I've been watching him closely for several years and it seems the mortal sin he committed was his failure to join the Russiagate bandwagon. In the end that was clearly the correct choice, but the liberal media no longer tolerates anyone who has the audacity to undermine their chosen narrative.
I don't think it's fair to say it was the correct choice. It was a choice, and one he was allowed to make, but it was one of many options.
You say "the liberal media no longer tolerates anyone who has the audacity to undermine their chosen narrative". Isn't that what I'm talking about? He founded the org. Do you think "the liberal media" got together and decided to censor him? Or do you think people just weren't buying what he was selling? I don't get how you can accuse the liberal media of anything in this situation... it's not like he works for MSNBC or CNN.
There doesn't need to be some grand conspiracy among liberal journalists in order for them to engage in the partisan censorship he describes. It's clear that most of them believe supporting the "correct" candidate is far more important than publishing the truth.
Linking to an article by Greenwald about how Greenwald was right all along is pretty spurious, to say the least. Even more so when there are plenty of non-Greenwald sources, like the ones involved in the Special Counsel investigation, which state exactly the opposite. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/04/complete-...
> It's absolutely fair and the Mueller Report proved Greenwald was right all along
So says... Greenwald.
He's doing a classic strawman: claiming that the "Russian interference" claim was that the Trump campaign co-ordinated with Russia. Outside some fringe beliefs that isn't the claim: instead it was that Russia interfered in the election which was exactly what the report found.
It found Russian intelligence agencies hacked the DNC, stole the emails and disseminated them via DCLeaks, Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks.
In regards to involvement of Trump campaign personnel, Greenwald conveniently leaves out the multiple mentions of Paul Manfort (pg 52-55) which the Republican-led intelligence committee confirms "One of Manafort’s closest aides during his time in Ukraine was Konstantin Kilimnik, who the Senate report identifies as a Russian intelligence officer."
It's ironic that Greenwald would do what he claims other publications do: only publish material which confirms his views.
You think (and to be honest, I agree with you) it was clearly the correct choice. If you ask anyone from the MSNBC/NYT/CNN/WaPo's audience (substantial amount of people), they will say it was clearly the wrong choice.
My conclusion is the opposite. The Mueller report was heavily redacted, and misrepresented by AG Barr - precisely because it is so damning. Trump got impeached by congress over the Ukraine scandal later on, again enlisting foreign help. Trump asked a foreign power to help him against a political opponent - the Ukraine facts are not in dispute. Trump's campaign took multiple meetings with Russians bearing emails, and multiple members of his campaign are now in jail. These two facts are also not in dispute.
Er, Mueller straight up said "if we could exonerate the President for obstruction of justice, we would. But we can't." So Mueller has admitted that Trump obstructed his investigation, and several members in Trump's circle have gone to jail for _lying to the FBI_.
Not to mention the fact that Mueller's investigation clearly found that Trump's campaign was in contact with Russian agents, knew they favored Trump's campaign, and "welcomed" their help (i.e., foreign interference). This is what the public understands as "collusion". However, "collusion" is not a legal term, "conspiracy" is and has a higher bar of proof. So yes, Trump colluded with Russia, we just couldn't prove that they explicitly conspired since Trump's circle lied for him.
> Er, Mueller straight up said "if we could exonerate the President for obstruction of justice, we would. But we can't."
I always found that statement to be bizarre and offensive. You don’t prove someone innocent. You prove someone guilty. Trump doesn’t need Mueller’s exoneration, and a statement like that speaks volumes, to me anyway, about the mindset of the person making it.
> Mueller, in addition to concluding that evidence was insufficient to charge any American with crimes relating to Russian election interference, also stated emphatically in numerous instances that there was no evidence – not merely that there was insufficient evidence to obtain a criminal conviction – that key prongs of this three-year-old conspiracy theory actually happened. As Mueller himself put it: “in some instances, the report points out the absence of evidence or conflicts in the evidence about a particular fact or event.”
