Thread by @SethAbramson

(THREAD) The biggest hoax perpetrated on American voters this century was the Mueller Report. Not the report itself—but how it was *misrepresented* by Trump and his crew. The Report didn't conclude what Trump says; more importantly, it didn't even consider the *topics* he claims.

1/ One of the strangest aspects of Mueller's probe—almost never reported on—is that as it was happening, we had no idea what *was or wasn't* being investigated by Mueller and his team. Writing PROOF OF COLLUSION and PROOF OF CONSPIRACY, I read hundreds of articles that *guessed*.

2/ There were members of the media who told us—without any evidence—that Mueller was looking at the "money trail" between Trump and Russia. Some journalists said Mueller was working with Trump's tax returns. Others said Mueller was looking into Trump's *Middle East* connections.

3/ The picture painted for America was of a *sprawling* investigation that would look at *any possible misconduct* Trump could ever be accused of. The truth? The people "reporting" on the scope of the Mueller investigation had *no information* on the scope of the investigation.

4/ Worse still, journalists had no visibility into Mueller's *ability* to access any the types of information they *reported*—usually inaccurately—he was looking for. They had no information on whether the evidence he—allegedly—sought was being withheld, destroyed, or lied about.

5/ So journalists filled their lack knowledge with a pretense to knowledge, telling us that not only would Mueller investigate anything Trump had ever done since 2015—and possibly before then—but also that his access to the evidence he needed was unparalleled.

It was all untrue.

6/ When the Mueller Report was released in Spring 2019, the first thing American media needed to do was clean up its *years* of inaccurate reporting on the *scope* of the Report. And then it needed to underscore how *little* of the evidence he wanted Mueller got.

It did neither.

7/ The result was a *massive* windfall for Trump and his crew. They claimed—falsely—that not only had Mueller had *unparalleled* access to all the evidence he could ever have wanted, but that the *scope* of his probe was *sprawling*.

Neither was true—and the Report even said so.

8/ The *truth*, according to the Report, was a sobering one:

1) For unexplained reasons, Mueller had been forced to use the *narrowest possible scope* at every stage of the investigation.

2) The evidence Mueller needed *even to do his narrow work* was largely withheld from him.

9/ So what *was* the scope of the Report—and what evidence *did* it have?

1) The Report considered if Trump and/or his team had conspired with Russia *before the fact* to hack Americans or spread propaganda.
2) Anyone who tried to keep evidence from Mueller was allowed to do so.

10/ The problem was that *no one* had ever accused Trump of conspiring with Russia *before the fact* with respect to hacking Americans or spreading Russian propaganda.

You could spend *years* reading major-media news reports—and even *op-eds*—and not find *anyone* alleging that.

11/ In researching PROOF OF COLLUSION and PROOF OF CONSPIRACY, I found no evidence Trump/his team conspired with Russia *before the fact* about hacking Americans or spreading propaganda—which is why those books aren't about that topic. Indeed such crimes would've been impossible.

12/ While it's true Trump decided to run for president in 2016 back in November 2012—and likely revealed his intentions to Russian nationals in Moscow in November 2013, days before he revealed it to GOP officials in New York—he had virtually no campaign apparatus until mid-2015.

13/ Based on what we know of when the Kremlin initiated its hacking/propaganda plots—and when/how those plots went "live"—it was quickly clear to *anyone* researching the Trump presidency that while the plots might've been hatched with Trump's run in mind, Trump wasn't involved.

14/ *No*—what the Trump presidency scholars and analysts both in and our of major-media journalism argued *from the jump* was that the Russia "collusion" case (a non-legal term) was, in its *legal* dimensions, focused on two crimes: BRIBERY and AIDING AND ABETTING AFTER THE FACT.

15/ In *non-legal* terms, AIDING AND ABETTING AFTER THE FACT—technically a redundancy, as AIDING AND ABETTING is typically after-the-fact, while CONSPIRACY is typically before-the-fact—is often referred to as "conspiracy," simply because one is knowingly *assisting* a conspiracy.

16/ If you found that last tweet very confusing, good: that's exactly the point I'm making.

Not only did media mis-report the scope and available evidence for the Mueller Report, it never *clarified the terms* relevant to understanding the Report, its conclusions, and its scope.

17/ Thankfully, Mueller *did*, and if anyone had read his report or reported on its first pages—rather than skipping, to Part 2—we'd understand that Mueller *only* looked at a *never-alleged* "before-the-fact conspiracy" and lacked the evidence he needed even to investigate that.

18/ On pg. 10, Mueller told readers of his report that his team had been hampered from the start by witnesses who refused to speak, withheld evidence, lied about evidence, destroyed evidence, or in myriad other ways made it *impossible* for him to pursue even his *narrow* scope.

