Thread by @SethAbramson

The terrifying fact about the Mueller Report that no one is talking about is that the first and more important half of it—the part that discusses whether Trump or members of his campaign betrayed America—doesn't resolve the question. Much more at NEWSWEEK: newsweek.com/mueller-report…

"Until the U.S. counterintelligence community releases its findings to Congress—and perhaps, given how secretive such an eventual report will be, even after that point—Americans will remain in the dark about what Mueller found or was capable of finding with respect to the bevy...

...of conspiracy/conspiracy-related offenses Trump has been accused or widely suspected of committing: a list including aiding/abetting, bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy with nongovernmental Russians and governmental/nongovernmental persons from several other nations."

Russian pre-election cyber-intrusions and the Kremlin psy-ops campaign began in 2014-15—before the Trump campaign existed—so it was *never* clear why Mueller probed whether the campaign conspired with the GRU/IRA before these crimes began. That simply was *never* the allegation.

The allegation Trump/his campaign faced was that the Kremlin bribed Trump; that he/his campaign aided and abetted Russian crimes once they were underway (pre-election, but also, thereafter—in 2017—via obstruction), and that a probe of these offenses would reveal money laundering.

So when the Report came out and journalists interviewed me trying to get me to say I was "livid" that Mueller hadn't established beyond a reasonable doubt a before-the-fact Trump-GRU/Trump-IRA conspiracy, I'd say, "Why would I be angry? That wasn't even a question on the table."

Imagine what such a conspiracy would look like and you see how silly the idea is—which is why no one floated it. Putin and Trump agree beforehand that Russia will hack and Trump will fund it? In 2014 the IRA asks a campaign that *doesn't exist yet* how to troll Americans? *What*?

Now amend the allegation to be *what it was*—did Russian agents bribe Trump with business deals to sway his Russia policy? Did Trump aid and abet Russian fraud (disinformation) after he learned it was happening?—and the evidence is suddenly *overwhelming*. It's *not* complicated.

So when you watch HPSCI question Mueller, *if you know Volume 1* it's going to be a surreal experience because Mueller is going to be largely detailing his findings on a question no one asked under a "theory of the case" no criminal investigator would *ever* have taken seriously.

The fact that Mueller and his team did an okay job on the obstruction question is causing the Democrats—who wrongly think we live in a time when a POTUS can be convicted/removed for obstruction—to give Mueller a pass on the volume of his report that is *shudderingly* problematic.

The obstruction case against Trump is a slam dunk, and the Democrats should've said so from Day 1—echoing the 1,000+ former federal prosecutors from both parties who wrote an open letter saying so. Then attention should've fallen on bribery, aiding/abetting, and money laundering.

Instead of that, what's going to happen is that we're going to act like Trump's obstruction is complex and hard to explain rather than *conspicuous and almost comically egregious*, and we're going to talk about a Trump-GRU/Trump-IRA conspiracy *no one ever alleged*.

It's insane.