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Why Buying Performing Loans Are a License to Print Money

Do you want to know how to make 6 figures on a deal with no money down and pay retail when you do it?

This question will be answered in today’s episode of Noteschool with Eddie Speed, Brian Lauchner, and Joe Varnadore. In addition, they have a special guest named Seth Choate to further give his thoughts on today’s topic.

Seth is a student of Noteschool, a highly recognized training company, specialized in the teaching of buying both performing and non-performing discounted mortgage notes that were founded by Eddie Speed.

Seth is a high-volume real estate investor that focuses his business on wholesale. About a year and a half ago, he decided to join Noteschool, realizing that this is the next step in the growth of his business. He is not only making money now but money overtime as well.

To learn more on how to be successful in the notes business watch this video to pick up some inputs with Seth and Eddie.

Landlords are burning out. Tenants are behind on rent payments. Toilets are backing up.

Uncover Why Savvy Investors Use Proven Mortgage Note Strategies for Massive Monthly Profits In Today’s Ever-Changing Market… Risk-Free!

Discover more about Note School and profiting without Tenants, Toilets and by taking our FREE one day class: https://new.noteschool.com/TV

Latest Class Information: https://noteschool.com/3-day-classes/pop/

Download a Brand-New eBook by Eddie Speed It’s A Whole New Ball Game With Creative Financing https://lp.noteschooltraining.com/moneyball-getstarted

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#NoteSchool #EddieSpeed #RealEstate #MortgageNotes -------------------------------------------------- Brian Lauchner (00:02): Do you want to know how to make six figures on a deal with no money down and pay retail when you do it, stick around here on NoteSchool TV as we dig into that today.

Brian Lauchner (00:25): We're back NoteSchool TV, every single Wednesday, make sure that you are joining us. We've got some of the greatest content, we've got some really cool people joining us today, but here's the first thing I want to ask. If this is good content for you, if this is relevant content for you, you're liking what we're doing, man. Please like these videos share them with your friends. But more importantly, subscribe to this channel so that you are able to consistently get this coming through your feed, right? And make sure you're clicking that notification bell so that when we do go live, like we are right now, you're getting notified you can jump on and you can start to communicate with us, bring your thoughts, bring your questions, bring your virtual high fives, so to speak, and we'll go from there.

Brian Lauchner (01:09): If you are new to kind of our channel or new to what we're talking about. And you just want to learn a little bit more about what is NoteSchool? What is this thing? and what are Notes? You can go to www.NoteSchool.com/Tv, and you can learn a little bit more about what NoteSchool is and kind of what we're teaching and to see if it's something you need to be adding into your business and really considering. Today we have some really cool stuff. We have a very special guest on actually we got a full house today. And so I'm going to bring on some people that I think are going to be pretty, pretty fascinating for you and including one of our students. And so Joe Varnadore with us today, somewhere out there in the virtual world. Joe, you want to pop on and we have Eddie Speed as well. So we got some pretty serious veterans with us. And then you'll see this handsome man up in the corner. The bearded wonder Seth Choate. He is a NoteSchool student, and we're going to dig into a deal that just a NoteSchool student did that you could be replicating in your business. And so, Joe, why don't you I'll kind of hand it over to you for a second you kind of kick us off.

Joe Varnadore (02:15): Sounds good. So I like the way it's got it arranged that old guy, young guy, young guy, old guy there. Right? So Hey everybody, thanks for being here today with us on NoteSchool TV. And we do, we have a very special guest, one of our students from California, Mr.Seth Choate, and Seth is a he's a high volume real estate investor, right? That focused his business for many years on the wholesale part of the business. And about a year and a half ago he decided that NoteSchool was the next step in the growth of his business and his wealth building capabilities. So he joined us and it has been nothing but just taking it straight up and not only making money now, but money over time and your money tomorrow. So Seth, how are you today?

Seth Choate (03:10): Doing great, Joe, doing great. Thanks for having me. How are you doing?

Joe Varnadore (03:13): I'm doing very well. Hey Eddie.

Eddie Speed (03:15): Hey, Hey how's about you guys?

