Per Attorney General William Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report, there is no evidence to prove that Trump or his campaign conspired with Russian agents to influence the election

I see no reason to take Barr at his word, especially so long as he and Republicans in the Senate are doing everything in their power from keeping the full report made public.

Barr is a person who voiced his opinion ruling out obstruction before he was even hired as AG — long before Mueller’s report was ever finished, and therefor long before Barr could have known whether or not that opinion had any basis in fact. That memo was probably a factor in him being chosen as AG. The man is not unbiased.

Let’s not forget he’s also the man who helped Oliver North escape justice for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal 30 years ago.

FOX News’s own Judge Andrew Napolitano has said that Barr’s summary is not to be trusted. Napolitano seems almost certain that the report does show evidence of collusion, and that it just doesn’t rise to the level of actionable evidence, or evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. But evidence is still evidence, even if it’s not enough evidence to proceed with an indictment, and so it is therefor misleading for Barr to say that there is no evidence whatsoever.

Unlike many people, I believe he was making a tacky joke, not actually signaling the Kremlin.

I agree, but that’s beside the point. Joke or not, the Russians acted on it, and then offered up what they found. Trump Jr. took a meeting with them in order to find out what they dug up. We don’t know if Trump knew anything about that meeting before the fact, but we do know that he participated in crafting the lies to cover it up.

There are plenty of others times Trump behaved in ways that fed the story. There was his statement to NBC’s Lester Holt in May 2017 that he fired James Comey because of the “Russia thing.” (Whether we now find Comey an obnoxiously self-important grandstander is totally irrelevant.)

For the record, I am also fairly agnostic on the question of collusion. I think the idea of Trump being a Russian asset, long or short-term, is a little silly.

But obstruction? That’s a different story.

I don’t know whether or not Trump colluded with Russia or whether he’s just an idiot who was being manipulated by Putin. Either scenario seems perfectly plausible to me. I mean, we already know he’s an idiot.

But Trump admitted he fired Comey to get rid of the Russia investigation… how is that not obstruction all by itself? As far as I’m concerned, the evidence for obstruction is in plain sight.

What he may also be guilty of are financial crimes. We know that he has billions of dollars in loans from Russian banks, because no U.S. banks would loan him anything. That fact alone is alarming.

and, for the record, I do not want impeachment.

Can I ask why not? I could list a dozen things that qualify Trump for impeachment, without even bringing up Russia.

Remember, a president does not have to be guilty of a crime in order to be impeached.

That said, I’m not necessarily in favor of impeachment either, but for political reasons. I think Democrats will stand a better chance against Trump than they would against Pence. And I also don’t want Pence in a position to have the power to pardon Trump of any crimes he may be charged with, in the ever increasingly unlikely event that he is charged with anything.