 1: like yeah, right, yeah, yeah, just like we talked about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh good, this this thing that I know is happening. Good.
Speaker 1: So Paul came through on that. Yeah, good man of
Speaker 1: Fort um So. My favorite story, and maybe the whole
Speaker 1: Molder report, is the tale of Donald Trump's lunch with
Speaker 1: Chris Christie after firing Flynn. Now, this is on February four, seventeen,
Speaker 1: the day after Flynn resigned. Um So, Trump had lunch
Speaker 1: at the White House with just Chris Christie. Quote. According
Speaker 1: to Christie, at one point During the lunch, the President said,
Speaker 1: now that we fired Flynn, the Russia thing is over.
Speaker 1: Christie laughed and responded, no way. He said, this Russia
Speaker 1: thing is far from over, and we'll be here on
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day two thousand to eighteen talking about this. The
Speaker 1: President said, what do you mean Flynn met with the Russians?
Speaker 1: That was the problem. I fired Flynn. It's over, Christie recalled,
Speaker 1: responding that based on his experience both as a prosecutor
Speaker 1: and as someone who had been investigated, firing Flynn would
Speaker 1: not end the investigation. Christie said there was no way
Speaker 1: to make the investigation shorter, but a lot of ways
Speaker 1: to make it longer. The President asked Christie what he meant,
Speaker 1: and Christie told the President not to talk about the investigation,
Speaker 1: even if he was frustrated with at his time. At times,
Speaker 1: Christie told the President that he would never be able
Speaker 1: to get rid of Flynn like gum on the bottom
Speaker 1: of your shoe. Towards the end of the lunch, the
Speaker 1: President brought up Comy and asked if Christie was still
Speaker 1: friendly with him. Christie said he what was. The President
Speaker 1: told Christie to call Comy and tell him that the
Speaker 1: President really likes him, tell him he's part of the team.
Speaker 1: At the end of the lunch, the President repeated his
Speaker 1: request that Christie reach out to Comy. Christie had no
Speaker 1: intention of complying with the President's request that he contact Comy.
Speaker 1: He thought that the president's request was nonsensical and Christie
Speaker 1: did not want to put Comy in the position of
Speaker 1: having to receive such a phone call. This is one
Speaker 1: of like five times the President tells someone to talk
Speaker 1: to Comy or someone else to try to get them
Speaker 1: to do something, and that person just doesn't do it.
Speaker 1: It's like yeah, okay, And just like again, it's like
Speaker 1: with McGann when he's like fire Muller and he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm packing my ship. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm gonen yea.
Speaker 1: This is nuts, like really previous, but I'm not doing
Speaker 1: this crazy ship. And I just love that. Like Christie
Speaker 1: specifically tells Mueller, I've been investigated for crimes, so I
Speaker 1: know what to do and it's nothing. Also, I just
Speaker 1: love that his Also Trump is so confused because he's
Speaker 1: used to this corporate thing. He's like, what Michael was stealing?
Speaker 1: Fire him? Okay, good, that's that's delt yeah, like and
Speaker 1: now it's like, oh, it's not over. What do you mean, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean his Christie's advice is good, Like, you can't
Speaker 1: you can't shorten the investigation, but you can make it
Speaker 1: longer by committing crimes, So don't do. And then again,
Speaker 1: who knows. Without it would have been like if you know,
Speaker 1: if Jared Kushner wasn't in the way of Chris Christie
Speaker 1: actually joining the White House Chris, it definitely seems like
Speaker 1: Trump would have handled all of this better if Christie
Speaker 1: had been closer to you know. When you also think
Speaker 1: about it, he doesn't listen to anyone, so it could
Speaker 1: have been a holographic ghost of his father. Christie McGann
Speaker 1: might have taken the same lift away from the White House,
Speaker 1: like you know. So the report heavily corroborates Comy's claims
Speaker 1: that Trump cleared out the room to speak to just
Speaker 1: him about letting Flynn go, a decision that could definitely
Speaker 1: be seen as a serious attempt to influence the investigation.
Speaker 1: Um he talks to other people besides Coney. That also
Speaker 1: lists Comey's notes and stuff. It definitely seems like based
Speaker 1: on everything the the Mueller investigation dug up. Comey's recitation
Speaker 1: of events while he was head of the FBI is
Speaker 1: very credible, um the uh Mueller investigation and seems to
Speaker 1: be concluding that, like what Trump did was obstruction in
Speaker 1: this specific instance, although again it doesn't call it that
Speaker 1: because it's not going to make a prosecutorial judgment. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: the president said he hoped Comy could let let Flynn go,
Speaker 1: rather than affirmatively directing him to do so. The circumstances
Speaker 1: of the conversation show that the President was asking Comey
Speaker 1: to close the s v I S investigation into flint
Speaker 1: like and so it began pretty clear. Yeah, Trump repeatedly
Speaker 1: whined about the investigation during intelligence briefings that comes up
Speaker 1: that like he would be talking about like isis and something,
Speaker 1: and he'd start whining about the investigation, and the briefers
Speaker 1: didn't know what to do about it, Like they were like,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to comment, I don't really okay, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have like someone from like this CI what about
Speaker 1: this Russia bullshit? Huh. Yeah. He did repeatedly complain that
Speaker 1: the Muller investigation was making his job as president impossible.
Speaker 1: But it seems like everyone he worked with besides him
Speaker 1: was trying to move on and just do their jobs,
Speaker 1: and he was the one that couldn't get rid over it,
Speaker 1: which I find interesting. Um, if he had been able to,
Speaker 1: most of the bad behavior in this section would not
Speaker 1: have occurred. Uh yeah. On at least two occasions, the
Speaker 1: President began the Presidential Daily Briefings by student that there
Speaker 1: was no collusion with Russia and he hoped to press
Speaker 1: statement to that effect could be issued. Pompeo, head of
Speaker 1: the CIA, recalled that the President vented about the investigation
Speaker 1: of multiple occasions, complaining that there was no evidence against
Speaker 1: him and that nobody would publicly defend him. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's it's pretty wild. Michael Flynn would have defended me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he sure what a buddy, He sure would have um his.