Joe Varnadore (03:18): We are wonderful. So Seth, so a little bit about, you know, your background there, you know, you were for many years just you know, you did wholesale deals, right?

Seth Choate (03:31): Yeah. That was the primary focus was just buy low sell high to investors. And we built a pretty successful business doing that. We still do that today about a year and a half ago when we ran into you guys and found the opportunity, we decided to add Creative Finance and Notes to our business and buying on terms.

Joe Varnadore (03:55): Well, and that just made sense because what you were really focused on, I mean, you're getting older now, right? So you decided building wealth along with making an income today, but then building wealth into the future and your business was changing as well, right? You have a lot of leads. You have maybe 20 leads come in and you're popping one of those or two of those, but you're leaving 18 or 19 of those behind. And that was one of the challenges you were facing, right?

Seth Choate (04:25): That's exactly right. I mean we, one of the frustrations that I had was we had a very successful business, but we're still striking out 95% of the time. And it's, I'm sitting there going, how can we make money on these leads? These are opportunities. These are sellers who have raised their hands wanting to sell. We've got to improve our skill set to want to help them get out of the deal and then make more opportunities for us. So that's the main reason.

Joe Varnadore (04:55): Right? So Seth, let's talk about the deal there, Eddie, any objection you want to make? Just jump right in of course. So Seth, you found a deal there and it was in Modesto, correct?

Seth Choate (05:07): Close to Modesto they're form Oakdale

Joe Varnadore (05:09): Oakdale. Very good. Well, I was going to get it right eventually. Right? So you found the deal there and it was one that you had marketed too and this one was one you really needed to do. And you realize you can do it as a creative finance deal. So you paid, you negotiated with the seller and you paid $265,000 for this place, right?

Seth Choate (05:32): Yes. And you know, this was a long several conversations with this seller. We had talked for a long amount of time, and initially we went at her with the cash offer, but I was about 180,000 is where I was. So we were way off, but there was motivation, she wanted to sell and so over time we came back to the table and the purchase price was 265, but there's a lot of layers to this with the terms and everything that make it attractive.

Joe Varnadore (06:05): Right. Well, and you were right cause you were able to pay her. And the reason you were able to pay her more than the 180 that you would have paid as a wholesale deal is because you were going to pay her equity over time. Right?

Seth Choate (06:17): Correct. There's no way we could have done this from a cash standpoint at 260 that's full market pretty much.

Joe Varnadore (06:23): Right.

Brian Lauchner (06:24): So this is something that I think I see a lot of in the marketplace is obviously the seller is either stuck on price cause they need that price or they just want that price, right? Like they're up here and this is that retail range. Right. And you know that there's not much you can do with that as a wholesaler. And we're as a wholesaler, we're down here because we have to have the margin in the deal. And so I think this is something that everybody can relate to if you're talking to sellers because you're not going to close every single deal. And what you do with all these leads, like Seth was saying, he's spending hard earned money on leads, getting them, and then basically putting them in his trash can.

Seth Choate (07:01): That's exactly right. And you know, you get these folks that their neighbor told them it's worth this, or they saw it on Zillow or something. So they're just stuck on that number. And, but you can hear the motivation and you hear their whine, you understand these things. So there's, as you start to understand, all right, I'll give you this price, but you've got to cut it up a few different ways on the terms. You can make it work where you give them their number and make them happy and give them what they want. But there's some advantages for you along the way and on the backend.

Brian Lauchner (07:33): So Joe, why don't you walk us through here then the kind of the points of this deal, because one of the most powerful statements I've ever heard Eddie say, and I might've even said it on this show is it's not about the price you pay. It's when you pay the price. And so with Seth paying this higher price, walk us through some of the deal points so we can kind of start to better understand.

Joe Varnadore (07:52): Yeah. So Seth, you got it for 265. That was her number. And she was stuck on that number. And she was also stuck on, she wanted $1,500 a month as far as a payment, right? She was okay with seller financing, she was okay with you paying it over time, but she wanted the 265 and she wanted the 1500. And basically, you know, we talked about this on a deal lab and figured out, you know, Hey, I can you can do exactly that, right?

