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When is Trump going to drop utterly bizarre "Mueller interview" forcememe?

His people are behind every story about this alleged "s...
180 community account
  08/02/18
Today, July 26, NYT has a breaking news story that Robert Mu...
180 community account
  08/03/18
Probably never. I think you're probably right. It makes it s...
Cowardly locale crotch
  08/03/18
"Mueller examining Trump tweets" story, like "...
180 community account
  08/03/18
https://www.nola.com/national_politics/2018/08/giuliani_wait...
180 community account
  08/16/18
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/05/01/just-obstruction-is-th...
180 community account
  08/03/18
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/08/02/how-abc-broke-a-story-...
180 community account
  08/03/18
...
180 community account
  08/03/18
...
180 community account
  08/04/18
An attorney for President Trump once predicted that Robert...
180 community account
  08/12/18


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Date: August 2nd, 2018 9:00 AM
Author: 180 community account

His people are behind every story about this alleged "standoff" over whether he will submit to an interview. I doubt Mueller has actually pressed the issue. If it was as urgent for him as Giuliani makes it seem, he would subpoena Trump. But there's dozens of other things that are higher on his checklist at this point than interviewing Trump. Hard to discern the Trump legal dream team's "strategy," but maybe Trump wants to engineer a phony confrontation or try to negotiate with Mueller or set up a meeting to get information about what they have.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4040294&forum_id=2#36539221)



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Date: August 3rd, 2018 8:42 AM
Author: 180 community account

Today, July 26, NYT has a breaking news story that Robert Mueller is investigating Trump’s tweets in a “wide-ranging obstruction inquiry.”

This breaking news tees up this quote from Rudy Giuliani.

Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer in the case, Rudolph W. Giuliani, dismissed Mr. Mueller’s interest in the tweets as part of a desperate quest to sink the president.

“If you’re going to obstruct justice, you do it quietly and secretly, not in public,” Mr. Giuliani said.

It’s a really interesting breaking news story, because the [squints closely] NYT reported, [squints again] on April 30, that Jay Sekulow had collected this list of questions Mueller wanted to ask the President in March.

Two of the questions posed in March and reported in April are specifically about tweets. Another alludes to harassment that included tweets. And all of the tweets in today’s breaking news save one are covered by the tweets described in this list dating to March and reported in April, the exception being one tweeted earlier this week.

All of which serves Rudy’s narrative that the Mueller investigation is a frivolous exercise in trying to find obstruction behind the smoking bonfire of “collusion” rather than the conspiring with Russia instead.

In fact, this breaking news story never once mentions the “collusion” side of the investigation.

If Mueller’s addition of Trump’s tweets to the list of questions he wants answered is the “latest addition” to his interest in obstruction, then maybe Maggie and Mike should move on to reporting the actual conspiracy investigation?

https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/07/26/breaking-nyt-discovers-tweets-they-discovered-3-months-ago/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4040294&forum_id=2#36545405)



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Date: August 3rd, 2018 8:45 AM
Author: Cowardly locale crotch

Probably never. I think you're probably right. It makes it sounds like Mueller has nothing, has exhausted every lead, and is now wildly grasping for evidence directly from POTUS. So maybe the GOP should just put an end to it! I doubt Trump is going to stop this line of attack anytime soon.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4040294&forum_id=2#36545412)



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Date: August 3rd, 2018 8:55 AM
Author: 180 community account

"Mueller examining Trump tweets" story, like "Mueller gave list of Qs" = Rudy Bullshit

Date: July 27th, 2018 11:31 PM

Author: ,.,..,,.,..,.,.,.,.....,...,..,.,,..,.,,. ( )

Amazing the NYT lets that idiot Haberman keep churning out these fake news stories:

Trump also on Friday dismissed as “ridiculous” a report that Muller’s team is looking at Trump’s tweets as they investigate possible collusion and obstruction of justice.

Trump complained that he had returned from a trip Midwest Thursday “only to be greeted with the ridiculous news” that Mueller and his team “cannot find Collusion… so now they are looking at my Tweets (along with 53 million other people).”

“(T)he rigged Witch Hunt continues!” he complained, adding: “How stupid and unfair to our Country.”

A list of potential questions for Trump compiled by the president’s legal team following conversations with investigators and released earlier this year made clear that Mueller is interested in some of Trump’s tweets to the extent they raise obstruction of justice concerns.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4036797&forum_id=2#36511452)



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4040294&forum_id=2#36545430)



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Date: August 16th, 2018 2:08 AM
Author: 180 community account

https://www.nola.com/national_politics/2018/08/giuliani_waiting_on_mueller_re.html

WASHINGTON - Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's lead lawyer for the ongoing Russia probe, said Wednesday that he is still awaiting a response from Special Counsel Robert Mueller III to the Trump team's latest terms for a presidential interview, which were made last week in a letter that argued against Trump having to answer questions about his possible obstruction of justice.

https://nypost.com/2018/08/15/giulianis-threat-to-mueller-we-will-just-unload-on-him-like-a-ton-of-bricks/

Rudy Giuliani threatened to “unload” on Robert Mueller “like a ton of bricks” if the special counsel doesn’t wrap up his Russia probe by the time the former mayor wants him to.

Giuliani also told Bloomberg that Mueller should “write the damn report so we can see it and rebut it,” in an interview published Wednesday.

“If he doesn’t get it done in the next two or three weeks we will just unload on him like a ton of bricks,” he said.

But Mueller doesn’t have to shut down the investigation into Russian election meddling and possible collusion with the Trump campaign by any artificial deadline — despite claims by Trump’s lawyers that he faces a Sept. 1 deadline, current and former US officials told the news outlet.