Speaker 1: Trump repeatedly badgered Comy in other Department of Justice officials
Speaker 1: to announce that he was not under investigation. They tried
Speaker 1: to explain to him why this was a bad idea,
Speaker 1: but he did not listen to them. Trump basically used
Speaker 1: compe firing Comey as an excuse to note that on
Speaker 1: three occasions, the FBI director told him that the President
Speaker 1: was not under investigations, Like it seems like his primary
Speaker 1: reason in firing Comy is that Comey wouldn't state publicly
Speaker 1: that he had told the President that he wasn't under investigation,
Speaker 1: and Trump used the firing memo as an excuse to
Speaker 1: say that, Um, yeah, it's it's it's pretty pretty wild.
Speaker 1: The Molar report definitely seems to be concluding that the
Speaker 1: firing of James Comy may have also been an example
Speaker 1: of obstruction of justice. Um, so that's pretty cool. What
Speaker 1: versions are? What version of the report are you looking at?
Speaker 1: Do you do you fucking think we'll believe? Now? What version?
Speaker 1: Because we know for a fact Trump is not reading
Speaker 1: the report? No, good god, no, no, it's a thing.
Speaker 1: We're probably not reading an entire article about the report.
Speaker 1: Um there's a chance he might be might have listened
Speaker 1: to bars entire summary, but like, what, what do you
Speaker 1: think he knows? Because it does seem like across the
Speaker 1: days after the day after the report, he started calling
Speaker 1: some of the details bullshit, Like I just wonder, we've
Speaker 1: never had a president who can't or won't read before? What?
Speaker 1: How how is the information coming to him? Like how
Speaker 1: is he digesting? Is it just foxes? It seems like
Speaker 1: he mostly gets it from Fox News, right, That's been
Speaker 1: the past, But this is like such a specific doc
Speaker 1: he meant, and it's so dense that like, I just
Speaker 1: I'm curious like that. I mean, I'm sure there'll be
Speaker 1: another book where someone talks about how they had to
Speaker 1: like dumb it, like cliffs notes it or just highlight.
Speaker 1: This doesn't talk about how Trump gets his information, but
Speaker 1: it does talk about how relentlessly when he's interested in something,
Speaker 1: like he was incapable of not asking everyone around him
Speaker 1: to try to get Comy to drop the Flynn thing
Speaker 1: when that was his focus. And then like when he
Speaker 1: wanted someone to say that he wasn't being investigated, he
Speaker 1: brought that up to every single person he talked to,
Speaker 1: because again, he's kind of incapable of listening to people,
Speaker 1: especially when there's something on his mind like this. Right,
Speaker 1: I bet there's a lot of conversations happening where he
Speaker 1: implies that he's read the Muller Report, but everybody knows
Speaker 1: he hasn't. He's like, what do you think of it? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: remember page I remember that part that was right? I mean,
Speaker 1: total bullshit. Um. So the fact that like the so
Speaker 1: the report notes that the firing of James Comey would
Speaker 1: was never like going to close the investigation and could
Speaker 1: not have, which is a mark in the president's defense. Um,
Speaker 1: it seems accurate to say that Trump's intent in firing
Speaker 1: Comey was to punish him for not openly stating that
Speaker 1: he Trump was not being investigated more than it was
Speaker 1: an attempt to disrupt the investigation. That seems to be
Speaker 1: the conclusion that the Mulder report makes. Uh. The analysis
Speaker 1: of whether or not the President obstructed justice gets really
Speaker 1: interesting after this point in the report. It notes that
Speaker 1: his talk to Comy about the loyalty pledge, if you'll
Speaker 1: remember his asking Comy to be loyal does support the
Speaker 1: fact that he was trying to put the kabosh on
Speaker 1: the investigation. Um. But then it basically says that Mueller, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna read this quote because it's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 1: As described in Volume one, the evidence uncovered in the
Speaker 1: investigation did not establish that the President or those close
Speaker 1: to him were involved in the charge Russian computer hacking
Speaker 1: or active measure conspiracies, or that the President otherwise had
Speaker 1: an unlawful relationship with any Russian official. But the evidence
Speaker 1: does indicate that a thorough fd FBI investigation would uncover
Speaker 1: facts about the campaign and the president personally that the
Speaker 1: President could have understood to be crimes or that would
Speaker 1: give rise to personal and political concerns. So he's saying that, like,
Speaker 1: we didn't find any evidence of a conspiracy with Russia,
Speaker 1: but the evidence suggests that the reason the president was
Speaker 1: so worried about the investigation is because he committed a
Speaker 1: bunch of other crimes that he was worried wouldn't be revealed.
Speaker 1: That's Comey stating that as directly as he can. Um. Mueller,
Speaker 1: Mueller staging that. Sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah, just kind of
Speaker 1: circling back on a detail that we talked about earlier. Um,
Speaker 1: just in terms of like Trump and the people around
Speaker 1: him having direct Russian ties. Somebody was pointing out, and
Speaker 1: this is a detail that I hadn't really heard. I
Speaker 1: think it was Andrew Sullivan was pointing out in the
Speaker 1: Intelligence or the New York Magazine thing that in the
Speaker 1: days immediately after the election, uh Putin and a lot
Speaker 1: of Russian officials were scrambling to try and get access
Speaker 1: to Trump. So that's kind of the best argument I've
Speaker 1: seen for why like the at least the idea that
Speaker 1: like there was some deep, deeply tied in uh conspiracy
Speaker 1: like probably isn't true like all the unless it's tempening
Speaker 1: through people around him right there. Yeah, yeah, because I don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard to be like Trump fully knows the full
Speaker 1: extent of everything, knows like just enough to be to
Speaker 1: know how to move, but not enough to seem completely
Speaker 1: on the hook for anything. And I think that some
Speaker 1: of that might be the Russian government giving him too
Speaker 1: much credit, because knowing what we know now, if I
Speaker 1: was the Russian government, I was trying to influence him,
Speaker 1: I would just have I would just reach out to
Speaker 1: someone on Fox News and get them to talk about
Speaker 1: the president should let Russia have Eastern Ukraine? Like that,
Speaker 1: you don't even you don't need to talk. He doesn't
Speaker 1: listen to people who talked to Like I'm gonna guess
Speaker 1: that's what Putin learned in their meeting, is that like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this guy can't pay attention. Hear me,
Speaker 1: He's just talking about Comey, who the fund is? James
Speaker 1: to me, like a hand of that? Would you say
Speaker 1: that the investigation is not into me? Like right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Um so uh it talks about for a while about
Speaker 1: how he repeatedly tried to file the special counsel McGan
Speaker 1: after McGann refused to uh talk about how they were
Speaker 1: conflicts of interest between Robert Mullen. What Trump thought was
Speaker 1: a conflict of interest is that Mueller had interviewed for
Speaker 1: the head of the FBI job and not gotten it, which,
Speaker 1: like everyone else was like, that's not conflict of interest.
