It

I shall come out of semi-retirement long enough to comment on IT.

Or at least Barr's summary of it. I've already discussed my problems with Barr.

As most have acknowledged, the Report (says Barr) does not exonerate Trump of the obstruction charge. Trump practiced obstruction out in the open, on Twitter and on teevee, and provably did so in private.

As Marcy points out in her most recent piece, Barr told Congress that a pardon-for-silence scheme would be illegal, and thus ought to be bringing charges against Trump this very day.

We know Trump has repeatedly floated pardons to witnesses who have, in hopes of obtaining a pardon, not incriminated him.

That’s true of Paul Manafort most of all.

So on the basis of what he said to get this job, Barr is already on the record saying that Trump obstructed justice.

This behavior speaks to Trump's underlying guilt: No need to fear justice if one has, in fact, behaved justly.

So everything comes down to these words:

The report further explains that a primary consideration for the Special Counsel's investigation was whether any Americans – including individuals associated with the Trump campaign – joined the Russian conspiracies to influence the election, which would be a federal crime. The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

The public evidence of collusion is mountainous and beyond rational argument. I need only point to the Trump Tower meeting and Trump's provable lie on that score, along with his bald-faced public lie about investments in Russia. There would have been no effort to smear Mueller (remember the attempt to "Me Too" him?) if Trump had committed no crime. At no point did Trump act like an innocent man.

So why does Mueller write that he "did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government"? (Those words are Mueller's, not Barr's.) I think some combination of the following occurred:

1. We need a definition of "The Russian government." All intelligence operations require plausible deniability. People connected with the Trump team can claim that they were dealing with various private individuals, not with Putin. The foremost of Stone's rules: Always use a cut-out.

Only the most naive ever visualized actual, direct communications between Putin and Team Trump. If that is the standard, then the Mueller effort was doomed from the start.

2. We need a definition of "did not establish." This careful wording implies that there were, in fact, reasons to believe that contacts occurred, but that Mueller could not find definitive proof. The investigators saw footprints and heard growls, but could not photograph the monster.

This leads directly to my third point:

3. As I've said in previous posts, Mueller presents us with a classic case of a general fighting the previous war. My heart sank early on when I realized that Mueller intended to go after Trump the way he went after the mob -- by squeezing those lower in the pecking order until they squealed on the Big Boss. Trump is not Gotti; Stone and Manafort are not Sammy the Bull. John Gotti could not dangle pardons.

In short: It appears that Trump's method of insuring omerta worked. Meuller "could not establish" collusion because justice was obstructed.

4. We need more information about other governments/organizations/individuals. A few obvious names come to mind: PSY Group, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Cambridge Analytica, MI6 -- plus any number of actors within what we might call the international fascist movement. I have never discounted the possibility of covert action by a faction within our own spook brotherhood.

This brings us to point five:

5. This day will, I hope, finally kill the "spooks against Trump" narrative which entranced so many liberals, particularly those who still read Louise Mensch. Barr is spookier than the Winchester Mystery House. Cambridge Analytica is a creature of the British and American intelligence services. Michael Flynn was the head of the DIA. Roger Stone, if you look carefully, has had some rather "spooky" associates.

Beyond that, we need to see the report itself, not a summary from Barr. The devil is in the details. Let's wait until we have a long chat with Mr. Scratch.

Update. I'm reminded of one of my favorite Oscar Wilde quotations: "Quotation may be slander/If you gerrymander." If you squint a bit, you can see evidence of gerrymandering in the way Barr quotes Mueller. Look again:

As the report states: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Note the brackets around the capital "T." In the original, the T must be lower-case. In other words, this sentence began with a clause that Barr does not disclose. Perhaps Mueller wrote something along these lines: "Due to interference with our efforts, the investigation did not establish..."