Seth Choate (08:23): Yeah. That's. So actually we came, those were her initial terms. And I was fighting back with her for weeks wanting 1300 and 3%.

Joe Varnadore (08:35): Right,

Seth Choate (08:35): And I'm just fight and fight and I'm like, I didn't want to pay 1500. And then I brought it onto the call with you guys. And you're like, Seth, give her 1500 go principal only. And I'm like, bingo went off in my head and so she was just stuck on payment. And so instead of 1300, 3%, we went 1500, 0%. And I think saved about 200 grand.

Joe Varnadore (08:57): Yes, you did then interests.

Eddie Speed (09:00): That's a great point, Seth. And we see that a lot, right? We know that you're when you buy, you know, you're going to resell it and sell it on a wraparound mortgage. And you're going to collect a bigger payment from who's paying you than the payment you're making, right? So you were worried about cashflow and the seller was worried about cashflow, but here's what we've seen over and over and over. They give up everything if they get the one little thing they want, she gave up her interest. If she could just get $200 more a monthly payment, ain't that great?

Seth Choate (09:36): Yes. And one of the things after we signed all this and got all this done, she's older, she goes, Seth, I'm not gonna, I don't care about the back half of this, she was cause I needed 1500 a month now. And then a light bulb went off in my head. The interest was irrelevant to her. It was what she needed for the next five, six, seven years of her life that were important.

Joe Varnadore (09:58): Right. And you know, that's the way it often is. And Seth, you know, we call that the talk off, right? I mean you said it right? You talked to her over several conversations it wasn't, well, I can't, you know, you won't sell it to me for 180 well, it's pivot, right? That's you know, one of the buzz word for 2020, right? So you pivoted and you bought it. And then once you had that, she got what she wanted. Then you used you know, you used basically Facebook marketplace and said, Hey, private loan available to a well qualified buyer with a large down payment. And you found your buyer, right?

Seth Choate (10:34): Yep. We ended up selling this place for 295 and got a 25,000 down,

Joe Varnadore (10:42): Right.

Seth Choate (10:42): As a down payment and believe it's 2100 a month, we're netting about 7,200 a year right now.

Joe Varnadore (10:48): Right. So Seth, let's talk about that a second. So she was she didn't care about the down payment. She cared about the 1500 a month, so you sell it for 295.

Seth Choate (10:58): Yep.

Joe Varnadore (10:58): You have $25,000 down. So you had $25,000 in today money, right?

Seth Choate (11:05): Yep.

Joe Varnadore (11:05): And then you had a cashflow of about $600 a month for 15 years.

Seth Choate (11:13): Yes,

Eddie Speed (11:13): Right? So that's $7,200 a year. And then at the end of 15 years you know, you did it with you set your terms up when you bought it at a 15 years, it had to all pay off at the end of 15 years. And actually the loan paid off in less, about 13 years your underlying loan, but then you, at the end of 15 years you then receive a lump sum of cash because your buyer's loan ballooned, it all came due and you made another $211,000.

Seth Choate (11:50): Yup. It's awesome. I'm very excited for that.

Joe Varnadore (11:58): You know, that I do, it's 25 today, $600 a month for 15 years. And boom, I get 211,000, right?

Seth Choate (12:05): Yeah.

Brian Lauchner (12:06): All on a deal that you paid retail for.

Seth Choate (12:08): Full market.

Eddie Speed (12:09): You would have offered 80,000 less on a wholesale deal and you would have probably made a $25,000 flip.

Seth Choate (12:19): Maybe, probably less than that. And that's the crazy thing, pay full market and get and make way more.

Eddie Speed (12:24): Profit today. You made more profit today when you resold it from the down payment money.

Seth Choate (12:31): Correct.

Eddie Speed (12:31): And you would've made wholesaling the deal. well how come they don't do a TV show called buy this house for retail? Call the duck school TVs show.

Joe Varnadore (12:51): Oh, that's right. Yeah. So Seth, You know, at the end of the day, and you know, this is over time but you're making what $344,644 on a deal that again, it would have never been made as a wholesale deal.

Seth Choate (13:09): Yeah, No. Cash loan.

