Fox News is Referenced in the Mueller Report Four Times, and Each Makes Trump Look Worse

With the release of the redacted version of the Mueller report by Donald Trump’s plant in the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr, there is going to be a flurry of furious spinning by Trump’s devoted martinets in the right-wing press. Trump himself will continue his frantic robo-rant of “no collusion, no obstruction,” as he has been doing for months.

Fox News, Robert Mueller

Naturally, Fox News will assume its predictable role as the main line of defense for Trump. They will focus exclusively on any positive angles among the vague interpretations of Mueller’s report offered by Barr or other Republican partisans. And they will brazenly ignore anything in the report that is remotely detrimental to Trump, of which there is a significant amount. Even Chris Wallace of Fox News noted that “There is a lot of stuff in here that is damaging to the president, politically embarrassing to the president.”

However, Fox News itself had a place in the Mueller report with four references to Trump’s State TV affiliate. The following passages from the report illustrate just how deeply integrated Fox is with Trump and his associates. For instance:

Page 70:

“That night, the White House Press Office called the Department of Justice and said the White House wanted to put out a statement saying that it was Rosenstein’s idea to fire Comey. Rosenstein told other DOJ officials that he would not participate in putting out a ‘false story.’ The President then called Rosenstein directly and said he was watching Fox News, that the coverage had been great, and that he wanted Rosenstein to do a press conference. Rosenstein responded that this was not a good idea because if the press asked him, he would tell the truth that Comey’s firing was not his idea.”

What we have here is Trump keeping tabs on the investigation by watching Fox News, and then trying to get Deputy AG Rosenstein to lie for him about FBI Director James Comey’s firing. That’s obstruction of justice right there. The fact that Rosenstein refused doesn’t make Trump’s attempt any less illegal. And then there’s this:

Page 99:

“[Reince] Priebus recalled learning about the June 9 meeting from Fox News host Sean Hannity in late June 2017. Priebus notified one of the President’s personal attorneys, who told Priebus he was already working on it. By late June, several advisors recalled receiving media inquiries that could relate to the June 9 meeting.”

It’s rather remarkable that Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, found out about the infamous Trump Tower meeting (with Don Jr, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and some Russian operatives) only by watching Fox News. That’s how out-of-the-loop Trump’s closest White House aide was, but also how integral Fox News is to Trump’s affairs. And that’s not all:

Page 126:

“In a Fox News interview on August 22, 2018, the President said: ‘[Cohen] makes a better deal when he uses me, like everybody else. And one of the reasons l respect Paul Manafort so much is he went through that trial-you know they make up stories. People make up stories. This whole thing about flipping, they call it, I know all about flipping. The President said that flipping was ‘not fair’ and ‘almost ought to be outlawed.'”

In this “interview” with the unabashedly pro-Trump “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, Trump is laying the groundwork for threats directed at his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, while simultaneously praising his more loyal campaign chairman, Manafort. This is a fairly clumsy attempt at witness tampering. Which he did some more of here:

Page 151:

“In January 2019, after the media reported that Cohen would provide public testimony in a congressional hearing, the President made additional public comments suggesting that Cohen’s family members had committed crimes. In an interview on Fox on January 12, 2019, the President was asked whether he was worried about Cohen’s testimony and responded:

‘[I]n order to get his sentence reduced, [Cohen] says “I have an idea, I’ll ah, tell-I’ll give you some information on the president.” Well, there is no information. But he should give information maybe on his father-in-law because that’s the one that people want to look at because where does that money-that’s the money in the family.'”

Trump made these accusations during an interview with his adoring acolyte, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro. They were directed against Cohen’s family as a flagrant attempt to scare him into keeping his mouth shut.

It’s hard to see why Mueller didn’t think he had sufficient evidence to indict Trump, or at least to recommend that Congress take up an inquiry that could lead to impeachment. And as guilty as Trump now appears to be, it’s plain that Fox News was a willing accomplice every step of the way. It is not insignificant that Fox was referenced four times in the report. They were further included in twenty-seven footnotes. No other national news network was referenced in the body of the report even once. What does that tell you?

