A political scientist's understanding of the Mueller Report

When William Barr released his "nothing to see here, move along, folks" letter, credulous commentators decided that there really was "no collusion," Trump and his people were innocent, and everyone who ever suspected anything needed to do some sort of penance because glory be to he who is most innocent.

Um... no.

Let's have some reminders of what I have been writing.

OK, I spent a lot of time writing that you'd never see the Mueller Report.  Um...  Let's start with that.  The redactions are big.  The redactions prevent us from learning much new in terms of substance.  The basic facts in the Mueller Report are facts that we have known for time ranging from months to years.  There are a few new goodies, like Trump's "I'm fucked" quote, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders admitting to Mueller that she's a craven, worthless, liar who doesn't deserve to have anyone listen to any word that ever comes out of her lying mouth.  Ever.

So, please, stop the White House Press Briefings!  For the love of all that is good and true!

Anyway, did we learn many new facts?  Not many.  Mostly, what we learned that was new was Mueller's reasoning for not bringing the charges he didn't bring.  That matters!  A lot.  And this speaks to why I was wrong.  I thought that there would be more to cover up in terms of substance.  I thought Mueller had more dirt that Barr would want to hide, but no!  The most damning things Mueller had to say weren't new factual details, but instead, the reasons for why he couldn't bring charges.  Those were the kinds of things that would be hard to hide anyway.  So, yeah.  I got that wrong.  We saw a lot more than I expected.

Will we ever see the redacted portions?  Given that I underestimated how much we'd see, I'm the wrong guy to ask here.

As for what was in the Report, I got that pretty much exactly right.  So at least I can preen about that.  Let's walk through this, because it matters.  The takeaway point is that, in my assessment, Mueller is right on the money here with respect to "criminal conspiracy," but I still don't see how he reached his assessment on obstruction.

Let's go back through what I wrote when I was trying to infer what was in the Mueller Report.  Once we knew that Mueller wasn't bringing any new indictments, on March 23, I posted this, saying that the fact that Mueller wouldn't bring any more indictments meant that he had nothing on Trump in terms of conspiracy.  That just left the possibility of obstruction, but he'd never indict on that because of the DoJ's position that he couldn't indict a sitting president.  So, even before we had Barr's bullshit letter to Congress, I knew Mueller basically didn't have the goods in terms of "criminal conspiracy."  (I also began updating my statements about what would be released, saying we wouldn't see the "full" document, and technically, we haven't, but now I'm just ass-covering.)

What happened then?  Barr released his letter, and I began a series of posts like this one, and this follow-up on game theory and the concept of "collusion" as we define it in academic literature.  My assessment, based on publicly known facts, the wording of the quotes Barr selected and my background in campaign finance law was as follows.  The evidentiary standards required to demonstrate criminal conspiracy, which is what Mueller was actually investigating, are really high, and very different from the colloquial term, "collusion."  Mueller didn't think that the evidence he had met those standards, so he couldn't prosecute.  My questions were about how he assessed things like the Manafort/Kilimnik meeting, and how he reconciled his indecisiveness on obstruction with the "corrupt intent" standard because corrupt intent requires an underlying crime, for which he found insufficient evidence.

So, now that we have the Report, even in redacted form, how does this hold up?  Pretty well.

Anyone telling you that the Report exonerates Trumpworld in any way is completely full of shit, and everything I told you about the content, before seeing it, is about right.

Let's start with the "collusion" versus criminal conspiracy thing.  I posted a few brief comments the other day about this.  When Barr did his press conference, I watched, and noticed how many times he repeated, "no collusion."  Before seeing the report, I posted this.  It was clear from Barr's word choice that he was just acting like Trump's flunky.  No real lawyer would use the word, "collusion."  I pointed that out, and said that I wanted to know what Mueller said about the word, "collusion."  As soon as the report was released... I put up another quick post about Mueller shooting down the word, "collusion" on page 2.  Barr is so completely full of shit...

Let's get into the meat of this, though.  On March 30, I posted this, as my own head check, explaining how I would read the Mueller Report.  And I'm following it.  You see, when Barr put out his bullshit letter, those of us who have been accusing Trump and his people of "conspiring" (and I still think they did) were told to recant.  So, I asked myself, what would I need to see from Mueller's report to recant?

Here's what I said, in brief.  There were a bunch of incidents that looked hard to explain as anything other than collusion, like Manafort's meeting with Konstantin Kilimnik.  Occam's razor says that's collusion, even though the evidentiary standard for conviction might not be met because of how the law is written.  Think of it this way.  Do you really think Michael Jackson never molested a kid?  Evidentiary standards are different from how any smart person interprets known facts.  Laws are weird that way.  Damn it, Jim, I'm a Bayesian, not a lawyer.

So, if Mueller looked at stuff like the Manafort/Kilimnik meeting and said, "you know, y'all, I know this looked bad, but y'all are misinterpreting it.  There's a more innocent explanation that I found, and here it is.  Trump and his people are innocent," then I'd recant.  If, on the other hand, Mueller said, "the bar for conviction is really high, and I can't prosecute this even though it looks fishy," I wouldn't recant because like I said, (Jim), I'm a Bayesian, not a lawyer.

What did Mueller say about the Manafort/Kilimnik meeting?  This was key for me.  Paul Manafort-- Trump's campaign manager, had a meeting with a Russian spy named Konstantin Kilimnik.  Not a "spy" like William Barr uses the word in his bullshit Trump propaganda, but a real spy.  While Russia was engaged in a disinformation campaign and manipulation of social media in order to assist the Trump campaign-- efforts of which the Trump campaign was aware and welcomed-- Trump's campaign manager handed over a bunch of polling data to a Russian spy.  Which, you know, might have been useful for that disinformation and social media manipulation campaign that the Russians were doing.