They got Don Gotti, Nixon, and countless other criminals on obstruction. But when the Senate and AG are fully loyal to the president, it suddenly isn't an indictable offense.
> As Mueller himself concluded, a reasonable debate can be conducted on whether Trump tried to obstruct his investigation with corrupt intent. But even on the case of obstruction, the central point looms large over all of it: there was no underlying crime established for Trump to cover-up.
> All criminal investigations require a determination of a person’s intent, what they are thinking and what their goal is. When the question is whether a President sought to kill an Executive Branch investigation – as Trump clearly wanted to do here – the determinative issue is whether he did so because he genuinely believed the investigation to be an unfair persecution and scam, or whether he did it to corruptly conceal evidence of criminality.
> That Mueller could not and did not establish any underlying crimes strongly suggests that Trump acted with the former rather than the latter motive, making it virtually impossible to find that he criminally obstructed the investigation.
If you were innocent of a crime would you really just sit back and watch the government waste $35 million investigating you?
"If we had confidence the President did not commit a crime, we would have said so."
From the Executive Summary:
"Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."
It is a lie to suggest that there was "no evidence"; Mueller himself in a public statement literally said there was merely "insufficient evidence" to rise to the bar of conspiracy, contradicting your quote.
> "If we had confidence the President did not commit a crime, we would have said so."
Expecting them to prove a negative in a conspiracy case is laughably absurd. Mueller said that there was not only insufficient evidence for all claims, there was zero evidence for many of the others.
> Er, Mueller straight up said "if we could exonerate the President for obstruction of justice, we would. But we can't." So Mueller has admitted that Trump obstructed his investigation
There's a pretty big excluded middle between "We can say with authority that X obstructed" and "We can exonerate X of obstructing".
(Which is not to say that details in Mueller's report don't tend to support the conclusion of obstruction, but Mueller saying that they could exonerate doesn't equate to saying that Trump did obstruct.)
Mueller also said that, if the President did hypothetically obstruct justice, _he would not be able to bring charges_. That is Congress's job, he said.
So, let's say Mueller found ironclad evidence of obstruction. What would he have done? He told us that he would have said exactly what he did. He does not believe it was in his power to bring charges, only present evidence. And then he said "if we could say that the President did not commit a crime, we would have said so." He's speaking like a career lawyer because he is one; he can't outright tell Congress to bring charges.
> There's a pretty big excluded middle between "We can say with authority that X obstructed" and "We can exonerate X of obstructing".
Mueller was following Justice Department policy - he can't even say he thought a crime was committed, despite mountains of evidence, because the department's policy is it will never prosecute the president, so they can't indict, and thus won't ever accuse.
The president could murder someone on live television and department policy would be to say "Doesn't look like anything to me."
It means evidence backing up Greenwald's controversial position was still not checked out. The fact that the centerpiece of a story could be "lost" before it was even studied would show that Greenwald was jumping the gun.
He has no access to the evidence but he is making very preliminary bets.
News agencies outside of Fox / NY Post haven't been able to study the evidence on a developing story, and Tucker Carlson has yet to reveal critical evidence.
Glenn Greenwald's own editor is telling him not to make preliminary bets. What's so surprising here?
i think what greenwald is basing is story on is all in the public domain. i think tucker is prone to hyping stuff so these documents probably don't add much.
> Mueller, in addition to concluding that evidence was insufficient to charge any American with crimes relating to Russian election interference, also stated emphatically in numerous instances that there was no evidence – not merely that there was insufficient evidence to obtain a criminal conviction – that key prongs of this three-year-old conspiracy theory actually happened. As Mueller himself put it: “in some instances, the report points out the absence of evidence or conflicts in the evidence about a particular fact or event.”
$35 million wasted on an investigation that started with a FISA warrant based on a phony report (Steele Dossier) commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
I've been watching him closely for several years and it seems the mortal sin he committed was his failure to join the Russiagate bandwagon. In the end that was clearly the correct choice, but the liberal media no longer tolerates anyone who has the audacity to undermine their chosen narrative.