{"id":794272,"date":"2019-03-28T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/opinion-knopf-trumps-misdeeds-are-obvious-mueller-report-or-no-mueller-report\/"},"modified":"2019-03-28T18:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-03-29T00:00:00","slug":"opinion-knopf-trumps-misdeeds-are-obvious-mueller-report-or-no-mueller-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/opinion-knopf-trumps-misdeeds-are-obvious-mueller-report-or-no-mueller-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Knopf: Trump\u2019s misdeeds are obvious, Mueller Report or no Mueller Report"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

As we await the public distribution of the Mueller Report, let\u2019s consider what we already know. Mueller concluded Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election. He indicted 34 Americans and 26 Russians. With the exception of Roger Stone, who is awaiting trial, all Americans have been found guilty or plead guilty. Mueller\u2019s investigative team is the most productive in history<\/a>, and completed its work more expeditiously than any other special prosecutor.<\/p>\n

Eighty percent of Americans want to see the report, but even without it we already know what happened.<\/p>\n

Never in the history of our country has a candidate for president asked a foreign hostile nation to dig up dirt on the opposing candidate. Trump did<\/a>. For the record, he said, \u201cRussia, if you\u2019re listening, I hope you\u2019re able to find (Hillary Clinton\u2019s) 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.\u201d The press will reward Russia? Or Trump will reward Russia?<\/p>\n

We know irrefutably that the Russians began attacking Hillary\u2019s server<\/a> the same day Trump submitted his request, not clandestinely, but at a rally, covered by cameras.<\/p>\n

We know in his first months in office, Trump held an unprecedented meeting, by himself, with two Russian officials, and passed classified information<\/a>, outing an Israeli spy.<\/p>\n

The payoff. Why was he not impeached? Politics.<\/p>\n

His base is angry, well-organized and proved to be more formidable at the ballot box than the majority of Americans who allowed him to be elected. Politics is no more than a popularity contest, and it\u2019s no more logical than a high school cheerleader election. Trump sold himself better than Hillary Clinton did. He engaged and mobilized voters. There was no way, at the nascence of his term, to get rid of him. Democrats didn\u2019t have the votes then, and they don\u2019t have them now.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t need the Mueller report. We don\u2019t need more indictments from the Southern District of New York, which believe me, are coming. We don\u2019t need a U.S. House of Representatives investigation, which I\u2019m sure is coming. We need the public to comprehend the trick played before their eyes and still playing on YouTube.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say you order a pizza, and it\u2019s delivered, and you pay for it. You didn\u2019t make the pizza. You probably never talked to the person who prepared the pizza. You talked to the order taker. So no direct connection between pizza prep and your door. But it\u2019s your pizza.<\/p>\n

The problem is everyone is looking for collusion, direct linkage. Trump publicly requested Russia\u2019s help to win the election. Russia took the order, and started hacking the same day. Russia filled the order. Trump paid for his order by handing the Russians classified, highly sensitive data. He revealed the identity of Israel\u2019s spy embedded in Syria.<\/p>\n

I think the confusion is conflating clandestine with espionage. We think of the two words as somewhat synonymous. Who would ever engage in espionage in plain sight and over a microphone? Trump did. The American people have to realize what they already know, and demand justice for themselves. Not just Democrats, the majority of Americans in both parties.<\/p>\n

Nancy Pelosi demonstrates her superior political savvy<\/a> when she says no to impeachment. \u201cImpeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there\u2019s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don\u2019t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country,\u201d she added. \u201cAnd he\u2019s just not worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem is the security issue isn\u2019t behind us, it continues, with Trump\u2019s ordering top secret clearance for his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who experts consider a security threat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His advocates say his security clearance process was handled through the usual channels. Yep, and his clearance was rejected. His family\u2019s real estate holdings are highly leveraged, and in the past Kushner sought funding from the Chinese and the Russians.<\/p>\n

When he was getting top secret briefings last year, it is believed he divulged information to Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Salman<\/a>, who said he had Kushner in his pocket.<\/p>\n

After their chats in Saudi Arabia, which were said to extend to 4 a.m., Prince MBS, as he is called, did some house cleaning. According to The Intercept, Saudi royal family members, who had been identified in President Trump\u2019s classified Daily Brief were arrested and at least one tortured.<\/p>\n

We got problems. But the first issue is helping our friends, neighbors and relatives, true MAGA supporters, see the truth. It\u2019s as plain as the noses on their faces.<\/p>\n

Republicans are taking victory laps. The President is claiming exoneration, when U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr said the opposite. The AG\u2019s four-page summary said the report does NOT exonerate the president. We must all be vigilant in our conversations, so POTUS, the creator of \u201cfake news,\u201d does not win this round. As Late Show host Stephen Colbert said, \u201c..not being indicted for betraying your country is a pretty low bar.\u201d<\/p>\n

See our digital edition for links to source material for this column. Susan Knopf is a local resident of Summit County, and weekly contributor to the Summit Daily News.<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we await the public distribution of the Mueller Report, let\u2019s consider what we already know. Mueller concluded Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election. He indicted 34 Americans and 26 Russians. With the exception of Roger Stone, who is awaiting trial, all Americans have been found guilty or plead guilty. Mueller\u2019s investigative team is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-794272","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 04:31:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}