Distinguishing herself in a crowded field of Democrats running for president, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, called Robert Mueller’s decision not to charge Donald Trump with colluding with Russia during the 2016 election “a good thing for our country.”

Gabbard, who lags in 2020 polls behind better-known rivals, said in a video posted to her Twitter account that “now that Mueller has reported that his investigation revealed no such collusion, we all need to put aside our partisan interests and recognize that finding that the president of the United States did not conspire with Russia to interfere with our elections is a good thing for our country.”

While a chorus of Republicans, based on Attorney General William Barr’s four-page summary of Mueller’s report, are treating the matter as closed, other Democrats aren’t ready to move on.

“I'm very concerned because I think what the Attorney General did is undermine the purpose of the special counsel's job by summarizing this report and putting his imprimatur on it, he is taking away the benefit of having someone who's non-partisan, not appointed by the president actually making the decision about whether crimes may have been committed,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said Thursday on MSNBC.

To date, only Barr’s team at the Justice Department have actually read Mueller’s report as the attorney general decides what portions, if any, of the nearly 400-page document he will keep from public view.

Like her rivals, Gabbard said she would like the public to see special counsel’s findings.

“The American people need to be able to see Mueller’s report,” Gabbard said in the video, but she emphasized that “we should all be relieved” Mueller did not recommend charging Trump with a criminal offense.

Explaining her rationale, Gabbard said that “if the president had been indicted for conspiring with Russia to interfere with and affect the outcome of our elections, it would have precipitated a terrible crisis that could have led to civil war.”

Gabbard then called on lawmakers to unite and pass her own legislation that seeks to secure U.S. elections by mandating paper ballots “that would make it impossible for Russia or any other country or rogue actor to come in and manipulate or change the results of our elections.”

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, using cyberattacks and other means to try to help elect Trump.

A Quinnipiac poll of Democrats likely to seek the 2020 presidential nomination found Gabbard was the choice of less than 1% of voters surveyed.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tulsi-gabbard-calls-mueller-findings-a-good-thing-in-break-from-dem-candidates-203318063.html

Infowars owner and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claimed a "form of psychosis" made him question whether certain events, including the Sandy Hook massacre, were staged.

Jones, who previously suggested the 2012 elementary school shooting was a “hoax,” acknowledged this week that the elementary school shooting was real during a sworn deposition released this week.

The deposition was recorded and posted online by the Texas law firm representing some of the Sandy Hook families, Kaster Lynch Farrar & Ball, LLP.

"I, myself, have almost had like a form of psychosis back in the past where I basically thought everything was staged, even though I've now learned a lot of times things aren't staged," Jones said in the deposition. "So I think as a pundit, someone giving an opinion, that, you know, my opinions have been wrong, but they were never wrong consciously to hurt people."

Jones blamed the "trauma of the media and the corporations lying so much" for causing him to distrust everything.

“Kind of like a child whose parents lie to them over and over again,” he said.

"So long before these lawsuits I said that in the past I thought everything was a conspiracy and I would kind of get into that mass group think of the communities that were out saying that," Jones said in the deposition. "And so now I see that it's more in the middle… so that's where I stand."

Twenty children and six adults were killed in the shooting in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012.

Jones has repeatedly suggested the shooting wasn’t real on InfoWars.com and on his three-hour radio program, which he previously claimed was carried on more than 160 stations, according to CNN.

He currently faces multiple lawsuits from the families of students and teachers killed in the shooting.

Two lawsuits were filed in April 2018 by three parents whose children were killed. The lawsuits each sought at last $1 million in damages for "a severe degree of mental stress and anguish" and "high degree of psychological pain" that the families say they suffered as a result of Jones’s statements.

"We've clearly got people where it's actors playing different parts of different people," one lawsuit quotes Jones as saying in March 2014. "I've looked at it and undoubtedly there's a cover-up, there's actors, they're manipulating, they've been caught lying and they were pre-planning before it and rolled out with it."

Jones later claimed on his website that his comments were taken “all out of context” and that it wasn't "even what I said or my intent."

Weeks later, Jones was sued again by the families of six victims and and FBI agent who responded to the shooting.

"Defendants' defamatory publications were designed to harm the Plaintiffs' reputation and subject the Plaintiffs to public contempt, disgrace, ridicule, or attack," the lawsuits obtained by CNN allege. "Defendants acted with actual malice. Defendants' defamatory statements were knowingly false or made with reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of the statements at the time the statements were made."

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/436559-alex-jones-claims-psychosis-made-him-question-sandy-hook