19/ In my books PROOF OF COLLUSION and PROOF OF CONSPIRACY, I looked at the *other* crimes people *actually* believed Trump had committed with Russia (PROOF OF COLLUSION) and the reams of *counterintelligence* data Mueller said he couldn't put in his Report (PROOF OF CONSPIRACY).

20/ What I found in those two books is what was likewise discussed in two other books—HOUSE OF TRUMP, HOUSE OF PUTIN and DARK TOWERS (see first tweet in this thread)—namely:

♦️There is *substantial* evidence Trump's Russia policy was the result of bribery and money laundering.♦️

21/ Had media told America—when the Mueller Report was released—that the Report narrowly (and with much missing evidence) investigated an allegation *no one had ever made*, there'd be a sense in America that Trump's crimes have *yet to be investigated*.

Which happens to be true.

22/ Moreover, had Democrats pursued *all* the facts on Ukraine during the Fall '19 impeachment probe and January '20 impeachment trial, a trend would've been clear, namely:

♦️There is *substantial* evidence Trump's Ukraine policy was the result of bribery and money laundering.♦️

23/ In other words, the pattern that researchers first saw in Trump's relationship with Russia years ago—and have been shouting from the rooftops since—exists *also* with respect to Ukraine.

Oh—and China.

And Turkey.

And Saudi Arabia.

And the UAE.

And Israel.

And elsewhere.

24/ Upshot: the Mueller Report didn't investigate anything—with respect to *Trump*—that had been the *focus* of allegations against *Trump*, with the exception of some desultory, incomplete, controversial, glancing discussions of the June 2016 Trump-Russia meeting at Trump Tower.

25/ As neither the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA or anyone else in US intelligence will release *any* data to *anyone* about what they have on the *real* Trump probes—BRIBERY, MONEY LAUNDERING, AIDING AND ABETTING—Trump goes on... his actual crimes discussed by no one but a few journalists.

26/ That doesn't mean nothing is happening.

The effort to get Trump's tax returns—which is (broadly speaking) going well, if taking years—is part of the *real* Trump investigation.

SDNY and other federal jurisdictions continue pursuing these *real* Trump investigations as well.

27/ And any who've read PROOF OF COLLUSION—in its focus on how Putin used the biggest business deal of Trump's life to entice him into pro-Russia policies—and PROOF OF CONSPIRACY (in its focus on Trump's bought-and-sold Middle East policy) know these are still-developing stories.

28/ Having said all this, here's where journalists like me who cover the Trump presidency were *wrong*: we believed Mueller had more leash; we believed he'd compel more testimony and crash through obstacles to get more evidence; and we believed Barr wouldn't kill federal probes.

29/ We believed the courts would move more swiftly; we believed major media would do a better job—broadly speaking—at explaining to America what the Mueller Report did and did not say and did and did not cover or have access to; and we believed America would reject Trump's lies.

30/ We believed, I suppose, that even more people would read, write reviews of, and discuss publicly books like HOUSE OF TRUMP/HOUSE OF PUTIN, PROOF OF COLLUSION, PROOF OF CONSPIRACY, and DARK TOWERS—all New York Times bestsellers that sold 5% of what Michelle Obama's memoir did.

31/ Mostly, we underestimated how much time it'd take to reveal the truth about the most dangerous man in US history—we assumed that with a global spotlight on Trump, the feds would be public about their work and journalists would have the time/space needed to disseminate theirs.

32/ Instead, when the Mueller Report came out, irrelevant as it was to the *real* allegations against Trump—BRIBERY, MONEY LAUNDERING, FRAUD, AIDING AND ABETTING, and more—it deflated a balloon that wasn't the one that mattered and that no one had actually ever tried to blow up.

33/ I've always operated under the assumption that history will find out the full truth about Trump and declare him the most vile character in the whole of US history. I still operate under that assumption, as I remain 100% convinced it's the path the course of history will take.

34/ My books, past and any future, will hopefully aid this critical historical work. For instance, MSNBC made a big deal today about the "Tammy McFadden" revelations in the just-released DARK TOWERS—revelations I already discussed in PROOF OF CONSPIRACY...released six months ago:

35/ My point isn't that MSNBC ignored PROOF OF CONSPIRACY, but that it—and other networks—must tell their viewers that *the real investigation of Donald Trump continues* and that it has very, very little to do with the narrow and repeatedly frustrated scope of the Mueller Report.

PS/ History doesn't stop for anything—not social media, not political rhetoric, not even the results of elections held in the shadow of persistent (and as yet not with finality debunked) lies by one of the most vile men ever. In other words—know that many of us continue our work.