Eddie Speed (13:16): Seth and I have a lot of mutual friends, I tell people, I said, Seth thinks like an old man, right? I said, because he came into this, you know, thinking like a young man, like he came, he and I met about two years ago and he came in, he came to a class and, but he said look, I understand.

Eddie Speed (13:33): I need to be building well, I don't need to just make transactional money and stuff. It's cool that you bought 200 houses a year and he did, and he still does, but he just realized that he could make, I have seen a number of case studies Seth, that you make North of total money on the deal North of 250,000 bucks, not one deal, a number of case studies. I know because I've taught some of those case studies, and this is another one where you just went in there and I remember you bringing it to the table. And you said look, you know I'm paying retail the half in this case, people ask these questions Seth, have you ever had to fix up a house that you bought on terms?

Seth Choate (14:19): Yes.

Eddie Speed (14:19): Didn't have to fix this one.

Seth Choate (14:23): This one I sold. Here's the best part about this one that got me so excited. The last few months, 2100 just keeps hitting my bank account and they're putting a roof on it right now. If that was a rental property, I would not be getting 2100 a month in my bank account. But they have to pay me because I'm the bank.

Eddie Speed (14:43): And then you pay the underlying mortgage of the 1500.

Seth Choate (14:47): Uh-huh.

Eddie Speed (14:47): So you're making $600 net income every month.

Seth Choate (14:49): A true net number.

Eddie Speed (14:51): So you bought it with nothing down, you sold it with 25,000 down, which means that you took home the 25 grand because you didn't have any money invested when you bought it.

Seth Choate (15:05): Correct.

Eddie Speed (15:05): And you sold it on this wraparound transaction. It's kind of like a lease a master lease on Airbnb, right? You're at, you're collecting more money every month than you owe on your underlying, right?

Seth Choate (15:20): Yeah.

Eddie Speed (15:20): So it's a wrap around and so I wanted to talk about like, who is this buyer Seth? Like, what makes you comfortable that they're going to pay you?

Seth Choate (15:31): Sure. So when we put this out for marketing, we actually had a very significant amount of interest. And these folks, this was a very nice family. This guy has a contracting business he's in construction and he's crushing it. The one problem he has is that he doesn't have a social security number. He has, he's an ITIN borrower. And in traditional lending, he can't get traditional lending. So the only way he could buy a home was go get a awful hard money loan from somebody that's just terrible, or I have financing for him. And that was where he came and played. The guy makes excellent income. He's been doing this for quite some time, literally a great borrower, but just because he doesn't have a social security number, he can't buy a home from traditional lending institutions,

Eddie Speed (16:32): You know and Seth, right now with this mortgage credit availability right down so much, even if he had a social security number, that being self-employed this is exactly one of the targets they've gone after that. They're not making loans in terms of this Seth, if you gave home ownership to a deserving family because of your ability to structure Creative Financing.

Seth Choate (16:59): Yes. And I, we text back and forth, I ask them how the house is going. Like it's created a relationship. That's one of the things I've realized is like, I create a relationship with, I still talk to the lender on the phone all the time, her and I chat. And then now I talk with my, the people I'm lending to. So there's, I've helped two different people two different groups through this process and it's pretty cool.

Joe Varnadore (17:23): Well you know, Seth, the other thing that really strikes me about this is that, this gentleman that you've sold it to that is your just missed buyer. He has a circle of friends, he's a contractor, right? So he has a circle of friends that are going to be just, that are just missed buyers as well.

Seth Choate (17:44): I have a line of buyers, like I didn't own have enough houses yet. I gotta go get some more cause they're ready. Like I, they were mad he got the deal and not them, so.

Joe Varnadore (17:54): And, you know, it just reminds me of something. And Eddie I'll share this with the young guys here is that, you know, the guy told me that was the bearded professor when I started back in early 1990. He said, Joe, just remember money has an end, but cashflow is continuous. So that's been, always been my mantra with the Note Business.

