Talk:Mueller report/Archive 4

Lead change
I would prefer that the last sentence of paragraph one of the lead remain intact so that readers can see what the report concluded right up top, without having to wade through the details.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mueller_Report&diff=971562105&oldid=971488435

soibangla (talk) 22:31, 6 August 2020 (UTC) I have no issue. Just seems that adding that negates the entire lead as the lead explains the conclusions, reasoning, and details of the report and conclusion of. I am not sure if there is a WP precedence but whatever is more uniform and standard, let's go with that. - Aviartm (talk) 22:34, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

There is a difference between "was insufficient evidence" (above) and "found insufficient evidence" (below): "But its flaws have taken on outsized political significance, as Mr. Trump's allies have sought to conflate it with the larger effort to understand Russia's covert efforts to tilt the 2016 election in his favor and whether any Trump campaign associates conspired in that effort. Mr. Mueller laid out extensive details about Russia's covert operation and contacts with Trump campaign associates, but found insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy charges."

I prefer the latter as it is more accurate. The first is rather final and thus misleading. One cannot truly say that there "was (not)" with something like this. Only God can say that. There are many indications that there is more evidence that was not "found" because of Trump's extensive and successful obstruction. Without that evidence being uncovered and examined, we cannot know for certain whether or not there was verbal or written evidence of a conspiracy. I doubt it, as these types of things are rarely spoken or written. There is just a shared understanding that leaves no concrete evidence. Plausible deniability is a game Trump plays well, taught to him by his personal attorney, mafia lawyer Roy Cohn. Mueller's investigation was ineffective and he blew it, as detailed in Jeffrey Toobin's new book True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump. He could have forced Trump to testify and used subpoenas, but he didn't when he should have. -- Valjean (talk) 01:14, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 6 August 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved. —usernamekiran (talk) 20:08, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Mueller Report → Mueller report – The name "Mueller Report" is not the official title of the report, but merely a shorthand name for it. As such, it is not a proper noun, and the word "report" should not be capitalized per WP:CAPITALIZATION. This lowercase name is common in reliable sources; e.g. New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, PBS, BBC, ABC News, NBC News, Fox News, Washington Examiner, Time, Wall Street Journal (Time and the Wall Street Journal capitalize it in the headline, but they use lowercase in the article body). Iago Qnsi (User talk:IagoQnsi) 12:35, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There are 21~ instances of "Report" capitalized in the title of various pages on Wikipedia, per Reports of the United States government alone, stylized in the same fashion as this article. If this kind of consistency is here, keep it. Aviartm (talk) 22:27, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Support per MOS:CAPS; not a proper name, as news shows (see uses in sentences, not in headlines).  If there are more with the same problem, I'm happy to help fix them. Dicklyon (talk) 02:51, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Support Agreed Oldag07 (talk) 17:36, 8 August 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Formulation in the Article
There is following sentence: "the investigation did not find sufficient evidence that the campaign "coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities"" with a reference to the page 180 of the Report, where the information about contacts between Trump campaign and Russians. On the other hand there is following text on the page 173 of the Report: "Ultimately, the investigation did not establish that the Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities." On my opinion text in article is not really correct and should be rather "no evidence" instead of "did not find sufficient evidence".--Divega (talk) 13:54, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
 * "Did not find" is more accurate, as the Report also details much obstruction, destruction of evidence, refusals to testify, and other actions which prevented discovery of any possible evidence. If Trump had allowed a proper investigation and cooperated, there would be no doubt about the outcome, but his obstruction leaves a cloud over this forever. Jimmy Carter was not in doubt about what he saw as the results of a proper investigation: Jimmy Carter just called Trump an illegitimate president who was elected only because of Russian interference.
 * The article makes it clear, besides the quotes you mention, that the Report concluded that there was no "conspiracy" or "coordination", but the report did provide a mountain of evidence for massive co-operation, otherwise known as "collusion", between the Trump campaign and Russians, which they hid and lied about.
 * BTW, "did not find sufficient evidence" and "did not establish" are essentially synonymous and open-ended. They do not close the door to possible "conspiracy". They just could not prove it under the less-than-ideal conditions of a compromised investigation. -- Valjean (talk) 01:50, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Isn't it odd to use Jimmy Carter's opinion as facts? Who is Jimmy Carter? The investigator of the case? A whistle-blower? A White House employee with access to classified intel or documents? No, he is a 94 year old former President and political opponent of the Trump administration. Why do you use it as facts? What purpose does this serve in providing plainly the truth to the reader? The purpose of this introduction is to deflect from the reality of Trump being falsely accused by the Democrats of rigging the elections. If the names in the article where reversed with Hilary, this would be read as "The Mueller Report, officially titled ... etc ..., is a conspiracy theory against the Hillary administration".
 * This is the definition of conspiracy against Trump. Nobody of the accusers had any information about any "hacking", phone-calls, or any other evidence against Trump and fabricated everything. On a final note, the firing of the James Comey has nothing to do with blocking or placing obstacles in any ongoing investigation inside FBI, because that's not how any public organization work and if you want more info on this, check how many investigations stopped with the firing of Comey, that's 0, because that's not the job of the director of the FBI. The president of the U.S. have every right to fire anyone for ANY reason under his command. The firing of Comey shouldn't be included in the article to begin with, because it proves nothing, it is a point that Trump's political opponents disagree with, but proves nothing. You can twist it around however you want, fact is that there is NO evidence, nor any intent shown. If there was any evidence (as "not enough" implies, then Trump would've been liable for other crimes and charged for them. The U.S. system is built in such way that any state or federal prosecutor could, can and is able to prosecute even the President at ANY time for ANY crime he has committed, which simply was never done, even by traditional blue states.
 * The Russian, Chinese and sometimes Ukrainian intervention in the 2016 elections are conspiracy theories from the Democrats that were planned before Trump was even elected. I am not telling you or anyone else who is overseeing the changes in this page to change the subject and content of this page according to your _conspiracy theories_ rhetoric, but this is what it SHOULD be written from the top to bottom of this article. Citing opinions instead of facts is what brought wikipedia in its current state, a political echo chamber. Not enough means anything from 0 to N-1 out of N and is used here blatantly for damage control in favor of the accusers, while fact evidence on the cases are non existent. Tsoliassssssssss 2A02:587:A827:6300:D250:99FF:FE09:1BE5 (talk) 00:03, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not a native speaker, so for me sounds they a bit different, like the first one "there is a bit of something we found", but the second "no connection at all". Stays the second part of my question: there is some reference to the Report, that has not much to do with the sentence. Shouldn't be the exact citation also referenced, like the one, that already there, something like: "Mueller Report, vol. I, p. 173: "Ultimately, the investigation ..."?--Divega (talk) 05:32, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's possible to make a reference very exact, right down to the page number. With books that can be practical, but with exact quotes from most online sources it's easy to search the whole article, so precision isn't necessary. -- Valjean (talk) 03:38, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I didn't understood this part. So if the book exists as PDF and a paper version -- no need to give an exact page? Or is there some difference between format of book and this report? And about precision -- in this article almost everything with page numbers, so it will be just like all other references. --Divega (talk) 05:40, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Obviously, almost nobody will buy this report from Amazon. Even though you can buy it there. 91.76.22.132 (talk) 09:23, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
 * It is not an answer on my question. Why pages in pdf-file are not needed? Any such file is not a plain text, but divided in pages.--Divega (talk) 12:05, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Non-sensical sentence
Section 10, “Conspiracy or coordination”, paragraph 2 ends with “The New York Times estimated as many as 140 contacts between "Mr. Trump and his associates and Russian nationals and WikiLeaks or their intermediaries" in the report.”. The structure of this sentence is “A estimated X contacts between ‘B and C and D’ in the report.”

This could be read as “In the report, A estimated that X contacts occurred” or as “A estimated that X contacts occurred in the report”. The latter is silly: certainly no contacts occurred in the report, they occurred in the real world; and apparently only 100 of them are even described in the report. But the former is not (as far as I know) plausible: the NYT did not contribute to the report.

On quick glance, the cited editorial seems to indicate the NYT has found and doucmented 140 contacts. Thus I suspect the sentence is intended to assert that, whereas Mueller only reports 100 instances of contact, the NYT found 140. But I am not sufficiently confident in this interpretation to change the article itself. (In part because I have not read the editorial, I have to admit.) It might be that the intended end of the sentence was “in an editorial”, which would be much better, but not entirely correct. (The editorial reported that the NYT had documented 140 contacts, but the report listing those contacts is elsewhere.)

Sbauman (talk) 01:03, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Did not that happen after the other report "SSCI on russian interference", volume 5, was released? 109.252.94.59 (talk) 17:18, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

First statement of the "conspiracy and cooperation" section
Currently, this section's first statement is that Trump associates had 170 contacts with Russian officials, and the says that there was no evidence for an illegal conspiracy. I believe this gives WP:UNDUE weight to the discussion on contacts in the section about the findings on conspiracy. Therefore, the statement of the findings of the report should come before the contacts number, which should probably just be introduced in the second paragraph, that discusses contacts more closely. Mottezen (talk) 20:55, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I take strong exception to what you're doing here. Prior to you coming to this article to make changes, the content had been longstanding, and was only recently tweaked in response to the changes you made without consensus, and now you have escalated to a full edit war. Simply because I have been online since you opened this topic 20 hours prior but have not yet responded does not mean that I or any other editor have acquiesced to your changes. You need to demonstrate a modicum of patience and consideration for other editors who aren't necessarily on your timetable Your approach is inappropriate and you should self-revert so we can further discuss this in a reasonable way, though your actions lessen our ability to proceed on such terms. soibangla (talk) 00:52, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Moreover, you also reverted this, again by saying simply "see talk." Well, I did see talk, and there is currently a 2-1 consensus against your change. soibangla (talk) 01:12, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with Mottezen's changes so far. I have yet to see an actual argument against the changes. Do you two have one or just blind reverts at this point? PackMecEng (talk) 01:16, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Well color me shocked that you would side against me on anything. soibangla (talk) 01:20, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It's not every time! PackMecEng (talk) 01:24, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Look, consensus is not a !vote. Wikipedia is not a battlefield. I have a lot of patience. Can we please discuss the matter at hand? Mottezen (talk) 02:55, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Revert of my edits
In this diff, you reverted the contested section discussed above as well as all the changes I made to this section in the past few days, including:


 * moving a paragraph on the impediments to the investigation to the "proceeding of investigation" section,
 * removing two reactions from blog posts, and
 * clarifying, condensing and removing duplicate text from the "Obstruction of justice" section.

Can you please explain what you find objectionable in these latter edits? Mottezen (talk) 03:11, 21 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I can't speak for them, but going over your changes myself:
 * This and this change misrepresents the source, which states (in its first two paragraphs) Donald J. Trump and 18 of his associates had at least 140 contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries, during the 2016 campaign and presidential transition, according to a New York Times analysis. The report of Robert S. Mueller III, released to the public on Thursday, revealed at least 30 more contacts beyond those previously known. However, the special counsel said, “the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges.” The end result of your changes were to break that up in a potentially misleading manner, presenting the final sentence without the vital context of the preceding text. I would strenuously oppose any version of the article that presents those two points separately when the Times presents them together as a single summary (and leads with the contacts.)
 * The paragraph beginning with The Report cited several impediments to investigators' ability to acquire information... is largely cited to sources that discuss it in the context of the report's conclusion (and as a way to provide context for that conclusion), so it seems most appropriate to discuss it there, using it in a similar manner.
 * Benjamin Wittes is a subject-matter expert and I don't agree with removing him. Previous RSN discussions have found Lawfare to be a reliable source in similar contexts - legal proceedings are complex, and it makes sense to cite a subject-matter expert to decipher them.
 * The statement that Trump, Barr, Rudy Giuliani and others have persistently and incorrectly maintained that an individual cannot obstruct justice unless the individual committed an underlying crime establishes why the rest of the paragraph matters, and by my reading the sources directly connect it to the topic of the rest of the paragraph it was originally situated in, ie. it doesn't make sense to break it up and move it elsewhere.
 * The conclusion of On obstruction of justice, the report "does not conclude that the President committed a crime, [and] it also does not exonerate him". Since the special counsel's office had decided "not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment", they "did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President's conduct". The report "does not conclude that the president committed a crime" seems worth using a quote for due to the importance of precise legal language; I don't agree that it's redundant, since this is a central point to the entire article (ie. we have to be extremely careful to never get it wrong, which is a risk if we only cite part of their conclusions.)
 * The remaining edits were more minor and debatable, but I'm not seeing them as a clear improvement. --Aquillion (talk) 04:21, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Good summary. SPECIFICO talk 06:24, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