“It’s an absurdity to think that Mueller has to shut down in the coming weeks because of the midterm elections. There is no legal impediment to Mueller continuing his work as we get closer to the election,” said Jeffrey Cramer, a former federal prosecutor.

As a former Justice Department official, Giuliani should know better, said Cramer.

“He’s going to play poker against Bob Mueller? That’s not a smart move. Mueller’s holding all the cards,” he added.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4040294&forum_id=2#36625208)



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Date: August 3rd, 2018 8:45 AM
Author: 180 community account

https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/05/01/just-obstruction-is-the-new-red-line/

It appears the same is true for the extended reporting — from the NYT, among others (though this NBC report is a rare exception) — that Mueller is primarily investigating Trump for obstruction. For some time, the press has been reporting that Mueller is honing in on an obstruction case against Trump, seemingly without understanding that some things being labeled obstruction — such as the response to Mike Flynn lying about implementing the policy concessions to Russia Trump made in the transition period — actually went to prove the quo part of a quid pro quo.

And so, when NYT published their list of questions Mueller had given Trump’s lawyers, almost a third of which have nothing to do with obstruction and many others have to with have to do with both the conspiracy case in chief and obstruction, the headline focused exclusively on obstruction.

And while Mike Schmidt’s report on the questions does mention “Russian ties” and include two paragraphs on the questions that address topics besides obstruction, the lead might be read to focus on obstruction itself.

This morning, Trump predictably pointed to the list that one of his associates leaked, claiming to be outraged by a new “leak,” and asserted, evidence to the contrary, that the questions did not address “collusion.”

I get that Trump’s claims that the questions include none on the underlying conspiracy need to be debunked.

But one reason why he tweeted what he did is because it plays into a narrative that the press has long very credulously helped to create. What is needed now (indeed, what was needed months ago) is loud reporting that the whole obstruction emphasis was a distraction partly seeded by those being investigated for a conspiracy, a distraction in which the press was complicit.

As with the “red line” of Trump’s (non-Russian) business interests, the notion that he is being investigated only for obstruction is a tactic he has used, and used well, to play public opinion. Before trying to get the man to acknowledge public facts his team itself released, however, the press ought to consider how they’ve been doing just what Trump did this morning for months, ignoring the details that implicate him personally in “collusion.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4040294&forum_id=2#36545414)



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Date: August 3rd, 2018 8:52 AM
Author: 180 community account

https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/08/02/how-abc-broke-a-story-about-mueller-limiting-questions-on-obstruction-and-claimed-it-showed-a-focus-on-obstruction/

On Monday, Rudy Giuliani revealed that Robert Mueller had gone ten days without responding to the White House’s latest set of conditions under which President Trump would be willing to sit for an interview:

"We have an offer to [Mueller] — by now, like, the fifth offer back and forth, so you’d have to call it a counter-counter-counteroffer. And, where it stands is, they haven’t replied to it and it’s been there about 10 days. Despite the fact that we’re getting more and more convinced that maybe he shouldn’t do it, we still have that offer outstanding, and in good faith, if they came back and accepted it, or if they came back and modified it in a way that we can accept, we would consider it."

By yesterday afternoon, ABC, showing unbelievable credulity, reported that Mueller wanted to ask Trump questions about obstruction.

...

I get it. Mueller isn’t leaking and readers want more Russia stories so any time the White House seeds one, all secret like except that CNN films it, you gotta tell it in such a way that you’ll get those cable-televised secrets the next time. But please please please treat those claims with the same skepticism you treat Trump and Rudy bullshit when it is delivered where the public can see it. If Trump and Rudy are lying in public, there is zero reason to believe they’re telling you the truth when they claim to be feeding you secrets.

Robert Mueller is investigating the President of the United States for willfully entering a conspiracy with Russians offering to help him get elected, I believe in exchange for certain policy considerations, including changes to US Syria policy. Yes, Mueller obtained evidence demonstrating that conspiracy in large part because, in an effort to thwart any investigation into how he got elected, Trump fired the last guy who was investigating it (and investigating it less aggressively). Yes, that means obstruction is one of the crimes that Mueller believes Trump may have committed (if you’re going to harp on obstruction, then please focus on Trump’s pre-emptive offers of pardons to Mike Flynn and Paul Manafort, because it’s one of the most grave examples of obstruction and it’s critical to understanding what is going on now in EDVA).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4040294&forum_id=2#36545426)



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Date: August 3rd, 2018 4:45 PM
Author: 180 community account



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4040294&forum_id=2#36548456)



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Date: August 4th, 2018 2:29 PM
Author: 180 community account



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4040294&forum_id=2#36552922)



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Date: August 12th, 2018 1:05 PM
Author: 180 community account

An attorney for President Trump once predicted that Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation would be done by Christmas — of 2017. When Rudolph W. Giuliani joined the president’s legal team in April, he predicted a resolution within “a week or two.” And on Wednesday, as news broke of Trump’s lawyers yet again rejecting Mueller’s offer of terms for an interview with Trump, Giuliani once again optimistically pegged an end date — Sept. 1.

Given all that, it’s difficult to believe that the end may be approaching. Alas, things may be coming to a head.

The most recent word from the Trump team is that it has issued what it considers something of a final offer to Mueller. In rejecting the special counsel’s latest proposed terms for an interview, The Washington Post’s Carol D. Leonnig reports, Trump’s attorneys maintain that questions related to obstruction of justice need to be off the table. “The multipage response represents what Trump’s lawyers expect to be their last word on Mueller’s request for a sit-down interview with the president in his Russia investigation,” Leonnig writes. Things can always change, of course, but continuing to negotiate now would risk looking like they had their bluff called.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4040294&forum_id=2#36603638)