The devil says: "Give it up, Democrats"

"Give It Up, Democrats. The Russia Investigation Is Over." So sayeth Alex Shephard of the Newly Republican.

No. A thousand times NO. Vade retro.

Virginia Heffernan has a "good source" who says that the real Report is far worse for Trump than Barr makes it out to be. We have one excellent reason to believe that this unnamed source is onto something:

We haven't seen the Thing-In-Itself.

If the report were exonerative, you'd already have the pdf in your "Downloads" folder. As simple as that.

We haven't even had a glimpse of Mueller's summary. There has to be some sort of summary, either at the beginning or at the end. That's the way all writers -- of any sort -- work. If you compose a long and detailed document, at some point you will offer the gist.

As noted in the previous post, Barr weirdly truncates the one sentence of actual Mueller which supposedly exonerates Trump of the collusion charge. Why?

Although I was the first blogger to suggest that Putin was helping Trump, I was not surprised by Mueller's conclusion that the campaign did not collaborate directly with the Russian government. In fact, I would have been astounded if such a thing had happened. Both Team Trump and Team Putin would have used deniable cut-outs. That's how operations are done. That's Spook 101.

I am, by nature, the most flamboyantly pessimistic personage ever produced by the great state of California -- a man for whom every bright sky contains a dark cloud and every happy chipmunk carries an untreatable form of the plague. But in this case, obstinate optimism remains the way to bet. Absence of Mueller's actual words offers evidence of criminality, or at least of the politically difficult. Reticence or refusal to divulge those words proves conclusively that Mueller wrote something that Trump and Barr do not want us to know.

Trump's ploy is the demoralize the Dems to the point where they do not insist on seeing the actual report. People like Alan Shephard and David Brooks are playing the devil's game.

Vade retro. And speaking of His Satanic Majesty, here's Matt Taibbi:

Thank you, Marcy! She probably didn't read my words. (Then again, maybe.) But Marvelous Marcy Wheeler (as Stan Lee would have called her) makes the same point that riveted my own attention:

For example, this is a sentence fragment. Why didn't Barr give us the full sentence? Taibbi doesn't know what the rest of it says--nor do I--but it may say there was some evidence there.

She makes this point in the context of a full-on takedown of Taibbi, a formerly-great writer whom I shall never take seriously again. (What did they do to him in Russia?) I shall take the liberty of translating her tweets into conventional prose:

What Mueller did know is:

1) Trump's campaign learned Russia had hacked Hillary before she did.

2) Trump was pursuing a ridiculously lucrative real estate deal, involving sanctioned banks and a former GRU officer and Putin's involvement, in secret, until at least June.

3) At a time he was hoping to seal up that deal, Don Jr accepted a meeting offering dirt on Hillary as part of a RU govt package of assistance. At the end, he said dad would revisit sanctions relief if he won.

4) Two months later, Trump's campaign manager shared polling data w/a guy he knew would pass it on to Ukr and RU oligarchs at a meeting where they discussed a Ukrainian "Peace" deal. The campaign manager continued to lie abt this in hopes of getting a pardon.

5) Trump's campaign asked Roger Stone to optimize the release of the email Russia stole from Hillary. Per Jerome Corsi, he had some success in doing so.

6) Before inauguration, Trump moved towards offering sanctions relief.