First Thoughts on the Mueller Report

I find it significant that there are, by my count, 10 redactions in the Report's Table of Contents alone.  (Haven't counted those in the body of the document yet.)  Most of the items blacked out were categorized as HOM, or Harmful to Ongoing Matters.  In other words, even knowing, via the Table of Contents, more specifically what these items were might be harmful to ongoing investigations.

Working our way through the Table, from beginning to end, we find redactions associated with:

• The Trump Campaign and the Dissemination of Hacked Materials - two such items in this category
• Russian Hacking and Dumping Operations - two more such items in this group
• WikiLeaks - four redactions here
• Application of Evidence to Certain Individuals - two final HOMs

That's just the Table of Contents.  But the bombshells aren't far behind.  In the first two  paragraphs of page 9, the legal basis for the Mueller investigation and Report, as well as the initial conclusions of those, are stated quite clearly.  The Russians tried to bollix up the 2016 Presidential election.

To quote the Report:

The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.  Evidence of Russian government operations began to surface in mid-2016.   ...   a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Only page 9, and it already sounds dire for the Trump campaign.

Next post - a discussin, from the Report, of the much-bandied-about word collusion.