Tonight’s The Rachel Maddow Show may have been one of her most important shows ever because in it, Ms. Maddow explained why it is so important for the House Judiciary Committee to see the full Mueller Report, especially the findings of any Grand Juries that were part of the Muller Probe. Also, It looks like our own DailyKos writer durrati may indeed be correct in his DK article entitled, “Source With Knowledge of The Probe - “Mueller was making a case to Congress..."
There was a ton of useful information regarding the Robert Mueller investigation on tonight’s Rachel Maddow Show, including 15 questions about William Barr’s 4-page report, and two guests who provide insight into Mueller’s investigation. One can view the five short videos that comprise tonight’s show here. The videos are already up. The first 17 minutes of her show are, in my opinion, the most important. If you watch Ms. Maddow’s videos of tonight’s show, you probably will have little need to read my long diary post below. :)
Below is my diary based upon what I believed to be the key points from Ms. Maddow's show:
What Can Watergate Investigation Teach Us About The Mueller Report?
In tonight’s Rachel Maddow Show, Rachel first describes how back in the Nixon days, after the Watergate story broke, Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski was assigned to investigate the Watergate Scandal (after the firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox). Upon the conclusion of the investigation of the Special Prosecutor, Mr. Jaworksi wanted to make the testimony from the Grand Jury that was conducted during the Watergate Probe available to the House Judiciary Committee. Now, Grand Jury testimony is normally kept secret, so the Special Prosecutor's office received special permission from a federal judge to make the Grand Jury testimony available to the House Judiciary Committee.
The Special Prosecutor in the Watergate case did not make a decision one way or another on whether or not Nixon was guilty of obstruction of justice. Instead, the Special Prosecutor's office made a 62-page report which included Grand Jury testimony available to the House Judiciary Committee, and from this report, Congress began drawing up the paperwork necessary to launch the open session impeachment hearings that would go on for months and would ultimately lead to Nixon’s resignation.
How Can We Apply What We Know About the Watergate Investigation To The Mueller Report?
Now, here is something important to keep in mind. It is Department of Justice policy not to indict a sitting President. However, Congress can impeach a sitting President, and impeachment is essentially an indictment. I suspect that Robert Mueller believed he could not impeach Donald Trump according to current DOJ policy. So, what he did instead was he launched a massive investigation, and then he completed a report regarding that investigation. Then, as required by the rules of the DOJ, he passed his report on to AG Barr.
I believe Mueller's report, and perhaps specifically the Grand Jury testimony part of his report, may very well make the case against Donald Trump for impeachment. In the case of the Special Prosecutor for Watergate Leon Jaworski, he was able to provide the 62-page report, including Grand Jury testimony, directly to the House Judiciary Committee. Today, according to Rachel Maddow, based on his 4-page letter, William Barr is apparently intending not to provide Grand Jury testimony to the House Judiciary committee.
Ms. Maddow also pointed out that that the current U.S. Attorney General, William Barr, apparently wrote an unsolicited 19-page report that he provided to Donald Trump's office before he was selected as Attorney General, where he expressed the opinion that not only was it inappropriate for someone to investigate a President for obstruction of justice, but that the President cannot even be guilty of obstruction of justice. In other words, Barr was biased against a case of obstruction against Donald Trump before he was even selected as Attorney General.
Conclusion
So, allow me to put everything together now. On March 1, 1974, the Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski sent to the House Judiciary Committee a 62-page report which contained important findings from the Grand Jury that the Special Prosecutor had conducted. It was that 62- page report from the Watergate Special Prosecutor that caused the House Judiciary Committee to call for the Watergate open session hearings. The Watergate open session hearings ultimately helped determine the minds of the public and the minds of the Democrats and Republicans in Congress of both the need to impeach President Nixon and eventually of the need to convict President Nixon. The likely possibility of that eventual conviction ultimately led Nixon to resign before he could be either fully impeached or convicted. Now, according to what Rachel Maddow said in her show tonight, it appears as if AG William Barr intends to strip out any Grand Jury testimony from any Mueller report information that he sends to Congress.
To me, it seems obvious that one of the purposes of the appointment of William Barr to the Attorney General position by Donald Trump before the conclusion of the Mueller investigation was to allow William Barr to short circuit any possible impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump by stripping as much useful information as possible from any Report based on Robert Mueller's findings that is sent to Congress.
Because of the current DOJ policy, Donald Trump personally never had that much to worry about with regard to the DOJ indicting him in his current position. Instead, what Trump needed William Barr to do was 1) make sure that no sealed indictments would be created by Robert Mueller to be used against Donald Trump when he left office and 2) make sure that as little useful information as possible from the Robert Mueller's investigation makes it to Congress. This is because what Donald Trump ultimately has to fear is Congress getting ahold of information upon which it can build an impeachment case against him, or that can be used against him in some other way.
Even if the information from the Mueller Probe does not lead to enough of a case to impeach and convict Donald Trump, it may result in enough information being learned about Trump and his associates that the ultimate result will turn out to be Donald Trump not getting a second term. This is why, despite what Donald Trump says about wanting the Mueller Report to go to Congress, we can expect that 1) William Barr will try to strip out as much information as possible from any report that goes to Congress and 2) we can expect Barr, Trump, and Congressional Republicans to attempt to delay any and all useful information from getting to Congressional Democrats as long as possible.
At this point, Barr’s 4-page letter is apparently an attempt to distract both Congressional Democrats and the general public from what should be the real goal—getting as much information from the Mueller probe as possible to Congress as quickly as possible. Apparently, Robert Mueller's massive investigation created a whole lot of information for Congressional Democrats. Now, Congressional Democrats need to fight William Barr in order to get as much of that information as possible as soon as possible.