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Readers' Forum, June 7, 2019: Facts, evidence the foundation of Mueller Report
Letters to the Editor: Opinions from readers on issues of the day 12 hrs ago
   
Facts, evidence the foundation of Mueller Report

Where Brian Howey sees “Hot messes courtesy of Trump, Comey and Mueller” (Terre Haute Tribune-Star, June 1, 2019), I see the Mueller Report not as part of some kind of “hot mess” but as a hearty broth of facts and evidence. Unlike what Howey correctly pegs as the “incurious and supplicant Indiana congressional delegation,” American citizen-voters should put personalities and diversions aside. We should all be willing to ingest and digest this medicinal and necessary broth.

But face it, if you want to know what’s in the Mueller Report, you’re going to have to read the book or read it online. We’re not going to get a TV docu-drama starring Bryan Cranston as Robert Mueller on HBO or a “Hamilton” style rap musical production explaining the truths and evidence of the Mueller Report.

The Report’s actual title is “Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election.” Does this sound important, intriguing, worth knowing something about? Does it sound like something you, sitting at home, in a library, or at your computer, should read all or parts of?

Of course it does. The FBI and the CIA — agencies staffed with dedicated, professional, Americans to the core — have verified that their findings are not a case of “The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!” These agents have found that “The Russians Have Been Here and They’re Coming Again!” This Report provides the evidence supporting this finding. Read, weep, worry, and act.

I’m reading it. I recommend you do the same. It’s both fascinating and scary. Not Steven King scary. Scary in the ways the Founding Fathers were concerned and fearful of self-serving factions, nefarious foreign influences, and naked abuses of power by the powerful. James Madison is definitely not resting easy.

I tried Volume I, Section IV, the other night. This section is titled “Russian Government Links To and Contacts With The Trump Campaign.” At least 140 contacts between Russians and Americans are identified in it. Read it and you’ll find names that have been in the news for months. Trump appointees and operatives such as Flynn, Cohen, Manafort are peppered throughout this section. As most know, these guys are all in jail. Trump hired them. Trump praised them. Trump deserted them.

So it’s almost all there, chapter and verse, in clear language, footnotes bristling with supporting evidence and sources. I say “almost” because there are the redactions. President Trump’s appointment to Attorney General, William Barr, has chosen to block out some of the Report. Why is this? Shouldn’t your representatives in Congress (even if they’re from Indiana) be allowed to see what actions and names are behind those black curtains Barr chose to hang over portions of the Report? Isn’t seeing the evidence in full the job of Congress (even if they’re from Indiana)? Even the job of American citizens? Isn’t this all part of the checks and balances and election protections those who founded our Republic wrote into the Constitution?

And I know, I know, we live in cynical, politically divided, silo-world times. Nothing read or said will change some people’s emotion-fueled loyalties. As one historian put it in her study of medieval charlatans, “They [those under the thumb of a charlatan] want to believe, and would only hate the argumentative expert who tried to injure the object of their faith.” And so it goes. Some still think Nixon was a hero who got a raw deal and that Ponzi scheme artist Bernie Madoff was sincerely interested in growing and keeping people’s nest eggs safe.

There are many books on the lies and frauds of past charlatans, Nixon and Madoff. But first read the Mueller Report, the “Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election.” It opens eyes and minds.

— Gary Daily, Terre Haute

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