Eddie Speed (18:16): All right. So you do another crazy deal where you make some upfront money. You make $600 a month cashflow, and nobody gets wealthy on $600 a month cashflow, but they get wealthy on 50 deals times 600 bucks, right? And all this future money cause the underlying mortgage, because you're only paying, you're paying no interest. The $1,500 is going straight to the principal. So it pays out like 13 years. The wrap mortgage you're receiving payments sum, it's a 30 year amortization, but it has a balloon due in 15 years. And by the way, that is compliant with Dodd-Frank.

Joe Varnadore (19:02): Right.

Eddie Speed (19:04): So at the end of 15 years after you've gotten all this 600 bucks a month for 13 years and then it gets 2100 a month for another couple of years. Then all of a sudden Bonanza, you get a $200, $200,000 balloon payment due, you know, Seth, I was doing the math, I'm going to be 61 years old at the end of this month. And I was thinking in 15 years, I'm going to be about 75. And I was wondering where you're going to send me on vacation when you get that balloon. Would you mark that in your calendar?

Seth Choate (19:40): You got it. I, the goal with these is like you said, get 50 of them. Cause if you can get three, four pay offs a year, this is 200 grand, 200 grand, 200. I mean, that's pretty awesome. And it's that delayed gratification, but you get upfront money now too, It's cool.

Brian Lauchner (20:03): Yeah.

Eddie Speed (20:03): All right. I want to go back down memory lane with you. Okay so, we have introduced this concept on NoteSchool TV, Brian teaches about it all the time to people at real estate investor groups and real estate audiences. Obviously Joe and I get real involved in teaching advanced classes that you've done all that with us. But here's the idea. The idea is how did you start and what was going through your head when you started, like you saw me speak at an event, right? And you said, okay, I'm going to buy a NoteSchool training. It's a class, and it's got some home study stuff and you went and came to that class. I remember it was in Sacramento, California.

Seth Choate (20:46): Uh huh

Eddie Speed (20:49): And you sat on the front row on the left side.

Seth Choate (20:52): Yes.

Eddie Speed (20:53): Speaker left they call it.

Seth Choate (20:54): Yep.

Eddie Speed (20:54): Right? And so all that's really cool, but the reality is you had to go home and say, how am I gonna, how am I gonna work this into my business? Right? So what, like, what were those steps? What was your mindset? You, you stick. I'm not giving up anything in my wholesaling business. If I can buy low sell high and make profit, I'm going to do it, right?

Seth Choate (21:21): Yeah.

Eddie Speed (21:21): So you were just walking your trash can lead. So how did you, what was your mindset when you started that?

Seth Choate (21:27): When we sat through that class. There was the upside is tremendous in this. Now, it takes a minute to learn it. So, but putting this into your business, not having to spend any more money on marketing, I knew if I could immerse myself in the three courses a week and then take some, I, there's so many online tutorials through the program that you can go through. I think I spend about in the beginning, it was about six hours a week inside of the NoteSchool platform through all the different things that are offered. And I started immersing myself in this every week showing up on the calls and then I bring something onto the call because to me, I learn best by doing. And when you're invested in it, you're going to learn a lot more. And so, but I had to immerse because I saw the upside and I can't find another opportunity where I could just pay full price for something to make 200 grand, like 300 grand. I just, the wealth that it builds along the way was too good to pass up. So I had to figure this out and it's about six hours a week.

Eddie Speed (22:44): Seth, if you could take a timeline of somebody from 30 years ago and show them an iPhone 12 today, they couldn't wrap their mind around it. Right?

Seth Choate (22:59): No.

Eddie Speed (22:59): Because 30 years ago I was in business 30 years ago. I don't know where you were, but you weren't in business. Right?

Seth Choate (23:06): One year old.

Eddie Speed (23:08): Okay. That's about what I was thinking. So the point is, is now you have all of these things on an iPhone that would have been in a computer as big as this room. Okay. So we don't know what we don't know until we see it. And once we see it, it makes sense. So we figured this out long time ago, right? The only way you really can teach this ultimately is with case studies. But the, but here's the thing about it. You were frustrated with the success of your marketing, right? When you, when I met you, you said my marketing dollars are becoming less effective. I'm making less profit for the dollar. I'm having to spend marketing. And that's because apparently everybody in the whole United States found out about flipping houses and they all tried it.

