The Mueller report was released on Thursday and I have been struggling with how to present this. Guess what? I give up. I read the thing. Just finished tonight (Saturday) and don’t think a lot of it. At first I was going to actually go through the bloody thing line by line and give my opinion.

Guess what? That’s been done by everyone and a lot better than I could ever do. Ben Shapiro looks at it from a legal perspective and it all makes sense. Dan Bongino looks at it from the “deep state” perspective. That may sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I have read his book and listen to his podcast and he has yet to be wrong. I suspect he’s not going to be wrong about what’s coming. Finally, the news media, depending on the channel, gives the listener whatever he wants to here (sorry, my litereature degree taught me to use “he” when no gender is defined on the subject).

I just can’t live up to that because I already have my opinions, which I think you want to hear, and my analysis would be limited to what I am interested in. So I’m going to give out the basics about the report, the arguements, the media reaction and my opinion will be left to the end. So here we go.

The Report

I have read all 480 pages of the report. I did not read the footnotes (I learned that was a mistake) but I read the body. The report is broken up into two volumes. The first addresses collusion or conspiracy. This section addresses the Russians attempts at influencing the elections through social media and hacking, their work with Wikileaks and Julian Assange. It also addresses the “crimes” of Paul Manafort, George Popadopoulos and Michael Flynn.

This was not the most exciting part of the report. It was interesting. It showed that Robert Mueller really did investigate this. One learned how the Russians hacked the DNC computers and how they propagated the information. But that’s about it. Their social media infiltration seemed very flimsey. It looked like they barely tried. Spending a $100K in advertisements and posting 86,000 memes doesn’t seem to me like a lot of effort. It just wasn’t that interesting. But there was one thing that 194 pages made clear: there was not collusion or conspiracy.

OK, that’s awesome. Our President isn’t a Russian agent (or so you’d think).

The second volume of the report dealt with obstruction by Donald Trump. This was part of the report where Donald Trump may face a few issues. Apparently there were several instances when Trump told his advisors to do things that would really change the direction of the investigation. It was mentioned in the report that a lot of the demands were ignored by the advisors to no interfere in the investigation and were done because Trump was angry at being investigated. It was even pointed out that Trump said, “F***, this is going to be the end of my Presidency (sic)”. This is going to be important later.

I have to admit, I did not think any of this was obstruction. Especially because there was no crime. But it does look like he was trying to make things difficult for the Mueller probe to do its job. For me, this looks like he was trying to interfere with the probe. Even if there was no crime, could Trump still be legally obstructing the investigation?

Luckily, I’m not a lawyer. Mueller did not reach a conclusion. He said that he did not find any evidence of obstruction but he could not exonerate the President of obstruction. Ugh!

The report is very easy to read and the redactions were minimal. I don’t think I lost a lot because of the redactions. The one thing I would need to do is actually read the footnotes. Mueller really showed his bias in the footnotes. Not for what he said but for what he did not say.

What’s Going on Legally?

As far as Trump being a Russian agent, something that the media has been living on for the last two years, that’s done. He did not collude or conspire. That’s over. No reason to talk about it anymore. Trump has been exonerated. Period.

Obstruction, that’s a different story.

I always thought there needed to be a crime for someone to obstruct. It didn’t make sense that he was guilty of obstructing a crime that didn’t happen. But the law doesn’t always make sense. Now I’m not going to quote laws or anything. I’m not a lawyer. Listen to Ben Shapiro’s podcast on April 19th and he’ll give you the laws. And he’ll explain the scope of the laws in ways I cannot. What I mean by that is there are several different definitions of obstruction. Apparently, Bob Mueller used the most liberal definition of obstruction (we’ll get into that later or just listen to Ben Shapiro’s podcast.

Here is the definition according to 18 U.S.C. § 1503:

…an act that “corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice.”

The big word here is “corruptly.” That word means that Trump had to have some intent to obstruct the investigation because he was guilty. That’s what it means. Let me say that again: Trump obstructed because, and only because, he was guilty of conspiracy with Russia.

This is where stuff gets really muddy. Trump was pissed off. His presidency was in peril over a long investigation. He did not feel it was fair because he was innocent. He told people to do things that would have stalled or halted the investigation. None of his orders were followed for fear that there might be another Saturday Night Massacre (a term used during the Nixon administration’s Watergate debacle).

Though nothing happened and Bob Mueller was able to continue his investigation, were Trump’s ignored orders still evidence he obstructed?

