You are way off here. Questioning whether liberals would have reacted the same had Obama or Clinton been president is not the same as talking about them or laying some sort of blame on them. It is simply recognizing that partisans want a different set of rules for their people vs. the other side. Same goes for conservatives, BTW.
The bigger question to me is, did Trump collude with the Russians? So far I have seen no evidence that it actually happened, and to me the apparent switch to trying to take him down for obstruction rather than collusion looks like it's partially driven by the fact that liberals no longer expect to find the evidence for collusion either. Could it be true that the whole collusion story was made up for the purpose of driving Trump from office? Is that the plan that Strzok was referring to in his texts? Based on the info I have seen so far, I don't think that's impossible.
Well, Mueller has run a pretty tight, non-leak, ship up to this point. Something he has a reputation for. Lately, everything does indeed point to obstruction of justice without any leaks suggesting an underlying crime. Except perhaps for Trump's consistent efforts to impede the Mueller probe. It's not the way an innocent man acts, IMHO, although it might be the way a guy like Trump acts if he just wants an investigation ended that is a huge distraction to his "greatness" as President. Those may be the only two credible reasons for his acting to obstruct the probe. Either he knows he's guilty of something and worried, or he wants a baseless distraction put to rest.
I have not finished it yet, but am well along in reading The Guardian's Luke Harding's recent book "Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and how Russia Helped Donald Trump Win". Can you guess the slant? Lol. Of course. It's basically based on examining the evidence in the Dossier, including interviews with Steele. And of course that Dossier is at the heart of the accusations in the GOP's Nunes Memo. As far as Steele is concerned, who was highly regarded by our own FBI, and whose intelligence expertise when he worked for British intelligence was Russia, and who cultivated many sources within Russia during his time stationed in Moscow, his Dossier is 70-90% accurate. In reading Harding's book, I'm just getting into Carter Page and his role as the link between the Trump campaign and individuals close to Putin. Now, Harding himself is an expert on Russia.
From the blurb on the back jacket: "Drawing on new material and his expert understanding of Moscow and its players, Harding takes the reader through every bizarre and disquieting detail of the "Trump-Russia" story-an event so huge it involves international espionage, off-shore banks, sketchy real estate deals, the Miss Universe pageant, mobsters, money laundering, poisoned dissidents, computer hacking, and the most shocking election in American history. The result is an explosive, thriller-like expose that lays out the Trump administration's ties to Moscow and Russia's decades-in-the-making political game to upend American democracy".
Of course, that blurb is designed to attract potential buyers of Harding's book, and of course it will appeal to people not part of Trump's base. That said, I keep in mind that Bannon said at one point that money laundering would be a key element in Mueller's probe, and, if one looks, and I'll let you do that research if you wish, one can find connections between the Russian mob and Trump in the area of money laundering that are disquieting. And, in Russia under Putin, Putin, Russian intelligence services, and the Russia mafia are all closely linked. They are all one to the degree that Russia is essentially a mafia state.
Bottom line. I don't believe Mueller is finished examining possible cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia where helping Trump get elected is concerned. Steele's Dossier makes the claim, based on Steele's Russian sources, that there was indeed "collusion" in that regard. Now the GOP is making every effort to discredit the Steele Dossier, but not everyone agrees that it is somehow completely worthless. On the contrary, Steele has a reputation as a pro's pro in intelligence work, who would be the last person to put info in his Dossier that he felt had absolutely no value.
But, Trump may just need enough political capital to get rid of Rosenstein and Mueller, and Trump can refuse to release the Democrat's own memo in reply to Nunes. Whether he does act to fire Mueller, and whether that initiates a Constitutional crisis remains to be seen.
