Once upon a time, there was a republican President Donald Trump who had numerous financial ties to Russia going back decades, that he desperately tried to keep mum about as he fought a hard won 2016 campaign to become the 45th US president. He even tried to keep secret that he had been working on a mega multi-million dollar project in Moscow, Russia until mid 2016, while he was stumping on the campaign trail.

In the real world, if a man is financially dependent on the Mafia monies, then the Mafia owns that man. The same is true for an individual who owes his financial well-being to Russian sources, as Russia is well known for being managed in the model of an organized crime syndicate.

What most of us have been concerned about from the start, is that that the republican President Donald Trump’s judgment has been compromised by his dependence on Russian monies developed over decades to where he suffers from divided loyalties. Too often, President Trump has acted to further the interests of Russia versus acting in the best interests of US national Security interests.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Russians were highly motivated to help their guy, Donald Trump get elected as the 45th US president and President Trump was thrilled to accept their help. This scenario may not amount to a criminal conspiracy case but it doesn’t paint a picture of the kind of man we want to see living in the White House.

It is not an exaggeration to state that if Donald Trump were applying for any government . position except as US president, he couldn’t pass the most basic FBI security background check because of his strong financial ties to Russia.

Remember that the one issue that the FBI’s Mueller report and the memo by the US Attorney General Barr put to rest is this one crucial finding:

 RUSSIA DID INDEED LAUNCH AND CONDUCT A MAJOR ATTACK ON THE 2016 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS INFRASTRUCTURE AND THAT THIS IS A CONTINUING THREAT.

To date, this is the same fact that President Trump has refused to accept to the point that he disgraced himself at the 2018 Helsinki Trump-Russia Summit where he publicly announced that be had chosen to believe the Russia’s President Putin’s strong denials about Russia having nothing to do with the attack on the US elections’ infrastructure in 2016 over all the reports by US foreign policy US experts, asserting otherwise.

See: Saga Of The Ties Between Trump And Deutsche Bank Which Has Loaned Him $2 Billion Dollars

See: Dear Republicans, Are You Colluding With A Russian Asset?

See: There’s No Way That President Trump Can Be Credited With Being Tough On Russia

Ever since, early 2017, President Donald Trump has been complaining that he didn’t have a US Department Of Justice’s Attorney General to act as his Roy Cohn, Someone who was there to protect his back/ to cover for him. He still displays periods of rage about the first Attorney General Jeff Sessions daring to recuse himself from overseeing the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe, because it was discovered that he had not disclosed up front, information about contacts he had with Russian officials while he was part of the president’s campaign team.

President Trump never wanted to come to an understanding that the US attorney general is not there to solely serve his interests but that of the American peoples. He finally managed to oust and then to replace the Attorney General Jeff Sessions with his Roy Cohn substitute,  William Barr who auditioned for this post with an unsolicited 19 page letter sent to the White House where he berated the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe being led by the highly reputable and well respected former FBI Director of 12 years, Special Counsel Robert Mueller III, and that it was not possible to criminally charge a US president for acts that would constitute ‘obstruction of justice’. He survived the nomination process by stating an obvious fact, that when he shared his thoughts with the White House that he had not been in possession of all the facts.

See: [Read the attorney general’s letter: Justice Dept. notification to Congress regarding the conclusion of the Mueller investigation]

See Neal Katyal’s op-ed piece: I wrote the special counsel rules. The Washington Post …

See NYT: Barr’s Declaration on Trump Puts Justice Dept. Back in Political Crucible

The following Time update on the Attorney General William Barr’s handling of the FBI’s 3/22/2019 400 page plus addendums final report regarding its 22 months long Trump-Russia probe, with his 4 page summary substitute which has the appearance of a cover-up attempt.

Here is the rest of the story…

On March 29, 2019, Tessa Berenson of Time Magazine penned the following report, “New Letter from Attorney General William Barr Seeks to Reassure on Transparency of Mueller Report”

Excerpts:

“Attorney General William Barr sought to reassure Congress and the public that the Mueller report will be released, promising in a new letter that “everyone will soon be able to read it on their own.” The letter also answers crucial questions about the process but highlights new battle lines in the escalating fight over who gets to see Mueller’s work.”

