Thread by @JewhadiTM

The Shaky Standing of Muellers Footnotes | RealClearInvestigations realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/…

Some footnotes show that key allegations often rely on the flimsy say-so of media accounts.

One cites a Bloomberg report that Trump adviser Carter Page "had ties to a Russian state-run gas company" - itself sourced oddly to a Politico article that came to the opposite conclusion about Page.

Some footnotes show credulity toward anti-Trump critics, especially James Comey. Mueller treats the former FBI boss's memos as unimpeachable evidence without noting that Comey was misleading the president and acting unethically, perhaps illegally.

Some footnotes seem included just to smear people: Mueller quotes a deputy White House counsel who says he didn't believe a statement made by Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

Mueller doesn't explain the basis for this mistrust or make any effort to see whether Flynn was telling the truth.
Some footnotes are just places to air unfounded speculation:

Because Mueller found no evidence of a conspiracy with Russia, he imagines that Trump might have tried to obstruct the probe by firing Comey because he feared "other conduct" would come to light. Then Mueller says there is no evidence for this.

Talk about unfounded speculation: One footnote posits what we'll dub Chessgate -- an unlikely furtive Trump visit to the World Chess Championship in lower Manhattan two days after his election.

That would have required the President-elect to slip away from a fortified Trump Tower staked out by media, travel some six miles to the South Street Seaport, take in some chess, schmooze with some Russians, and return to midtown — all without being seen.

Mueller clearly doesn’t just use footnotes for citations, but also for speculation and explanation and even a little what-iffery.

Footnote 500 in Volume II, for instance, is a rather lengthy dissertation on a curious theory of how the president might have obstructed justice in firing Comey — a theory that imputes to Trump oracular foresight.

We now know, thanks to Mueller’s inquiry, that there was not evidence to establish a Trump-Russia conspiracy. But the special counsel is unwilling to let go of the notion that Trump obstructed the investigation.

Which leaves the special counsel team anticipating the obvious objection: How could the president have had a corrupt intent in firing Comey if there were no Russia conspiracy to cover up?

Mueller explains that Trump may have been afraid of what would get tangled in the net of a prosecutorial fishing expedition.

“We considered whether the President's intent in firing Comey was connected to other conduct that could come to light as a result of the FBI's Russian-interference investigation,” footnote 500 states.

“In particular, Michael Cohen was a potential subject of investigation because of his pursuit of the Trump Tower Moscow project and involvement in other activities.”

After all that fevered speculation – that when Trump fired Comey in May 2017 he might have been anticipating the raid on Cohen’s office in April 2018 -- the footnote ends with a sheepish shrug:

“The investigation, however, did not establish that when the President fired Comey, he was considering the possibility that the FBI's investigation would uncover these payments or that the intent in firing Comey was ... connected to a concern about these matters coming to light.”