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In a lengthy Twitter thread noted by Town Hall, Michael Tracey, a former Young Turks reporter who has been one of the few progressive media voices expressing deep skepticism about the Russian “collusion” narrative, lays out some of the biggest “bombshell” claims about Team Trump and collusion that the final report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller has now officially debunked.
On Thursday, Attorney General William Barr announced the release of the redacted Mueller report and offered his summary of its findings. “As you will see, the Special Counsel’s report states that his ‘investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,'” said the attorney general. Regarding obstruction of justice, Barr said that after consultation with the Office of Legal Counsel and Department of Jusice lawyers, “I concluded that the evidence developed by the Special Counsel is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
After the attorney general’s statement Thursday, Tracey posted, “Barr could not have been more definitive and emphatic that there was no evidence to establish any conspiracy, coordination, or collusion. Unless he’s egregiously misrepresenting the Report — and we’ll see momentarily — he just stuck a stake through the heart of this theory.”
Tracey then began to post excerpts of the report that debunked various “bombshells” over the last two years. First, the “most important, principal finding, to which everything else is subordinate: ‘The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government,'” Tracey wrote, quoting from the report.
“Mueller debunks one of the foundational myths of Trump/Russia, which is that the effort to change the GOP platform in 2016 was somehow part of a grand collusion plot,” he wrote, tweeting out a screenshot of the passage.
“Funny, I remember when Marcy promised she gave smoking gun evidence of a quid pro quo conspiracy to the FBI. Whatever happened to that? Or is Mueller himself now part of the conspiracy,” he wrote in another post highlighting a lack of evidence of such an arrangement.
“Remember when Manafort sharing polling data with [Konstantin] Kilimnik was supposed to be the lynchpin of the Trump/Russia conspiracy?” he wrote. “Mueller says this event had zero bearing on any broader ‘collusion’ scheme.” (Here’s Newsweek‘s coverage of the story.)
“Remember when there was massive speculation about Alfa-Bank being a key pillar of the Trump/Russia conspiracy?” he wrote next. “Yes, Mueller did investigate activity related to Alfa-Bank and found no conspiracy.” (Here’s The New Yorker‘s coverage.)
“Remember when there was huge speculation about whether Mueller would investigate Trump’s personal business activities, because if he did not investigate such matters, he would fail to uncover collusion?” Tracey asks. “Turns out he DID investigate the Trump Org, dating back to at least 2013.” (Here’s a March 2018 New York Times piece on Mueller investigating the Trump Organization.)
“In our interview this week @GeorgePapa19 stated that he was investigated for being an agent of Israel, not Russia. Mueller Report proves him right,” Tracey writes, linking to his interview with Papadopoulos.
Tracey also highlights the passage debunking BuzzFeed’s report claiming that Trump directed Cohen to lie about the Trump Tower Moscow project. (Here’s The Daily Wire‘s coverage of that story.)
One of the more thorough lists of the key Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theories debunked by Mueller was compiled by Glenn Greenwald in a piece for The Intercept Thursday. “The two-pronged conspiracy theory that has dominated U.S. political discourse for almost three years — that (1) Trump, his family and his campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election, and (2) Trump is beholden to Russian President Vladimir Putin — was not merely rejected today by the final report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. It was obliterated: in an undeniable and definitive manner,” Greenwald wrote.
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