Speaker 1: And he was like, you got to tell people about
Speaker 1: this conflict of interest. But it wasn't even that, but
Speaker 1: it's not. It was the golf course thing too. Oh wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: wait where he was like, Robert Muller tried to get
Speaker 1: into one of the golf courses. Oh that's not in here.
Speaker 1: Wait is that another one of them? Or maybe I
Speaker 1: missed it, look at but I'm one of the other
Speaker 1: things that was he was pointing to was like he's
Speaker 1: mad that he he tried to get into like a
Speaker 1: club and didn't or some other it was something. It
Speaker 1: was like, what you're also putting that layer on top
Speaker 1: of it. Beautiful that that is a very Trump story,
Speaker 1: Trump March three, But we have conflicts. I have a
Speaker 1: nasty business transaction with Robert Mueller a number of years ago,
Speaker 1: I said, why isn't that mentioned? He wants the job
Speaker 1: as FBI director. I mean, these are things that are
Speaker 1: out there, they know it. Why isn't that and I
Speaker 1: didn't give it to him? Why isn't that mentioned? Wow?
Speaker 1: But what about the membership fees for Trump National Golf Course.
Speaker 1: I think that's the nasty business transaction that he's talking about.
Speaker 1: Bob Mueller couldn't golf at a mediocre golf course, or
Speaker 1: it was it was a dispute over fees or okay,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't so okay. Robert Mueller's family was members
Speaker 1: of the Trump National Golf Course. He said, we actually
Speaker 1: we're not even using the membership anymore. We'd like to
Speaker 1: cancel it. Can we get some more membership fees back?
Speaker 1: And they did, right, okay, but that was like pretty damning,
Speaker 1: Well this changes everything. Yeah, let's just throw this, you
Speaker 1: know what. I'm sorry we wasted everyone's time listening. I
Speaker 1: believe that a man was shot, who was shot in
Speaker 1: combat for his country, would would because because golf club membership,
Speaker 1: of golf club membership, he recouped uh. And that I
Speaker 1: do think that is more than anything a window into
Speaker 1: trump psyche, because that is totally something he would do.
Speaker 1: Trump would burn this country down if someone somebody oft
Speaker 1: refund for yeah, oh yeah yeah. Now you probably have
Speaker 1: run into some of some quotes from pieces of Trump's
Speaker 1: reaction when he was first told about the special counsel investigation.
Speaker 1: I want to read that little bit in full because
Speaker 1: it's it's good for the soul, and we could all
Speaker 1: use that. At this point, the President learned of the
Speaker 1: special council's appointment from Sessions, who was with the President, Hunt,
Speaker 1: and McGann during conducting interviews for a new FBI director.
Speaker 1: Session stepped out of the Oval office to take a
Speaker 1: call from Rosenstein, who told him about the special council appointment,
Speaker 1: and Sessions then returned to inform the President of the news.
Speaker 1: According to notes written by Hunt, when Sessions told the
Speaker 1: President that a special council had been appointed, the President
Speaker 1: slumped back in his chair and said, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is terrible. This is the end of my presidency.
Speaker 1: I'm fucked. The President became angry and lambastad the Attorney
Speaker 1: General for his decision to not recuse the investigation, stating,
Speaker 1: how could you let this happen? Jeff The President said
Speaker 1: the position of attorney General was his most important appointment
Speaker 1: and that Sessions had let him down, contrasting him to
Speaker 1: Eric Holder and Robert Kennedy. Sessions recalled that the President
Speaker 1: said to him, you were supposed to protect me, or
Speaker 1: words to that effect. The President returned to the consequences
Speaker 1: of the appointment and said, everyone tells me that if
Speaker 1: you get one of these independent councils that ruins your presidency,
Speaker 1: it takes years and I won't people to do anything.
Speaker 1: This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me.
Speaker 1: The President told Sessions he should resign as attorney General.
Speaker 1: Sessions agreed to resubmit his resignation and left the Oval office.
Speaker 1: Hicks saw the President shortly after Sessions departed and described
Speaker 1: the President as being extremely upset by the special counsel's appointment.
Speaker 1: Hicks said that she had only seen the President like
Speaker 1: that one other time, when the Access Hollywood tape came
Speaker 1: out during the campaign. H chefs, Ah, it was it. Uh,
Speaker 1: Eric Ericsson maybe was the one. So I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think of the person. Oh no, it was someone from
Speaker 1: Gateway Pundit. I think Jim Hofft who said that that line.
Speaker 1: The reason why the president acted responded, I'm fucked, it's
Speaker 1: over is because he knew that the deep state had
Speaker 1: now initiated a coup against him, and that was the reason. Yeah,
Speaker 1: m cool. It's just funny to see like the ways
Speaker 1: there like journalists on the right or trying to answer
Speaker 1: a rationalizing Oh yeah, it wasn't because he did anything wrong,
Speaker 1: because he knew the deep state was gonna suck and
Speaker 1: the whole thing. So yeah, yeah, there's also just such
Speaker 1: child like little child vibes to it. This is the
Speaker 1: worst thing that's ever happened to me. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot about this that led to like you just hear
Speaker 1: how much how little trust everyone around the president has
Speaker 1: for him. Um So, Sessions gave in his resignation papers,
Speaker 1: but Trump ultimately didn't ask him to resign yet, but
Speaker 1: the President kept his resignation left letter, and then Rerines
Speaker 1: previous was like, Jeff, you gotta get that letter back.
Speaker 1: It's going to be The words he used was a
Speaker 1: shot caller on the Department of Justice's neck, Like you
Speaker 1: have to take that back. Um So, the president tried
Speaker 1: to argue that Mueller interviewing for the Yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: the President tried to argue that Muller interviewing for the
Speaker 1: director of the FBI job was a conflict of interest.
Speaker 1: Steve Bannon told him that was ridiculous and petty. Like
Speaker 1: Steve Bannon called it petty because at least he's somewhat
Speaker 1: in touch with the version of reality. Some people are engaged.
