“The Steele dossier – the intelligence mishmash funneled to Obama intelligence agencies via Fusion GPS – barely comes up in the Mueller report. Yet it was used repeatedly as the basis for a FISA warrant against Carter Page, and was presented directly to President Trump by former FBI director James Comey, then reported on broadly in the press.”
(Ben Shapiro – Daily Wire) On Thursday, the long-awaited Mueller report finally dropped, like manna from the heavens to the starved mass media. The media quickly swiveled from their years-long contention that President Trump and his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia to the contention that Trump obstructed justice in order to cover his non-collusion with Russia. That will be the talking point moving forward: that the cover-up was worse than the non-crime.
The Mueller report is interesting in a variety of ways. Here are some of the biggest takeaways:
1. The Trump-Russia Collusion Claims Were Farcically Overblown. While there were certainly members of the Trump team who acted suspiciously – including Trump, who continued to lie to the American public that no work was occurring on the Trump Tower Moscow deal during the 2016 campaign – the claims that Trump was a nefarious Russian agent were comically exaggerated. The Mueller report itself makes this clear:
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.
The report makes similar statements repeatedly. There was no there there.