President Trump and his family members have been celebrating their victory, in that the 3/22/2019 FBI’s final report’s findings submitted by the FBI’s Special Counsel Robert Mueller regarding the 22 month FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation have been favorable to them.

When Mueller was appointed special counsel on May 17, 2017, the Department of Justice’s Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said the probe would include “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation” into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

Then in August 2017, Rosenstein authorized Mueller to investigate allegations that Manafort may have “committed a crime or crimes arising out of payments he received from the Ukrainian government” before and while pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych was in office.

This information was deemed important because it would possibly have shed some light as to why Mr. Manafort had been so motivated to become President Trump’s campaign manager, around March 2016 even to the point, of volunteering to work for free. It could explain why he ordered US policy toward Ukraine and Russia to be altered in the GOP National Republican Convention platform.

See Trump’s NYC history: Center Of Gravity RE Investigations Into Trump World Has Moved From Washington DC To 

Mr. Mueller’s indictments to date of some of the figures in the president’s orbit during the campaign period of 2016-2017 include the president’s former personal attorney for a decade, Michael Cohen, his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, his sub rosa campaign adviser Roger Stone, and his former national security adviser, General Mike Flynn.

What is not resolved by Mr. Mueller’s 3/22/2019 report, is the question as to, ‘how does President Trump’s financial ties to Russia, dating back decades, compromise his ability to act solely in the best interests of US national security interests versus Russia’s objectives,’ requires further oversight/ review.

That’s why I’m convinced that the FBI’s counter-intelligence investigation that was opened around July 2017 regarding the president’s financial ties to Russia is still on-going. And this is why I’m believing that the SDNY  Southern District of New York US Attorneys’ offices is where the investigation into President Trump being possibly compromised because of his strong financial ties to Russia and other foreign entities, belongs.

Incidentally, the attorney Audrey Strauss was recently promoted in the SDNY prosecutors’ offices to oversee this part of the probe pertaining President Trump’s financial dealings with Russia.

Audrey Strauss (71 years old) is none other than one of the prosecutors, who bested Donald Trump and his attorney and mentor, Roy Cohn, in a 1973 case when the  Justice Department was suing the Trumps for not renting to black people.

See Courthouse News Service: Lawyer Who Bested Roy Cohn Tapped for Big Gig in SDNY

In summary, Mr. Mueller has decided that the answer is NO, that he couldn’t provide sufficient evidence with a likelihood of his prevailing in a court of law where he could justify criminally charging the republican President Donald Trump, and some of his family members for having directly conspired with Russian operatives in its attack on the US 2016 presidential elections’ infrastructure with the standard being, ‘guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.’ This amounts to an exoneration of the president and he has a right to feel relief. This is a victory for the president, the Republican Party and the American peoples.

But that is a far cry from the republican President Donald Trump and his GOP echo chamber of sycophants who are in already working overtime to claim that the president has been fully exonerated regarding his having criminally conspired with Russian operatives to effect the outcome of the US 2016 presidential elections and from his having obstructed justice. But here’s the caveat, the president and the Republican Party cannot claim exoneration on his having committed “obstruction of justice.’

Mr. Mueller didn’t make that final determination in his report, as to whether the conduct of the president demonstrated during his stay in the White House since January 2017, constituted ”obstruction of justice.’ In fact, Mr. Mueller specifically declined to exonerate the president on this charge.

The US Department of Justice’s Attorney General William Barr has admitted that Mr. Mueller did not “draw a conclusion — one way or the other — as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction.”

He adds, “Instead, for each of the relevant actions investigated, the (Mueller) report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as ‘difficult issues’ of law and fact concerning whether the President’s actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction. The Special Counsel states that ‘while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.'”

It is my opinion that Mr. Barr in his summary of conclusions, has gone too far in representing Mr. Mueller’s assertions pertaining to the president, as his NOT  having acted in a manner that constituted, ‘obstruction of justice’ to suit his own partisan purposes.

It was Mr. Mueller who was the independent investigator assigned the job of determining the innocence or guilt of President Trump and it should be his conclusion that holds, as is. The president’s appointed officials in the US Justice Department should not be the ones allowed to substitute their own conclusions.

• Attorney General William Barr wrote that the FBI’s Special Counsel Mueller found neither President Trump nor his campaign “conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.”
• Mr. Mueller decided not to make a determination as to whether or not Trump committed the crime of obstructing justice, and instead supposedly left that determination to Mr. Barr.
• Mr. Barr himself ultimately concluded that the FBI’s evidence was not sufficient to establish that President Trump committed a crime.

See NYT report: Read Attorney General William Barr’s Summary of the Mueller Report

Here is the rest of the story…

On March 24, 2019, Mark Mazzetti and Katie Benner of the New York Times penned the following story, “Mueller Finds No Trump-Russia Conspiracy but Stops Short of Exonerating President on Obstruction of Justice”

Excerpts:

“The investigation led by Robert S. Mueller III found that neither President Trump nor any of his aides conspired or coordinated with the Russian government’s 2016 election interference, according to a summary of the special counsel’s findings made public on Sunday by Attorney General William P. Barr.”

“Mr. Barr also said that Mr. Mueller’s team drew no conclusions about whether Mr. Trump illegally obstructed justice. Mr. Barr and the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, determined that the special counsel’s investigators lacked sufficient evidence to establish that Mr. Trump committed that offense, but added that Mr. Mueller’s team stopped short of exonerating Mr. Trump.”

“While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” Mr. Barr quoted Mr. Mueller as writing.”

“The findings delivered a significant political victory for the president, one he almost immediately began to trumpet. “No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!,” Mr. Trump tweeted an hour after the release of the findings.”

“Mr. Barr delivered the summary of the special counsel’s finding to Congress on Sunday afternoon, just days after the conclusion of a sprawling investigation into Russia’s attempts to sabotage the 2016 election and whether President Trump or any of his associates conspired with Moscow’s interference.”

“But congressional Democrats have demanded more, and the release of the key findings could be just the beginning of a lengthy constitutional battle between Congress and the Justice Department about whether Mr. Mueller’s full report will be made public. Democrats have also called for the attorney general to turn over all of the special counsel’s investigative files.”

“Shortly after the release of the Mueller findings, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Twitter that he plans to call Mr. Barr to testify about what he said were “very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department,” seemingly referring to the attorney general’s conclusion that the president did not obstruct justice.”

Link to entire report: Mueller Finds No Trump-Russia Conspiracy but Stops Short of Exoneration …

See: the summary of the Mueller findings, and find live updates about them here.]