Speaker 1: You have to be to be a good propagandists have
Speaker 1: to at least know what the world is. You'll be like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, cupcakes are making our kids all freaky
Speaker 1: and ship. Like what it's speaking of cupcakes making our
Speaker 1: kids all freaky and ship. We have some products now
Speaker 1: for freak cakes. Freak cakes, they make your kids unhealthy
Speaker 1: and think for themselves by umb. So, if you how
Speaker 1: much money are we getting from the freak cakes people,
Speaker 1: usually high number. First, your diamond encrusted grill says freak
Speaker 1: cakes on it. Well, let me tell you about freak cakes, miles,
Speaker 1: the only cakes that clean your teeth. Now, we're getting
Speaker 1: a lot of pushback from big Dental here every morning,
Speaker 1: dentists outside my door, picketing, fighting, fire bombing my windows.
Speaker 1: That's why I've got those diamond girls on the Wendows,
Speaker 1: so funk with big dentistry and buy some freak cakes.
Speaker 1: We're back. Speaking of us being back, here's more of
Speaker 1: the Mueller report. Are you dead inside yet? Back? Because
Speaker 1: Trump got stabbed in the back by the Deep States?
Speaker 1: Sure did? Nice Jack, Jack returning on this round. I'm
Speaker 1: going to robot everything you say. Oh boy, well, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to about everything Mueller says, because you got
Speaker 1: a we got a big mule quote here good, I'm ready.
Speaker 1: So the President repeatedly hammered McGann, his lawyer, to try
Speaker 1: and get to try to get McGann to call the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice and tell Rod Rosenstein that Mueller had
Speaker 1: to go. Uh. This next paragraph paints a very vivid
Speaker 1: picture of what it's like working for Donald Trump. When
Speaker 1: the President called McGann a second time to follow up
Speaker 1: on the order to call the Department of Justice, McGan
Speaker 1: recalled that the President was more direct, saying something like
Speaker 1: cal Rod, tell Rod that Mueller his conflicts and can't
Speaker 1: be the special counsel. McGan recalled the President telling him
Speaker 1: Mueller has got to go. Call me back when you
Speaker 1: do it. McGann understood the President to be saying that
Speaker 1: the special counselor had to be removed by Rosenstein. To
Speaker 1: end the conversation with the president, McGan left the president
Speaker 1: with the impression that McGann would call Rosenstein. McGan recalled
Speaker 1: that he had already said no to the President's request,
Speaker 1: that he was worn down, so he just wanted to
Speaker 1: get off the phone. McGann recalled feeling trapped because he
Speaker 1: did not plan to follow the president's directive, but did
Speaker 1: not know what he would say the next time the
Speaker 1: President called. McGann did decided he had to resign. He
Speaker 1: called his personal lawyer and then called a chief of
Speaker 1: staff and Annie Donaldson, informer of his decision. He then
Speaker 1: drove to the office to pack his belonging to submit
Speaker 1: his resignation letter. Donaldson recalled him again, told her the
Speaker 1: President had called and demanded he contact the Apartment of Justice,
Speaker 1: and that the President wanted him to do something that
Speaker 1: McGann did not want to do. McGann told Donaldson that
Speaker 1: the President had called at least twice and and asked
Speaker 1: in one of the calls, have you done it just
Speaker 1: real quick? Um? Because I have I listened to the
Speaker 1: slow burn about the Clinton Lewinsky affair and the just
Speaker 1: the Watergate investigation and the level of intrigue and just
Speaker 1: Clinton doing bad things is so minimal that and the
Speaker 1: Republicans freaked out about that for ten years in a
Speaker 1: row basically and still are and still are freaking out
Speaker 1: about it. And they have the balls to, uh say
Speaker 1: that call our interest in this guy who can't who
Speaker 1: can't stop committing crimes. They have the balls to call
Speaker 1: that Trump derangement syndrome. I just wanted to put perspective
Speaker 1: stop when crimes, when his employees who have a vested
Speaker 1: interest in his political success, repeatedly say please, don't do anything,
Speaker 1: You're not in danger, and then he endangers himself demanding
Speaker 1: that they commit crimes, calling them at all hours of
Speaker 1: the day, call Rode and say Mueller has to go.
Speaker 1: He has conflicts, those conflicts again just like that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what was the problem. That's not how it works. What
Speaker 1: do you mean? So McGann later told rens Prebus when
Speaker 1: he was still trying to resign, that the President had
Speaker 1: asked him to do crazy ship and seems to have
Speaker 1: been on the verge of resigning, but eventually did not
Speaker 1: in the President eventually dropped the issue because again he
Speaker 1: has the attention span of a fourteen year old um
Speaker 1: as to whether or not this is collusion. While the
Speaker 1: President claimed he was just asking McGann to bring up
Speaker 1: Mueller's possible conflicts of interest to the Department of Justice,
Speaker 1: but and then the mole Report notes that some evidence
Speaker 1: does support this, but quote substantial evidence, however, supports the
Speaker 1: conclusion that the President went further and in fact directed
Speaker 1: McGann to call Rosenstein to have the special counsel removed,
Speaker 1: which again his substruction of justice. The report notes that
Speaker 1: the president's conversations with numerous other people during this period,
Speaker 1: including Prebus and Chris Christie, showed that he had an
Speaker 1: intense desire to, in the president's words, knock out Mueller.
Speaker 1: Kind of fun to think of mullotyping all that out now.
Speaker 1: The evidence shows that the President was not just seeking
Speaker 1: an examination of whether conflicts of interest existed, but was
Speaker 1: instead looking to use asserted conflicts as a way to
Speaker 1: termine the special counsel. So again, the conclusion by the
Speaker 1: Muller Report is basically, the president committed obstruction of justice,
Speaker 1: but we we can't say that because that's not in
Speaker 1: the scope of this thing. Here's this outlining the obstruction
Speaker 1: he committed. Here is a detailed description of him committing
Speaker 1: obstruction of justice. Yeah. Also, that's a good it's a
Speaker 1: good snapshot of what life is like for people who
Speaker 1: work for Donald Trump. It's also a good testimony to
Speaker 1: how to deal with a shitty boss. Just say yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: sure boss, and then don't do the terrible idea he's
Speaker 1: telling you to do. That's that almost always works. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it every day. Fuck you, Miles, Yes, sir, I'm going
Speaker 1: to get right away. Yeah. And and speaking of that, Jack,
Speaker 1: there's another great detail of that later in the report
Speaker 1: on again. This is like a December of two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: after Flynn pleaded guilty of him hammering Jeff Sessions again
Speaker 1: to unrecus According to contemporaneous notes taken by Port, the
Speaker 1: President said, I don't know if you could unrecuse yourself,
Speaker 1: you'd be a hero. Not telling you to do anything.
Speaker 1: Dershowitz says, potus can get involved, can order a g
Speaker 1: to investigate. I don't want to get involved. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to get involved. I'm not going to do anything
Speaker 1: or to reckue to do anything. I just want to
Speaker 1: be treated fairly. Huh. Yeah, Now, the report does seem
Speaker 1: to suggest that Trump's constant attempts to get Sessions to
Speaker 1: unrecuse himself were, in fact acts of obstruction, do they
Speaker 1: And they use quotes there too when they sound recused
Speaker 1: in that instance, let me see yes, okay, yeah, so
Speaker 1: I like so that really is like a shade move. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a shade move. This is not a word in
Speaker 1: Trump vocabu you will unrecuse yourself. Yeah, So the report
Speaker 1: does seem to conclude that Trump's constant attempts to get
Speaker 1: Session to unrecuse we're in fact acts of obstruction. Uh, Like,
Speaker 1: I've seen the quotes every time, every time, every time
Speaker 1: recused himself. He seems very irritated by this point. There
Speaker 1: is Yeah, he's one. Just is fun this guy. He
Speaker 1: really frustrated at the President and at Paul Manafort. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: well I hear he's reading the report for audible. So
Speaker 1: that's gonna be Roberta. We actually are having handling on
Speaker 1: behind the bastards soon. But we're not We're not talking
Speaker 1: about Trump. We're gonna we're gonna, we're gonna finally talking
Speaker 1: about how he nailed the NFL. We're gonna finally get
Speaker 1: that Mao episode out. Bob Mueller seemed like the guest
Speaker 1: for that. He's actually, if you heard his type five
Speaker 1: down at the Comedy Factory, really solid. I was surprised
Speaker 1: he was doing so well with the prop bits. But yeah,
Speaker 1: he's actually, yeah, he's little racy, but uh yeah, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: really racy. It's like, yeah, well, because he says racy
Speaker 1: and then pulls out an inflatable race car. Yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: he does. It's a good joke. It's a good it's
Speaker 1: a good it's an afro on it. Yeah, that's what.
Speaker 1: The report does seem to suggest that Trump's constant attempts
Speaker 1: to get Sessions to unrecuse himself were in act acts
Speaker 1: of obstruction. Quote. There's evidence that at least one purpose
Speaker 1: of the President's conduct towards Sessions was to have Sessions
Speaker 1: assume control of the Russia investigation and supervise it in
Speaker 1: a way that would restrict its scope. A reasonable inference
Speaker 1: from those statements and the president's actions is that the
Speaker 1: president believe that an unrefused Attorney General would pay a
Speaker 1: protective role and could shield the president from the ongoing
Speaker 1: Russia investigation. Um. Yeah, uh, it's constantly interesting to me,
Speaker 1: how little loyalty and like is shown by the people
Speaker 1: who are close to President Trump. Um. Yeah, uh. He
Speaker 1: asked Rob Porter, the White House staff secretary, to deliver
Speaker 1: the president's demands to Rigan that he don McGan that
Speaker 1: he denied publicly the President had ever tried to fall
Speaker 1: fire Mueller. Um. McGann dismissed that like the threat that
Speaker 1: he would be fired if he didn't deliver this by
Speaker 1: saying that it would look bad for the president if
Speaker 1: he did this, and McGann turn him down again. So
Speaker 1: again he keeps ordering McGan to break the law, and
Speaker 1: Began doesn't break the law. And that's part of why
Speaker 1: the case against him as an clearer because people didn't
Speaker 1: listen when he repeat, these are lawyers. Yeah. McGann acknowledged
Speaker 1: that he had not told the president directly that he
Speaker 1: planned to resign, but said that the story was otherwise accurate.
Speaker 1: The President asked McGann, did I say the word fire?
Speaker 1: McGan responded, what you said is Calrod Rosenstein tell Rod
Speaker 1: that Mueller has conflicts and can't be the special counsel.
Speaker 1: The President responded, I never said that. The President said
Speaker 1: that he merely wanted Began to raise the conflicts issue
Speaker 1: with Rosenstein and leave it to him to decide what
Speaker 1: to do. McGann told the President that he did not
Speaker 1: understand the conversations that way and instead of heard call
Speaker 1: Rod there are conflicts. Mueller has to go. The President
Speaker 1: asked McGan whether or not he would do a correction,
Speaker 1: and McGann said, no, do do a correction. Yeah, do
Speaker 1: a correction. I'm sorry, let me do a correction. Really great,
Speaker 1: And this is all about, by the way, a New
Speaker 1: York Times report stating that the President had tried to
Speaker 1: get McGann to fire Mueller, which Trump claimed publicly was
Speaker 1: all lies by the bias New York Times, and McGann
Speaker 1: himself was like, no, they got it right. No. That's
Speaker 1: a funny thing too, is so many journalists are vindicated
Speaker 1: to from this report to when things came out there
Speaker 1: like oh, this is all unfounded, blah blah, and a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff is now in here. That's why
Speaker 1: the Glenn Greenwald thing of him being like, see it
Speaker 1: was all bullshit is like, wait, did you even read
Speaker 1: the report, Because like, all this stuff you've been like
Speaker 1: saying was bullshit and overblown has been born out in
Speaker 1: this report because Glenn Greenwald was not going to do
Speaker 1: what I did and spend the entire all of yesterday
Speaker 1: in a dank room drinking King Scotch and reading the
Speaker 1: Mueller Report. Because Glenn Greenwald lives on a mansion above
Speaker 1: a Brazilian favela filled with dogs, and it's better things
Speaker 1: to do than read this report. Is that where he lives? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he makes like a million dollars a year. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: lives in Brazil, crushing it. I didn't know that with
Speaker 1: his beautiful husband. He's one of the best journalists on
Speaker 1: the planet. Oh God, bless you, God bless him. And
Speaker 1: he lives above the favelas and where like Rio or something.
