Matt Taibbi: As the Mueller Probe Ends, New Russiagate Myths Begin

"Donald Trump couldn’t have asked for a juicier 2020 campaign issue"

On Sunday, Attorney General William Barr sent a letter to Congress, summarizing the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. The most telling section, quoted directly from Mueller’s report, read:

“[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

That one sentence should end a roughly 33-month national ordeal (the first Russiagate stories date back to July 2016) in which the public was encouraged, both by officials and the press, to believe Donald Trump was a compromised foreign agent.

After the 2016 election, the storyline instantly became that Trump was an illegitimate president, a foreign operative who’d cheated his way into office and would therefore need to be removed ahead of schedule.

There were too many stories that dwelled on this theme to count here, but we all saw them. New York asked, Was Trump “meeting his handler” in Helsinki? The Daily Beast asked, “Is he a Russian asset?”

(Note: the extravagant use of hack spy-novel language during this period is going to look particularly ridiculous in history books decades from now.)

Some outlets didn’t even put their beliefs in the form of a question. “Trump Is Compromised by Russia” read a not-unusual editorial in the New York Times last November.

If you tried to protest that this had not been proven, that journalists should be more careful about leveling such serious accusations, the first line of response (if it wasn’t accusing you of being in league with Putin) was usually a version of: Be quiet, you don’t know what Mueller knows.

Mueller knows became the cornerstone belief of nearly all reporters who covered the Russia investigation. Journalists reveled in the idea of being kept out of the loop, thrilled to defer to the impenetrable steward of national secrets, the interview-proof Man of State. He was no blabbermouth Donald Trump, this Mueller! He won’t tell us a thing!

Dan Rather told us that “what Mueller knows” will make the Cohen/Manafort pleas “pale in comparison.” Often we were even told the things Mueller hadn’t told us yet were the most important facts of all, that his filings were “more revealing by what they did not include than by what they did.”

Other pieces were just embarrassing, the news version of “We’re not worthy!” The story Axios released after Mueller’s Internet Research Farm indictments was entitled “We know nothing; Mueller knows all.” Axios gushed that Mueller indicted a bunch of Russians no one ever expected to appear in court without word getting out. This, they said, spoke to Mueller’s “deep, serious investigative work” which had gone “totally under radar, with zero leaks.”

“Amazing there was no hint of this in the media,” Axios noted.

All this hyping of Mueller The Omniscient dovetailed with the preposterous mythologizing of the special counsel through consumer goods (Mueller action figures! “Mueller time!” beverage mugs! Saint Robert Muller prints!) and breathless stories like the Vanity Fair ode to the “dreamiest G-man to hunt for collusion.”

Then there were episodes like the “All I want for Christmas is you!” song performed by the SNL cast. “I don’t need a full impeachment / I just need a little fun / Please don’t tell us we aren’t crazy / At least indict his oldest son.”

Now Santa Mueller has gone back to the North Pole, leaving just a written report. It absolutely should be released in full. It’s very possible that the full report contains a great many details that “Mueller knew” and we didn’t, and which will be embarrassing to Trump.

But the report’s key conclusions, as the Atlantic puts it, have already “quelled some of the fondest hopes of the anti-Trump ‘resistance.’”

Beyond the failure to “establish” Trump had colluded or coordinated with Russia, the letter had (despite news reports to the contrary today) a good deal to say on the obstruction issue.

[...]

Continue at source: Taibbi: As Mueller Probe Ends, New Russiagate Myths Begin – Rolling Stone

and a brilliant interview at Democracy Now, pitting David Cay Johnston against Glenn Greenwald: