History

On Wednesday, May 29, Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivered a statement about the Russia investigation. The statement, as prepared for delivery, is available below.

By Robert Mueller / May 29, 2019

Two years ago, the Acting Attorney General asked me to serve as Special Counsel, and he created the Special Counsel’s Office.

The appointment order directed the office to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. This included investigating any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.

I have not spoken publicly during our investigation. I am speaking today because our investigation is complete. … beyond these few remarks, it is important that the office’s written work speak for itself.

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By Tom Jackman / Washington Post / January 25, 2019

Joined by relatives of Robert F. Kennedy, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, a group of more than 60 authors and investigators have called for a new congressional investigation into the assassinations of the three men and President John F. Kennedy, saying that the four slayings were not resolved and “had a disastrous impact on the course of American history.”

In a public statement, they demanded a public tribunal modeled on South Africa’s “Truth and Reconciliation” process to persuade either Congress or the Justice Department to revisit all four assassinations.

Almost daily and nightly we hear comparisons of the abuse of power by president Trump to those by former president Richard Nixon back in the mid-1970s. And at times like these – immediately after Trump’s firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his appointment of a Trump loyalist and critic of the Mueller investigation to now be the acting-attorney general – we hear comparisons to the “Saturday Night Massacre” which led eventually to Nixon’s resignation

Okay, then, just what was the “Saturday Night Massacre”?

It was Saturday, October 20, 1973, and the nation was deep in the grip of the Watergate scandal and the investigation into Nixon’s abuses of power.

Editordude: In honor of St Patrick’s Day, we publish the following piece just sent to us by Michael Steinberg, who went to Ireland a number of times during the 1980s. Happy Paddy’s Day!

By Michael Steinberg

In 1983, I was among a contingent of 82 Americans, including 7 San Diegans, who went on a fact finding tour of Northern Ireland.

What we found there was a vicious colonialism that rules through murder, lies and a concerted attempt at total social control. And a native people who exist under this everyday terror and resist it with extraordinary courage and grace.

I arrive a few days before the tour begins to explore the southern Republic a bit. I first visit the city of Limerick at the mouth of the River Shannon on the west coast. It was from here that my great-grandfather Cornelius Donahue emigrated sometime in the mid 19th century.

[Editor: Here are sites for San Diego’s Christmas Tree Re-cycling Program.]

In William Carlos Williams’s famous poem “Burning the Christmas Greens” he notes how at “the thick of the dark moment” in “winter’s midnight” we turn to the trees because “green is a solace” that we use to “fill our need.” Thus the “living green” along with “paper Christmas bells covered with tinfoil and fastened by red ribbons” seem “gentle and good to us.”

But then when their time is past we feel the relief as we clear our rooms and assign the greens to the fireplace and “in the jagged flames green to red, instant and alive.” And we stand “breathless to be witnesses as if we stood ourselves refreshed among the shining fauna of that fire.”