On Friday the thirteenth October 1989, by happenstance the same day as the "Black Friday" market crash, news leaked of a legal memo authored by William Barr. He was then serving as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It is highly uncommon for any OLC memo to make headlines. This one did because it was issued in "unusual secrecy" and concluded that the FBI could forcibly abduct people in other countries without the consent of the foreign state. The headline also noted the implication of the legal opinion at that moment in time. It appeared to pave the way for abducting Panama's leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega.

Members of Congress asked to see the full legal opinion. Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that "summarizes the principal conclusions." Sound familiar? In March 2019, when Attorney General Barr was handed Robert Mueller's final report, he wrote that he would "summarize the principal conclusions" of the special counsel's report for the public.

When Barr withheld the full OLC opinion in 1989 and said to trust his summary of the principal conclusions, Yale law school professor Harold Koh wrote that Barr's position was "particularly egregious." Congress also had no appetite for Barr's stance, and eventually issued a subpoena to successfully wrench the full OLC opinion out of the Department.

What's different from that struggle and the current struggle over the Mueller report is that we know how the one in 1989 eventually turned out.

When the OLC opinion was finally made public long after Barr left office, it was clear that Barr's summary had failed to fully disclose the opinion's principal conclusions. It is better to think of Barr's summary as a redacted version of the full OLC opinion. That's because the "summary" took the form of 13 pages of written testimony. The document was replete with quotations from court cases, legal citations, and the language of the OLC opinion itself. Despite its highly detailed analysis, this 13-page version omitted some of the most consequential and incendiary conclusions from the actual opinion. And there was evidently no justifiable reason for having withheld those parts from Congress or the public.

History might not repeat itself but it rhymes.  Barr's love letter to executive power was not the only reason he was chosen.

Barr said he and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller and oversaw most of his investigation, "disagreed with some of the special counsel's legal theories."

"The president was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency," Barr said, "propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks."

Therefore, he said, that amounted to "evidence of noncorrupt motives," which he believes absolves the president from criminal wrongdoing.

Barr said the words "no evidence" multiple times in his whitewash.

Mueller used it exactly once

A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.

But when the Mueller report arrived on Thursday morning, it contained none of the bombshell, global pedophile cabal-destroying revelations QAnon fans had predicted. Instead, it detailed the a Russian campaign of electoral subterfuge that benefit Trump's election efforts along with repeated attempts by the president to impede investigations into his conduct.

Unhappy QAnon believers were left to grapple with the letdown. As the report's lack of QAnon proofs became clear, the Patriots' Soapbox livestream quickly moved on to other topics like human trafficking. The channel's viewers weren't fooled, though. The comment section quickly filled up with disappointed QAnon fans.

"Trump is toast," said one poster who said he wouldn't vote in 2020 after the disappointment. "Lied to us to extend his re-election. Good luck Q peeps. I'm done here."

(2) In his four-page summary to Congress last month, Mr. Barr further materially misstated and misrepresented the Special Counsel's findings when he stated categorically that "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." In fact, Mueller actually wrote the following (emphasis is mine):

"Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

(3) Mueller's report also makes clear that his office wasn't investigating whether or not collusion occurred, because collusion itself is not defined as a crime in federal law (again, emphasis is mine):

"In evaluating whether evidence about collective action of multiple individuals constituted a crime, we applied the framework of conspiracy law, not the concept of 'collusion.' In so doing, the Office recognized that the word 'collud[e]' was used in communications with the Acting Attorney General confirming certain aspects of the investigation's scope and that the term has frequently been invoked in public reporting about the investigation. But collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law. For those reasons, the Office's focus in analyzing questions of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law. In connection with that analysis, we addressed the factual question whether members of the Trump Campaign 'coordinat[ed] -- a term that appears in the appointment order -- with Russian election interference activities. Like collusion, 'coordination' does not have a settled definition in federal criminal law. We understood coordination to require an agreement -- tacit or express -- between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference. That requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other's actions or interests. We applied the term coordination in that sense when stating in the report that the investigation did not establish that the Trump Campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

(4) While Mueller says the investigation "did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities[,]" he further stated the following, which Barr again conveniently omitted in his summary (and once again, emphasis is mine):

"The report describes actions and events that the Special Counsel's Office found to be supported by the evidence collected in our investigation. In some instances, the report points out the absence of evidence or conflicts in the evidence about a particular fact or event. In other instances, when substantial, credible evidence enabled the Office to reach a conclusion with confidence, the report states that the investigation established that certain actions or events occurred. A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts."

(5) The Mueller report then provides about 100 pages of documentation regarding the multiple instances of contact and activities between members or representatives of the Trump campaign and Russian government officials and operatives, including the false claims to the contrary by Trump and his campaign.

So for anyone who claims that this report says Trump didn't collude with Russia, they ought to actually read the report first, because Mueller found that there was in fact a demonstrably significant and starling simpatico relationship between the Trump campaign and the Russia government.

To be perfectly frank, their simpatico relationship represents a profound moral betrayal of our nation and its values and principles. And that, I would offer, rises to the constitutional level of high crimes and misdemeanors required for impeachment and removal.

Why didn't congress dems cry "obstruction" and demand impeachment?

However, the Barr Report, despite its redactions presents and describes substantial wrongdoing.

House Democrats, when asked about impeachment deferred to the issuance of the Mueller Report.  Mueller, we now find, drops his serious findings at the feet of Congress. Can you say "hot potato?"

Inn view of Mueller's intended destination for his team's work,  it is clear that he expected the full, unredacted report to be made available to Congress, or, at least, to the appropriate committees.

However, it is curious in light of that expectation, that Mueller did not obtain authorization by Court order (Courts he had been working with) to disclose Grand Jury matters under Rule 6(e), as was done by Ken Starr, albeit under the Special Prosecutor statute, and, by a Republican.  Barr, announced that he would not do so, making it a task for Congress.

Never-the-less, the American people and Congress, need not be bamboozled by the Barr and Trump's redactions.  They need only, at this point, focus on the unredacted components---there is plenty there to pursue, e.g., "If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would say so..however, we are unable to reach that judgment."  (due, in part, because witnesses did not cooperate or destroyed records and used encrypted communications).

While impeachment may have been off the table, it appears to me, that that position is no longer tenable. At a minimum, an investigation for purposes of possible impeachment has planted its feet firmly under that table.

We always wondered or at least I did how many other Republicans this was going to take down. WaPo is reporting that Burr (R-NC) was giving Trump FBI information. So there's one Republican so far. I'm still waiting for Lindsay to blow his stack.

I definitely think an impeachment inquiry needs to be started.