In order for me to say "NO COLLUSION!!!," I'd need a better explanation for that meeting.  Otherwise, why didn't Mueller prosecute that as criminal conspiracy?  So, what'd Mueller say about that?  What he said was... exactly what I predicted.  Evidentiary standards weren't met.  Here's the critical passage, from page 130-1 from the Report:

The Office [Mueller's team] could not reliably determine Manafort's purpose in sharing internal polling data with Kilimnik during the campaign period.  Manafort REDACTED 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 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 Manfort'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 [emphasis added], 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.

Um.... Bobby?  "Data."  Plural.  Sorry, gotta say it.

Anyway, the key line is where I bolded the passage.  OK, here's Mueller's deal.  Manafort's a filthy liar, so you can't trust a word that lying liar says.  He breached his proffer agreement by lying his lying ass off, and talking to Trump's team while supposedly working with Mueller because Manafort is crooked as a pair of lightning bolts.  (Gee... I don't know why that image came to mind...)  But that bolded passage is about evidentiary standards.  Mueller didn't know what the Russians did with Manafort's internal polling data!  Here's what Mueller would have needed to show that the Manafort/Kilimnik meeting constituted criminal conspiracy:  Manafort hands Kilimnik some internal polling data, and those polling data (yes, "those") actually get used in Russia's election interference efforts.  Without that second part, Manafort isn't connected to a criminal conspiracy.

So, remember what I wrote about the difference between collusion and criminal conspiracy?  It's all about evidentiary standards.  That meeting was collude-y as hell.  Criminal conspiracy?  That's a legal term, and the law sets out evidentiary standards that are almost never met.  What's missing here is the connection to Russian interference efforts, which Mueller couldn't plausibly get, so Manafort skates on that charge because of how the law is written.

Collusion, though?  Hell, yes.  Unless you think Manafort and Kilimnik were just trading bedside reading 'cuz they're buddies who give each other reading suggestions, like friends do.

This is the difference between evidentiary standards and Occam's razor.  Ignore William Barr.  William of Ockham.  (Yeah, I know.  Old versus new spelling.  Read your history.)

So, yes, that's collusion by any reasonable definition of "collusion."  What did Mueller find on criminal conspiracy-- the thing he was actually investigating?  Not enough to bring charges, but if you are looking at this from the perspective of someone trying to make the most reasonable inference, Trump's campaign absolutely did "collude" by any reasonable definition of "collusion."

Anyone trying to tell me otherwise still needs to give me a better explanation for the Manafort/Kilimnik meeting.  Mueller didn't, and he flat-out called Manafort a liar whose lies and basic untrustworthiness prevented a real investigation into this.  After all, this was one of the things about which Manafort lied!

I hate liars.

At least it looks like I got that right.

Now, let's turn to obstruction.  I'm still puzzled here.  In my previous posts, I puzzled over the fact that an obstruction of justice charge requires that there be "corrupt intent," which, as interpreted by the DoJ, means there must be an underlying crime, the investigation of which is obstructed.  If Mueller doesn't have the evidence of a crime, how is there obstruction?

Mueller basically says that the case is weak, because he doesn't have the goods for an underlying crime.  The thing is, in terms of criminal conspiracy, he has nothing on Trump himself.  Manafort, Flynn, Papadopoulos... there are a bunch who were at risk there, and of course, my favorite was Don Jr., who skated on the grounds that he was too stupid to prosecute!  Tiny-hands, though?  Mueller found that he lied his ass off, directed Don Jr. to lie about the Trump Tower meeting, and stuff like that, but Mueller had nothing that would implicate Tiny-hands in "criminal conspiracy," and if all Trump was doing was trying to protect himself because he's a sociopath... then what's the corrupt intent?  It ranges from weak to bupkis.

Mueller admits that this is a weak charge.  And yet, the actions are pretty damning, or at least, the attempts, like telling McGahn to fire Mueller.  This part of the Report remains, in my opinion, a bit of a logical muddle.

Look, folks, you would be hard-pressed to find a more vehement opponent of Trump than yours-truly.  I don't think he has a single redeeming characteristic, and I think he is the most damaging thing to happen to this country in modern history.  I am finishing up my Introduction to American Politics class next week, for which I am assigning portions of Levitsky & Ziblatt's How Democracies Die.  I have never seen a thing for which I have less respect than Donald J. Trump.  I've even written about what I find interesting and compelling in villains in literature, and Trump doesn't meet that standard because he is stupid and one-dimensional. There's nothing.  As 23-chromosome-paired beings go, he is the lowest.

So when I tell you that I have a hard time seeing a legal case for prosecution under "obstruction of justice" if you can't connect it to an underlying prosecutable crime, that should tell you something.  I don't see the legal case here.  Barr is a hack and Trump's flunky.  He is not remotely honorable or honest.  But, the law is not on the side of prosecution here, in my opinion.

I would separate out impeachment in the following way.  The Constitution does not define "high crimes and misdemeanors" for the purposes of impeachment.  Were I to ignore practical politics and look at Trump's actions in a constitutional manner, I'd say impeach.

As a political scientist, I say that impeachment is the dumbest and most self-destructive thing the Democrats could possibly do.  But I've said that before, and I'll say more on that later.

For now, what should you take from the Mueller Report?

Exactly what I told you before I saw it.  (Preen, preen...)  Trump's campaign colluded, but the evidence didn't rise to the level of prosecution under criminal conspiracy law.  Prosecution under obstruction of justice looks to me like it wouldn't work (yes, I've changed my mind on this!).

And now... nothing.

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