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

AG Barr’s Bastardization of the Mueller Report Cements His Reputation as a Trump-Fluffing Shill

On Thursday morning Donald Trump got just what he wanted when he planted William Barr as his obedient lackey in the Justice Department. Barr held what he called a “press conference,” but was more of public sanitation of Trump’s clear and obvious criminal behavior, much of which was done in full view of the public. This will go down in history alongside the legal mendacity Nixon’s accomplices in Watergate.

Robert Mueller Trump

Much of What Barr said in his remarks was the best evidence that he was being flagrantly servile to Trump. He began by describing the Mueller report as concerning “matters related to Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.” And then he nearly ignored that entirely for the remainder of his remarks. Barr never explicitly mentioned incriminating activities like the meeting between Don Trump Jr and Paul Manafort with Russians in Trump Tower. Nevertheless, he did conclude that “no evidence that any Americans – including anyone associated with the Trump campaign – conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.” How does he square those two facts? Barr doesn’t say.

Barr did bring up the fact that Russians were found to have hacked into the emails of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. But he let’s Trump off the hook by saying that the Mueller report “did not find any evidence that members of the Trump campaign or anyone associated with the campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its hacking operations.” That, of course, was never alleged by anyone. What Trump and company did was to aid and abet the Russians in disseminating the product of that illegal hacking. All the while denying that it ever occured.

Barr noted that “Wikileaks then made a series of document dumps,” but he absolved Trump of any wrongdoing by stating that “Russian operatives who perpetrated these schemes did not have the cooperation of President Trump or the Trump campaign.” The public evidence to the contrary is undeniable. Trump promoted WikiLeaks’ stolen data over 140 times and said explicitly that “I love WikiLeaks.” Then he later denied this reality by saying that he “knows nothing about WikiLeaks.” Again, that contradiction is another example of his consciousness of guilt.

Barr did address the fact that “the Special Counsel investigated a number of ‘links’ or ‘contacts’ between Trump Campaign officials and individuals connected with the Russian government during the 2016 presidential campaign.” But he’s trivializing what were actually hundreds of contacts by dozens of Trump associates. And he cavalierly dismissed those contacts saying that he “did not find any conspiracy to violate U.S. law.” Well, then what else would he call it?

Barr’s “bottom line” was that the report concluded that “the Russian government sponsored efforts to illegally interfere with the 2016 presidential election but did not find that the Trump campaign or other Americans colluded in those schemes.” But what he isn’t denying is that Trump and his campaign abetted those schemes by promoting their narratives while pretending they didn’t exist.

Additionally, Barr cleared Trump of obstruction of justice by asserting that there was “not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.” That’s Barr’s conclusion, not Mueller’s. And it ignores all of the evidence to the contrary, including Trump’s innumerable lies to cover up his activities and even his television confession that he fired FBI director James Comey because of “the Russia thing.”

Proof of Barr’s bias was evident in his comments that Trump “was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency.” How does Barr know that Trump was frustrated and angry? He never testified. And as for his having “a sincere belief” that he was the subject of “presidential harassment” (as Trump calls it), that’s a brazenly subjective view that reveals prejudice on Barr’s part.

What’s more, Barr claimed that “the White House fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation [and therefore had no] corrupt intent to obstruct the investigation.” It’s absurd to say that someone who refused to be interviewed had fully cooperated. And Trump’s corrupt intent was evident nearly everyday in his tweets that maligned Mueller and his team as virtual traitors who were acting with purposeful deceit to stage a coup against Trump. Additionally, it’s impossible to ignore Trump’s witness tampering with both threats and the dangling of possible pardons.

This release of the redacted Mueller report, and Barr’s obsequious presentation of his deceitful version of facts, produces more questions than it answers. And the fact that Trump required this improper defense by the Attorney General just makes him look more guilty. There are still some sixteen other investigations of Trump in progress that encompass potential crimes related to his campaign, his inauguration, his businesses, his sexual affairs and assaults, and his presidency. So if Trump thinks this is “Game Over” as he tweeted following Barr’s press conference, he is not only wrong, he’s downright delusional.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.