Speaker 1: I think it's in or might piece up all I
Speaker 1: don't off the top of my head. Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: it seems like the sort of thing that he had
Speaker 1: locked and loaded right before the report even came out.
Speaker 1: There's no way he read it all. Good God, no
Speaker 1: four hours. It would betray everything he's done up until then.
Speaker 1: He's not. He's It took me eight and I really
Speaker 1: half asked the reading of this report, guys, and I
Speaker 1: know it's obvious. So this is all leading up to
Speaker 1: my very favorite paragraph and the entire Muller report. Um,
Speaker 1: and this is as he's he's talking to McGan. The
Speaker 1: President also asked McGann in a meeting why he had
Speaker 1: told Special Counsel's Office investigators that the President had told
Speaker 1: him to have the special counsel removed. McGan responded that
Speaker 1: he had to and that his conversations with the President
Speaker 1: were not protected by attorney client privilege. The President then asked,
Speaker 1: what about these notes. Why do you take notes? Lawyers
Speaker 1: don't take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes.
Speaker 1: McGan responded that he keeps notes because he's a real lawyer,
Speaker 1: and explains that notes create a record and are not
Speaker 1: a bad thing. The President said, I've had a lot
Speaker 1: of great lawyers like Ray Cohen. He didn't take notes,
Speaker 1: Boom mob lawyer Roy coh famous crime lawyer Roy like
Speaker 1: Roy Cohne, because I'm not committing crimes that guarantee you'll
Speaker 1: be impeached. Like, I'm not going to do that because
Speaker 1: I'm a real lawyer. But Gan's one of the guys
Speaker 1: who come across from this being like, well, at least
Speaker 1: your comt because I'm a real lawyer. Is such a
Speaker 1: condescending answer to be giving to the President, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure to like with Trump, he's like not used to
Speaker 1: being spoken to like that, and I'm sure Don McGann
Speaker 1: is like, fuck you mode, I don't like ship. Trump
Speaker 1: probably took all that. He's like because I'm a real lawyer,
Speaker 1: because he's seen what's happening to Flynn. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to go to prison for you, and other people probably
Speaker 1: would never. I hope that Don McGann was so just shitty,
Speaker 1: like I mean, obviously fuck him, like guiding Brett Kavanaugh
Speaker 1: through the confirmation ship and he's a bad person, Like
Speaker 1: just if it were like a scene in a show
Speaker 1: of just being like, shut shut the funk up. Because
Speaker 1: I'm a real lawyer, you fun. Because I'm a lawyer,
Speaker 1: I'm taking it's not banned to take notes, Donald, I've
Speaker 1: never seen that. You've never seen that. The TV show
Speaker 1: that it would be someone Right, Yeah, the TV show
Speaker 1: that I would be from would not be House of Cards,
Speaker 1: it would be Veep. Because you also have to imagine
Speaker 1: that McGann was taking notes of that conversation. Well, this
Speaker 1: is telling him not to take notes. So Trump was
Speaker 1: then like, you're doing it again. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: asking about notes, said creating record just said, but Roy
Speaker 1: Khane didn't do that. Okay, I got what I need, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mr President, like I got a lot of tables. Man,
Speaker 1: I gotta get out of here. Yeah. Next we get
Speaker 1: into a bunch more stuff of the Manifort stuff, which
Speaker 1: again it's a lot of obstruction e stuff there you
Speaker 1: can read it. We already talked about a lot of
Speaker 1: Maniforts crimes, a decent amount of it still redacted. We
Speaker 1: get to what's probably Roger Stone next. But again everything
Speaker 1: about Stone is redacted right now, so it's a little
Speaker 1: bit hard to say. There is a partially redacted paragraph,
Speaker 1: uh talking about the President Michael Cohen that makes Donald
Speaker 1: Trump sound exactly like a mob boss. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read that next. A few days after the searches, the
Speaker 1: President called Cohen. According to Cohen, the President said he
Speaker 1: wanted to check in and asked if Cohen was okay,
Speaker 1: and the President encouraged Cohen to hang in there and
Speaker 1: stay strong. Cohen also recalled that following the searches, this
Speaker 1: is after Cohen's house had been searched, Uh, he heard
Speaker 1: from individuals who were in touch with the President related
Speaker 1: to Cohen the President support for him. Cohen recalled that Blank,
Speaker 1: a friend of the president's, reached out to say that
Speaker 1: he was with the boss bosses Capitalized and mar Lago,
Speaker 1: and the President said he loves you and not to worry.
Speaker 1: Cohen recalled that redacted for the Trump organization told him
Speaker 1: the Boss loves you, and Cohen said that redacted, a
Speaker 1: friend of the presidents told him, everyone knows the Boss
Speaker 1: has your back. Uh. That's that's that's a mob ash ship.
Speaker 1: That is a mob ship. But it's also like very touchy, feely, warm, yeah,
Speaker 1: sentimental for Trump. Yeah, and an army general. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: that's probably as warm and feely as my Michael Cohen
Speaker 1: has ever been, including like on his wedding night. So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The fact that he has turned and sorry, I take
Speaker 1: a bullet for him, well, and I'm gonna testify, but
Speaker 1: he has to say it and in the third person,
Speaker 1: because saying you would be like two emotional and he
Speaker 1: said that. The report concludes the President probably knew and
Speaker 1: directly approved of Michael Cohen lying to Congress. The evidence
Speaker 1: could support an inference that the President was aware of
Speaker 1: these facts at the time of Cohen's false statements to Congress. Um.
Speaker 1: So again, so the president probably committed a crime, and
Speaker 1: the evidence could probably support that he committed a crime. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what Mueller seems to be saying. At the conclusion
Speaker 1: of the report, it reiterates that it will not make
Speaker 1: traditional prosecutorial judgments, but does note some conclusions in this investigation.