U.S. has new intel that Manafort friend Kilimnik gave Trump campaign data to Russia
There are some news about the Mueller investigations: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/u-s-has-new-intel-manafort-friend-kilimnik-gave-trump-n1264371 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThfWCc_Sxe0 ("Trump Collusion Exposed In 2021: Mueller Vet On Revealed Kremlin Link | The Beat With Ari Melber").--Einar Moses Wohltun (talk) 18:19, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Judge criticizes Barr as 'Not Worthy of Credence' and making ‘Disingenuous’ Claims
The cover-up exposed: Valjean (talk) 22:49, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 * 'Not Worthy of Credence': Ordering Release of Mueller Report Memo, Judge Blasts Trump DOJ for ‘Disingenuous’ Claims
 * Judge orders release of DOJ memo justifying not prosecuting Trump
 * Judge orders release of Trump obstruction memo, accuses Barr of being 'disingenuous'

RfC of interest
There is an RfC related to Seth Rich and the Russian hacking at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Julian_Assange#RFC,_how_should_we_word_the_material_about_Assange_and_rich? the Julian Assange talk page]. Participation invited. SPECIFICO talk 18:18, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Subtle edit that changes the meaning
Aias1996 edited the first section on 22:40, 19 February 2022‎, and replaced "unsufficient evidence" by "no evidence"

The complete sentence at page 173 in the report is: "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.",

while, on the introductory page 5 of the report, it is clearly written: "A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts."

So, I am editing the page to use the "establish" verb.

I wonder whether this page should be moderated if it is not already. Edit: ok, I didn't see the "controversial" banner. That's fine by me.

Lagaffe (talk) 09:32, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Bias
Funny how this article is quick to quote left-wing - and quite radical left-wing - media commentary to dispute remarks by e.g. Barr without offering any support to his remarks from other sources. Where’s the balance, Wikipedia? 2A00:23C7:3D0B:F201:48C:7538:42B7:8E75 (talk) 10:18, 12 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Like what "support"? – Muboshgu (talk) 17:56, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Funny how a sober and balanced representation of facts, supported by reliable sources, is perceived as "radical left-wing" by some. I guess it's a case of belief perseverance. HandsomeFella (talk) 18:44, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

"A president" vs. "the president"
Currently, the introduction to this entry paraphrases Mueller's response to Rep. Ken Buck, in his testimony before congress, as indicating that "a president" could be charged with obstruction after leaving office. It's cited source is secondary article that makes same paraphrase.

If you review the full transcript, Rep. Buck only ever asks Mueller if he/his office could charge "the president" with a crime/obstruction. The use of the indefinite article in this sentence mischaracterizes the statement as one of abstract legal procedure rather than one of concrete possibility for the the sitting president in question.

Directly from the transcript:

BUCK

"OK, but the -- could you charge the president with a crime after he left office?"

MUELLER

Yes.

BUCK

You believe that he committed -- you could charge the president of the United States with obstruction of justice after he left office.

MUELLER

Yes.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/full-transcript-robert-mueller-house-committee-testimony-n1033216 2601:18D:4900:AB40:0:0:0:39C3 (talk) 22:43, 22 August 2022 (UTC)