The Mueller Report thread

[Dill]

(05-02-2019, 10:56 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: Barr is a seasoned lawyer that knows how to dance around with his language in a way that obfuscates but is not a lie, which would mean he perjured himself.

I wanted to tack on, here, something I find interesting. A lot of people are saying "why does him misrepresenting the report matter when the report was released later on?" The answer to that is in the controlling of the narrative. By providing his interpretation before the report, before anything else can really come out, it is a move to control the narrative. He puts it out there that Trump is in the clear and that is all that is needed by Trump and his allies to keep parroting, even when the report says otherwise. It was a political move, plain and simple.

I'm not saying that this is unique to Barr or even the right-wing. I'm 100% certain that were this a Democratic administration it would be the same sort of thing going on. This is why reading primary source documents is important, though. Political actors will always try to control the narrative in their favor. Every. Single. Time. Analyses and opinion pieces from pundits/experts/reporters are also the products of political actors. We cannot rely on them to tell us what is important because they will tell us what they want to.

Certainly Dems would "Dance around with language in a way that obfuscates but is not a lie." Or in extreme cases even lie. Think of Bill's non-cooperation with the Starr investigation at times.

But this is not the usual/normal obfuscation, is it?  Barr is arguing the president can order people to lie to investigators. He has argued the president can quash an investigation into himself if he thinks he is innocent. He is ok with the president praising a felon for not cooperating with law enforcement. He is illegally withholding a document from Congress and trying to redefine that as legal.

This is about a redefinition of legal norms and standards. Neither Hillary nor Obama nor Biden nor Warren nor Bernie would be doing this.

Bothsidesism here only normalizes what is happening, makes these extraordinary legal arguments and maneuvers seem ordinary.