It's the gist of the report, perhaps not stated in so many words but Barr's summary of the main points said it found no evidence of collusion ...
Except that it's the gist of the report that there was tons of collusion, just that they could not find the evidence to prove conspiracy and co-ordination.
Plus, it is well known that Barr misrepresented the Mueller Report and that Mueller wrote a letter to Barr complaining how Barr misrepresented the report in such a way as to mislead the public.
NPRCNNWikipedia (Wikipedia page includes a
PDF of Mueller's letter to Barr):
quote:
Barr Letter -- Reactions -- Robert Mueller:
On March 25, a day after the Barr letter was released, Robert Mueller himself reportedly wrote a letter to Barr, as described in the New York Times as "expressing his and his team's concerns that the attorney general had inadequately portrayed their conclusions". In USA Today it was described that Mueller "expressed his differences with Barr".
On March 27, Mueller sent Barr another letter describing his concerns of Barr's letter to Congress and the public on March 24. Mueller thought that Barr's letter "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance" of the findings. "There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations." Mueller also requested Barr release the Mueller Report's introductions and executive summaries. This was first reported on April 30, 2019.
The next day on March 28, Mueller had a phone call with Barr and reportedly expressed concerns about public misunderstandings of the obstruction investigation due to a lack of context released by Barr's letter. In their phone conversation, Barr reportedly said that his letter was not intended to be a summary, but rather only as a description of the principal findings of Mueller's report, and said he preferred not to release more information until a more complete redacted version of the report could be prepared. Barr then sent a subsequent letter to Congress in which he reiterated that his letter had not been intended as a summary of the Mueller Report and volunteered to testify before Congress in early May.
Clearly, Barr's letter (which, contrary to your characterization of it here, even Barr said was
not a summary) is not a reliable source for determining what the Mueller Report says. The only reliable source for such a determination is the Mueller Report itself.
The Mueller Report shows clear evidence of collusion. Besides pages of instances listed in the table of contents (see
Message 2886 again, which I'm certain you chose to not read or even look at) let's look at the specific case of Manafort giving the Russians campaign data while working on the Trump campaign -- such data can be used to help the Russians target demographics in their attack, though the investigations not able to establish just exactly how the data was used.
From the Mueller Report, pages 129-131:
quote:
Manafort instructed Rick Gates, his deputy on the Campaign and a longtime employee , 839 to provide Kilimnik with updates on the Trump Campaign-including internal polling data, although Manafort claims not to recall that specific instruction. Manafort expected Kilimnik to share that information with others in Ukraine and with Deripaska . Gates periodically sent such polling data to Kilimnik during the campaign.
Manafort also twice met Kilimnik in the United States during the campaign period and conveyed campaign information. The second meeting took place on August 2, 2016 , in New York City. Kilimnik requested the meeting to deliver in person a message from former Ukrainian President Viktor Y anukovych, who was then living in Russia. The message was about a peace plan for Ukraine that Manafort has since acknowledged was a "backdoor " means for Russia to control eastern Ukraine. Several months later, after the presidential election, Kilimnik wrote an email to Manafort expressing the view-which Manafort later said he shared-that the plan 's success would require U.S. support to succeed: "all that is required to start the process is a very minor ' wink' ( or slight push) from [Donald Trump ]." 840 The email also stated that if Manafort were designated as the U.S. representative and started the process, Yanukovych would ensure his reception in Russia "at the very top level."
Manafort communicated with Kilimnik about peace plans for Ukraine on at least four occasions after their first discussion of the topic on August 2: December 2016 (the Kilimnik email described above); January 2017; February 2017; and again in the spring of 2018. The Office reviewed numerous Manafort email and text communications, and asked President Trump about the plan in written questions. 841 The investigation did not uncover evidence of Manafort's passing along information about Ukrainian peace plans to the candidate or anyone else in the Campaign or the Administration. The Office was not, however, able to gain access to all of Manafort's electronic communications (in some instances , messages were sent using encryption applications). And while Manafort denied that he spoke to members of the Trump Campaign or the new Administration about the peace plan, he lied to the Office and the grand jury about the peace plan and his meetings with Kilimnik, and his unreliability on this subject was among the reasons that the district judge found that he breached his cooperation agreement. 842
The Office could not reliably determine Manafort's purpose in sharing internal polling data with Kilimnik during the campaign period. Manafort {REDACTED -- Grand Jury} did not see a downside to sharing campaign information , and told Gates that his role in the Campaign would be "good for business" and potentially a way to be made whole for work he previously completed in the Ukraine. As to Deripaska, Manafort claimed that by sharing campaign information with him, Deripaska might see value in their relationship and resolve a "disagreement"- a reference to one or more outstanding lawsuits. Because of questions about Manafort 's credibility and our limited ability to gather evidence on what happened to the polling data after it was sent to Kilimnik, the Office could not assess what Kilimnik (or others he may have given it to) did with it. The Office did not identify evidence of a connection between Manafort 's sharing polling data and Russia's interference in the election, which had already been reported by U.S. media outlets at the time of the August 2 meeting. The investigation did not establish that Manafort otherwise coordinated with the Russian government on its election-interference efforts.
There is nothing in Manafort's actions that could remotely be considered "innocuous". That was collusion at the very least, and very likely much more. And that was just
one instance out of a hundred in the report.
Uh, have you even bothered to
read that article? All it says about
collusion, indeed the only mention of that word (or any form of it) occurs only twice: first in the article's title and second at the end when it directly quotes Trump's false claim of "complete and total exoneration".
Nowhere in the article does the author ever attempt to support the title's claim of "Mueller finds no collusion with Russia". It does mention the question of
co-ordination and conspiracy, which are a different question from collusion, albeit related. To engage in a conspiracy and to co-ordinate, there must be some kind of
explicit agreement between the parties involved. In order to prosecute a case of conspiracy and co-ordination, you must be able to obtain evidence of such an explicit agreement. The Mueller reported that they could not find that evidence, but such a finding can be very difficult to find in most cases of conspiracy. And none of that addresses the question of collusion.
Furthermore, the article's major source was the Barr letter, not the Mueller Report itself. We already know that the Barr letter is
not a reliable source, since it misrepresented the Mueller Report's findings. For that matter, when was that article written? I can find no date for it. There were weeks of delay between the Barr letter and the release of the redacted report. If the report had already been released, then why didn't the article reference
it? Why would the article restrict itself to the Barr letter? An obvious assumption would be that the article was written before the release of the Mueller Report and hence the author could not have had any knowledge of what the Mueller Report actually said.
That article does not support your claim.
Again, in
Message 2887 you stated:
Faith writes:
If any on your list amounted to "collusion" the Mueller Report would have said so but it specifically concluded that they found none.
You have been called upon to support your claim of "... but it specifically concluded that they found none." Your claim that the Mueller Report "specifically concluded" that there was no collusion.
You have failed to support your claim. You
must support it! You
must quote the Mueller Report where it is supposed to have said what you claim, along with the page number (a trivial requirement to meet when you are copying the quote).
SHOW US!
Show us!
Edited by dwise1, : "gist of the report"
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