“Barr’s letter comes as Democrats have become increasingly concerned that the attorney “I share your desire to ensure that Congress and the public have the opportunity to read the Special Counsel’s report,” Barr wrote in a letter addressed to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler. “Everyone will soon be able to read it on their own.”general wouldn’t make the full text of Mueller’s report available, after he released a brief, four-page summary of the findings less than one week ago. Barr’s March 29 missive expressly tries to alleviate some of those fears, but there is still wide latitude for large portions of the report to be hidden from Congress or the public.”

Barr’s letter revealed new details about the process of releasing the report (including revealing its length: nearly 400 pages, not including tables and appendices), but while some of Democrats’ concerns may have been allayed, they’re already gearing up for a new phase of the fight. The attorney general listed the four types of information he is working on redacting from the report: grand jury material, information that could compromise sensitive intelligence sources or methods, details related to ongoing investigations and “information that would unduly infringe on the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties.”

“Questions have lingered over what material to do with President Donald Trump that Barr might redact. The prevailing opinion in the Justice Department is that a sitting president can’t be indicted, and it’s typical department practice not to reveal information gathered about people who aren’t going to be charged. That could mean that Barr would scrub any information about Trump from the report. By citing “peripheral third parties,” Barr seems to imply that Trump won’t fall into that category. Still, depending on what Mueller’s report contains, it’s not clear how lengthy or significant the redacted sections will be.”

“Congress is already pushing to see the full report with no redactions. “Congress requires the full and complete Mueller report, without redactions, as well as access to the underlying evidence, by April 2,” Nadler said in a statement released shortly after the letter, establishing the push for access to redacted materials as the new front in the war.”

“If the Department fails to make the Mueller report public in its entirety and turn over the underlying evidence to Congress, it may be actively facilitating a cover-up,” said a Democratic House staffer.”

“Another key question about transparency has been whether the White House would get access to the report before Congress to make executive privilege claims. This, Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, tells TIME, is “where the ideological views of the Attorney General may have the greatest potential to threaten the transparency” of the report.”

“Many Democrats worried that Barr’s strong views of executive power would make him deferential to broad assertions of privilege by the White House. But in this new letter, Barr says explicitly that he doesn’t plan to go down that road at all. “Although the President would have the right to assert privilege over certain parts of the report,” Barr wrote, “he has stated publicly that he intends to defer to me and, accordingly, there are no plans to submit the report to the White House for a privilege review.”

Responding to that news, Trump said Friday, “I have great confidence in the Attorney General, if that’s what he’d like to do. I have nothing to hide.”

“That may be reassuring to Democrats, along with the fact that Barr could’ve sent another summary to Congress instead of the report itself. There was a change in regulations after independent counsel Ken Starr’s investigation into President Bill Clinton: When Starr submitted his final report in 1998, he had to send it to Congress as well as to the attorney general. But when the special counsel regulations were written the following year, the notification to Congress requirement was removed.”

“That means that Barr has almost sole authority over what information to share with Congress and the public, and he does not have to provide the report to lawmakers. Democrats had begun to ramp up pressure on Barr to send them the report itself rather than another summary. “We don’t need you interpreting for us,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, referencing his March 24 letter. “It was condescending, it was arrogant, and it wasn’t the right thing to do.”

“In his new letter, Barr chastises those “mischaracterizing” his previous letter. “My March 24 letter was not, and did not purport to be, an exhaustive recounting of the Special Counsel’s investigation or report… I do not believe it would be in the public’s interest for me to attempt to summarize the full report or to release it in serial or piecemeal fashion,” he wrote. Barr says he anticipates being able to release a redacted version of Mueller’s full report by mid-April.”

“Barr’s latest letter removes some of the crucial questions about points in the process where large chunks of Mueller’s report could have been scrubbed. If Barr plans to release the report itself—not a summary of it— and doesn’t plan to show it in the White House in advance, Congress and the American public should learn many new details about Mueller’s two-year-long investigation in a matter of weeks. And that won’t be the end of Barr’s input: he also said he would testify himself before both the House and Senate about the investigation. (Graham accepted his invitation to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 1.)”

New Letter from Attorney General William Barr Seeks to Reassure …
In-Depth–TIME–