Mueller concluded his second volume by saying there was not enough evidence to conclude that Trump obstructed justice but there was enough evidence that Mueller could not exonerate him. This leaves a big question. Did Trump obstruct or not. We have no answers.

Here’s the question: why don’t we know? After two years and thirty million dollars, Mueller’s best answer is, “I don’t know? You figure it out.” What the f***?!

Let’s get to the conspiracy portion. A lot of things cleared this up for me.

Putting on My Tin Foil Hat

The report had a lot in it that really did not need to be said. It could have been shortened by quite a bit simply by leaving out things that really were irrelevant. Here are a few examples of this.

Trump was not happy that Jeff Sessions recused himself. He told Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself. He had several advisers talk to Sessions about not recusing. When Sessions did recuse himself, Trump tried to get him to un-recuse himself. He did this directly, through social media and with his staff. Sessions never reversed his recusal until he resigned. There are several paragraphs about this. Yes, Sessions recusing himself hurt Trump but this is not illegal and not obstruction. It does make Trump look unethical and kind of weak, but that’s it. Why is this even in the report.

Another example was when Trump told Dan McGahn to tell the Justice Department to fire Mueller. McGahn decided to ignore the order stating that sometimes Trump, “thinks out loud.” At the time, Trump was angry that his presidency was under siege by the investigation. When asked if he relayed the information, McGahn said no and he would resign if he was asked to do so. The message never got relayed to the Justice Department. Again, no obstruction (nothing happened) and no intent to stop the investigation because he was guilty. So why is this even in the report?

But not only do I question what was in the report, I have big questions as to what was not in the report. There was no mention of Christopher Steele, the FISA warrants and Fusion GPS. The Steele Dossier, the document that started the whole investigation, was only mentioned twice in the 480 page report. What? Why not?

Could it be that Russian collusion, which was soundly disproved, was not what Mueller was going for? Is it possible Mueller was hired to protect the FBI and the Hilary Clinton’s bad behavior? The dossier is a killer for Clinton and the FBI.

Clinton paid for the dossier which was assembled by Christopher Steele. Where did Steele get the information? Mostly from Russian spies. You see the problem? It was actually Clinton and the DNC that were colluding with the Russians and the dossier is proof of that.

The FBI is in bigger trouble. Well, certain members and former members are. Christopher Steele got the dossier then leaked it to Yahoo news. When the FBI received it, they used the dossier to get a FISA warrant against Carter Page. The FBI used the leaked Yahoo article as proof that the dossier was valid evidence. And it turned out the dossier was crap. And looks like the FBI was trying to pull a fast one to get a warrant to spy on an American citizen. This is ugly stuff.

So, What Do I Think?

This report is a whole lot of nothing. Something most people thought for a long time. And it only took $25 million dollars to have all our thoughts confirmed.

As far as the collusion, or conspiracy, that was a big zero. Not only did Trump not collude with Russia or Wikileaks, Wikileaks did not even know that they were working with the Russians. When Julian Assange said that he had nothing to do with Trump or the Russians, he meant it. The Russians were so good at hiding their identities that they tricked everybody.

Obstruction seems to be a different story. Though there was no crime, Trump could still obstruct the investigation and be prosecuted. But it is very hard to prove obstruction. Remember: intent matters here. Trump had to have wanted the investigation to end because he was guilty. His intent needs to be proven. Mueller knew he couldn’t prove intent, so he said that. But he also said that he couldn’t prove Trump didn’t try to obstruct.

Listen, Trump is not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. He’s brash, self-centered and clumsy with his language. Just looking at his Twitter feed will tell one that he doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. He’s also extremely emotional and wants to control everything. But is he the modern day Nixon?

Not at all.

Volume 2 of Mueller’s report was bullshit. He accused Trump of attempting to end his investigation but the investigation never ended. Trump could have fired Mueller at anytime. He can do that. He wanted others to do it. They didn’t. Why? Because he has a good cabinet and they know what is good for him. He was never guilty. He was pissed. Being pissed does not mean he had the intent to end the investigation because he was guilty of a crime. He wanted to end the investigation because it was f-ing up his presidency. Period. That’s not corruption. It’s stupid, but not corrupt.

This is going to keep going. The media is all hot and bothered by the obstruction portion of the report. The radical Democrats want impeachment proceedings started based on the obstruction. Though it is going to be very difficult to prove because they have to prove corrupt intent, a lot want to get it started anyway.

It ain’t over yet.