Speaker 1: The evidence does not established that the president was involved
Speaker 1: in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference, but
Speaker 1: the evidence does point to a range of other possible
Speaker 1: person emotives animating the president's conduct. These include concerns that
Speaker 1: continued investigation would call into question the legitimacy of his election,
Speaker 1: and potential uncertainty about whether certain events such as advanced
Speaker 1: notice of Wiki leaks's release of hacked information, or the
Speaker 1: June nine, sixteen meeting between senior campaign officials and Russians,
Speaker 1: could be seen as criminal activity by the president, his campaign,
Speaker 1: or his family. Third, many of the president's acts directed
Speaker 1: at witnesses, including the discouragement of cooperation with the government
Speaker 1: and suggestions of possible future partners, occurred in public view. Well,
Speaker 1: it may be more difficult to establish that public facing
Speaker 1: acts were motivated by a corrupt intent. The President's power
Speaker 1: to influence actions, persons, and events is enhanced by his
Speaker 1: unique ability to attract attention through use of mass communications,
Speaker 1: and no principle of law excludes public acts from the
Speaker 1: scope of obstruction statutes. At the likely effect of the
Speaker 1: access to intimidate witnesses or alter their testimony, the justice
Speaker 1: system's integrity is equally threatened. That seems so damned like
Speaker 1: such a sane description of what the president was doing
Speaker 1: than like nobody was using like those sorts of straightforward
Speaker 1: words to describe what he was doing for so long,
Speaker 1: and he's just like, no, this is how it works.
Speaker 1: You can't publicly intimidate people. Yeah. Muller notes that the
Speaker 1: president's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but
Speaker 1: that is largely because the persons who surrounded the president
Speaker 1: declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.
Speaker 1: He kept urging them to do crimes, and they were
Speaker 1: just a little too smart to do it, right. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I just I don't want to go to prison.
Speaker 1: I don't want you to go to prison. So I
Speaker 1: guess not that he yells at you for an hour
Speaker 1: and a half yeah, so. Uh. It notes after this
Speaker 1: that the president is not immune to charges for obstruction
Speaker 1: of justice just by the nature of being the president. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you know, I'm going to read essentially the
Speaker 1: final word in the report before the appendix, this well
Speaker 1: final paragraph, which in any sane society would be damning.
Speaker 1: Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment,
Speaker 1: we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the president's conduct.
Speaker 1: The evidence we obtained about the president's actions and intent
Speaker 1: presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if
Speaker 1: we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time,
Speaker 1: if we had confidence, after a thorough investigation of the facts,
Speaker 1: that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice,
Speaker 1: we would so state, based on the facts and the
Speaker 1: applicable legal standard, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly,
Speaker 1: while this report does not conclude that the president committed
Speaker 1: a crime, it also does not exonerate him for the
Speaker 1: third time. Right, that's my fucking notes. Who really threw
Speaker 1: that bagel down? Where are the bagels? Where's my tossing bagels?
Speaker 1: They're already on the ground. Bring me my tossing bagels.
Speaker 1: Fuck you. I I'm not surprised by anything in there. Uh. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, Weeny William Barr to do some splaining, you
Speaker 1: need some Robert Mueller splaining. And uh, I mean all
Speaker 1: this really shows is like this is I think the
Speaker 1: beginning of a much longer process. Yeah. I mean again again,
Speaker 1: there's still fourteen ongoing criminal investigations. So is there a
Speaker 1: version of this where they don't say we're going forward
Speaker 1: with impeachment hearings, but they do continue to like have hearings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's possible. They can investigate all these others. I think
Speaker 1: it's a foregotten conclusion that Mueller is going to talk
Speaker 1: to Congress. That's and the Congress has already requested the
Speaker 1: unredacted version of the report, so that's probably going to happen. Um.
Speaker 1: So far, Democratic leadership has been unwilling to in fact
Speaker 1: directly stated they don't want to pursue impeachment, which, like
Speaker 1: I will say, based on my non lawyer knowledge of
Speaker 1: what I read in the report, definitely seems like there's
Speaker 1: enough to impeach over like to at least you know,
Speaker 1: do because obviously impeaching doesn't mean he gets kicked out
Speaker 1: of the job. It's just starts. Impeaching is just a
Speaker 1: political There's definitely more there than there was with Clinton,
Speaker 1: um in terms of uh crime that was probably committed. Uh,
Speaker 1: but at the state, like people are wondering, like is
Speaker 1: it a good political strategy to impeach him? Which, like,
Speaker 1: is it a good political strategy to just like not
Speaker 1: charge the president for his multiple crimes? Yeah, I hope
Speaker 1: that you win the next election, like Democrats often don't like.
Speaker 1: But there's no version of reality where the Democrats are
Speaker 1: able to act successfully impeach Trump from office given what
Speaker 1: is currently out there. So they would need depends on
Speaker 1: the votes too. Yeah, votes for on the Senate would
Speaker 1: require a bunch of Republicans to vote to impeach Trump.
Speaker 1: And that, I mean that is a good point that like,
Speaker 1: if he gets impeached and then like is actually kicked out,
Speaker 1: he might claim vindication or something you can say, it'll
Speaker 1: probably drag on up until the election. And b And
Speaker 1: the last time we saw an unsuccessful impeaching of a president,
Speaker 1: the president saw a huge boost after. Yeah, although the
Speaker 1: president there like his poll numbers flat as a fucking
Speaker 1: door nail. Uh, this president. Yeah, well, just in the
Speaker 1: wake of the Mullar report coming out, like it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to have had any impact, Like when we're looking
Speaker 1: at like but yeah, but but it's been like a
Speaker 1: week or two since bar announced no collusion or whatever,
Speaker 1: and it didn't do anything because I think most people
Speaker 1: they don't need the report on either side to still
Speaker 1: believe he's either the best thing to happen or the
Speaker 1: worst thing to happen. So so then I guess when
Speaker 1: you look at it from there, you're like, well, then
Speaker 1: if it's not going to move the needle that much,
Speaker 1: is it the best? Is that the best way of
Speaker 1: I'm not going to make a judgment on whether or
Speaker 1: not he should be impeached, because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: thinking behind that. I will say it seems like a
Speaker 1: horrible dereliction of duty to not h hammer every aspect
Speaker 1: of this, Uh, bring Muller up before Congress, like like
Speaker 1: like publicize heavily every investigation that is still ongoing, like
Speaker 1: it needs to be kept in the public eye up
Speaker 1: until the election. Yeah, and maybe committed a huge number
Speaker 1: of crimes, it sounds like. And by having people like
Speaker 1: under oath in a televised test like if they're testifying
Speaker 1: and giving testimony. You can hopefully chip away a little
Speaker 1: bit at the court of public opinion too, if you
Speaker 1: if it's NonStop of people being like yeah, and then
Speaker 1: he asked me to do this and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't do that. Yeah. I want to hear Donald
Speaker 1: McGann talk about all of the times Trump tried to
Speaker 1: get him to commit crimes in front of Congress. I
Speaker 1: really want that because what was the the in the
Speaker 1: Watergate thing, Like one of the first ones was like
Speaker 1: just like an office assistant who they asked to shred
Speaker 1: documents and like that whole thing was kind of the
Speaker 1: first anecdote that people like, what's going on? Yeah, because
Speaker 1: like higher up, like I don't know how to use
Speaker 1: this documents shredder, right, And the idea that Nixon should
Speaker 1: be impeached was incredibly unpopular at the start of those
Speaker 1: televised hearings, and it completely flipped by the end of
Speaker 1: the televised hearings. But I mean, I think people are
Speaker 1: too aware of this whole process too, uh, like have
Speaker 1: their mind changed that much by a televised thing. But
Speaker 1: I do think you know, as we're you know, looking
Speaker 1: at the election, if there is a televised Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: hearing where different just incompetence and dishonesty and just being
Speaker 1: terrible at the job are like kind of coming out
Speaker 1: and drips and drops. That's not a bad thing for Democrats,
Speaker 1: And that seems like it would be a smart strategy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does seem like it would be a smart strategy.
