Benjamin Wittes: Careful reading of the dense document delivers some urgent insights

[iluvtennis]

Yoni Appelbaum@YAppelbaum, 4h
I’d been waiting to see what
@benjaminwittes
would make of the Mueller Report. This one’s worth every word:

Link to tweet

?s=20

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/ben-wittes-five-conclusions-mueller-report/588259/

[Big Blue Marble]

1. Thank you.

Everyone here needs to read this analysis. Not always a Wittes fan, but this is the
best writing on the Mueller report I have seen, alarming to say the least.

[yonder]

2. Thanks for this OP

This appears to be a very thorough analysis with these last two paragraphs being especially sobering:

So I worry about a counterintelligence gap. Mueller, the person with the independence to take this matter on, construed his role narrowly as a prosecutor and set up a one-way street for counterintelligence information to go back to the FBI. And the FBI, the entity with the mandate, has every incentive to play it cautious.

It would be the deepest of ironies if the Mueller investigation showed evidence that the president had committed crimes and had committed impeachable offenses, and if he had painted a remarkable historical portrait of the relationship between Trumpworld and the Russian government, but if at the same time, the core counterintelligence concerns that gave rise to it and that have haunted the Trump presidency from the beginning went unaddressed.

[voteearlyvoteoften]

3. Knr 🦉