Speaker 1: But we are talking about the Democratic Party here, so
Speaker 1: I look forward to them doing something that makes everything worse. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is what I can rely on the Democratic Party for.
Speaker 1: So I'm excited about Hillary run with Tim Caine once again.
Speaker 1: Biden Kane ticket baby? Yeah, who do we who do we?
Speaker 1: Who do we talk? How do we? How do we
Speaker 1: get the lefties on board? Oh? Let's bring back Tim Kane.
Speaker 1: Love Tim Kane, Jack breaking. Mike just fell off, probably
Speaker 1: maybe related to all of the bagel tossing I've been doing,
Speaker 1: no way to know. See, you've angered You've angered the Lord.
Speaker 1: You know what, Daniel, when you get done with him
Speaker 1: and those bagels again, I'm gonna give one more good
Speaker 1: tossing before we before we threat on it. Yeah, you guys,
Speaker 1: and he got any got any pluggables to plug bagel's
Speaker 1: down there? Thank you? Dan Last time I did. I
Speaker 1: did glade plug ins, I did belkan Searge protectors for
Speaker 1: your plugable enemy. Um yeah done here. Daily Zeitgeist Daily
Speaker 1: check it out. Oh they already know week daily Monday
Speaker 1: through Friday. Well not not everybody, fuck bro, It's the
Speaker 1: sickest secondary podcast in the building. Man. Check out the
Speaker 1: Daily Zeitgeist. If you're looking for a great tube of
Speaker 1: throwing bagels, I can recommend Sairly Deluxe Bagel's Blueberry. Really
Speaker 1: than just listen to how good these toss solid bounce
Speaker 1: off one of the soundboards onto a couch. Really good
Speaker 1: throwing bagels and they're still intact. Those will be eating
Speaker 1: those bagels. So yeah, it's because the preservatives. Baby. I
Speaker 1: think those bagels became throwing bagels because nobody wanted to
Speaker 1: eat them and I didn't want to throw them. They
Speaker 1: were therefore donated to the throwing bagel throwing Bagel basket
Speaker 1: that we can put for Robert every day. So buy
Speaker 1: some throwing bagels of your own, tossome to relieve your
Speaker 1: frustration about the Muller Report and the horrible morass of
Speaker 1: of hatred that we are all slouching closer to. In
Speaker 1: gotta be a funnel like looking Forward the Best. Hey, Robert,
Speaker 1: do you have any plug Bulls? No, I think you do.
Speaker 1: I don't have any other shows, that's right, he only does.
Speaker 1: I don't even I don't even do this show. And
Speaker 1: I wanna talk about a podcast that I've been listening
Speaker 1: to lately, big fan slow Burn. Yeah, it's called Slowburn. No,
Speaker 1: it's called it could Happen Here. Uh. It is terrifying.
Speaker 1: It's about the possibility of a second American Civil War
Speaker 1: ties into all this a little bit. Yeah, it ties
Speaker 1: into all this wishes at the border. Yeah. Uh. What
Speaker 1: you might not know is when we're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: possible impeachment, that the right is already saying they will
Speaker 1: murder us in the streets if if people try and
Speaker 1: remove Trump from office. So just some of them, including
Speaker 1: several of the people named in the Muller report. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's worth taking into account. Uh. Yeah, it could
Speaker 1: happen here is mind blowing, very weak. It's growing more
Speaker 1: and more. It's become a phenomenon. Check it out. It
Speaker 1: could happen here. So make yourself sad and scared what
Speaker 1: it could happen here, and then stockpile food and armaments
Speaker 1: and those buckets and from Jim Baker. From Jim Baker, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Baker buckets actually by Indian Army rations. They have a
Speaker 1: really good shelf life. The pretty pretty cheap, and they're
Speaker 1: probably like good flavors, really good. I mean, yeah, you
Speaker 1: want a lot of curry in your rations, like a chowman,
Speaker 1: m R, m R. You can get out here. Those
Speaker 1: are the worst ones, all right. I have a podcast
Speaker 1: called Behind the Bastards, which this is, oh the podcast,
Speaker 1: this is I'm all out of sorts. You're so good
Speaker 1: at that. I liked when Jack was plugging your show.
Speaker 1: It felt like a weird like toast at a wedding.
Speaker 1: I got a podcast I want to tell you about.
Speaker 1: It's like Robert's like, oh god, I am hungover from
Speaker 1: the Mueller Report. It's it's terrible. Um. Also, buy merts
Speaker 1: for both of our show from Tea Public. It will
Speaker 1: keep you warm as the country burns down around you,
Speaker 1: or we'll keep you cool. Get the top, get it,
Speaker 1: get it to top, because it's going to be even warmer.
Speaker 1: So could be insurgent warfare, climate change. I don't know.
Speaker 1: You might not need sleeves anymore. I'm just saying nothing
Speaker 1: looks better than a freedom fighter with like those arms
Speaker 1: buried the big gun arms. You could be like that
Speaker 1: guy in Libya who stuck a cannon and a shopping cart.
Speaker 1: Shopping technical it wasn't, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, the podcast
Speaker 1: is over. Go hug your family, kiss a cat, throw
Speaker 1: some bagels,