Seth Choate (23:58): The competition got crazy.

Eddie Speed (24:03): And so this just became a way to dig through the trash can and go do it. And once again, once people start doing it you know, and that's why I laughed and said, you think like an old man Seth, because the truth of the matter is you really, really, really have adopted this as to understand what wealth is. We're not robbing you from transactional income. You're just allowing us to show you some paths. So that you're a young smart guy, 31 years old. Okay. But let me just tell you something, this will be good to you for the rest of your life.

Seth Choate (24:45): Absolutely.

Brian Lauchner (24:46): I love that. And I think something that's really important to point out here too, is Seth's giving up his transactional income from his wholesale business, right? He's still wholesaling deals. And if you want to wholesale deals, you can continue to do that, but there's going to be 10, 15, 20, 30 people that don't agree with you on price. And the whole point is Seth has figured out how to take all of those leads and turn them into bigger profit today, as well as bonus income over the future. And he's figured out how to start creating his own Notes, really making his own bank. And that's, I think what's so powerful about this. So I'll kind of put a bow on this by saying, if you're kind of in that spot, you're wanting to learn a little bit more about how can I do this?

Brian Lauchner (25:27): Like Seth, how can I start paying retail for houses, putting no money down, making six figures all on a deal that I wasn't going to get anyway as a wholesaler man, go to www.NoteSchool.com/Tv, get engaged, start subscribing to some of the contents are creating your own Notes. And if you want to learn more about the Note Business, we've got a whole other channel here on the NoteSchool YouTube channel that you could check out called Feeding Frenzy Friday. In fact, just last Friday, we put out a Note that the bar has been there from 2011. It's got a 10% interest rate it's got, I mean, so many good things, 20 years left to pay off a 40% investment to value which is going to lower your risk. My point is this, come check out those videos, come check out that part of the channel.

Brian Lauchner (26:12): You'll start to see what it looks like to be in the Note Business and kind of figure out, man, there's a huge opportunity for building wealth here as well. And so there's a lot of ways to get involved. I really want to encourage you to do it. And if nothing else, just like the video subscribe to the channel, it means a lot to us turn on the notifications, especially so that you can start to engage with us here on the channel during these live streams. I don't know if there's any questions that have come in. I saw some things pop up a second ago. But I want to just encourage guys to come in and get involved. And if there's no other question, man, we'll always see you next week.

Eddie Speed (26:50): Seth, you're awesome.

Brian Lauchner (26:50): Thanks so much.

Joe Varnadore (26:50): Take care of the family man! keep safe.

Seth Choate (26:50): Thank you.

Brian Lauchner (26:51): All right. We'll see you all next week on NoteSchool TV.

#Real Estate #Real Estate Investing #Notes #Mortgage #Mortgage Notes #Eddie Speed #NoteSchool #NoteSchoolTV #Note School #Brian Lauchner

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getoutofthisplace · 14 days

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Dear Gus & Magnus,

This is the only picture I took today, taken toward the end of my run. I joined Orange Theory a year ago in an effort to get in shape. Mom joined a month or so before me. She has an unlimited plan and goes to lots of classes, but I have a plan that gives me eight classes a month. In between classes, I go for runs -- usually 3.15ish miles. Mom and I are proud of ourselves and each other for sticking with it. And we've both noticed positive changes in our bodies. And taking so many steps has put me in 10th place of the 1,300 employees at Garver (who have connected their wearable devices) when it comes to steps taken since January 1. That leaderboard is a big motivator for me.

Dad.

Little Rock, Arkansas. 4.9.2024 - 7.04am.

2024 STEP COUNT (AS OF 4.15.2024): 1,183,211.

#running #exercise #guy choate #selfie #rainy run #getting in shape #fitness

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comiccourse0 · 2 years

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U.S. ladies’s hockey’s Hilary Knight, ex-Hanover resident and Olympian, no longer able to retire

She was as soon as the youngest, however at age 32, Hilary Knight, a veteran of three Olympic teams, is now the oldest participant on the U.S. girls’s ice hockey country wide crew roster. still, Knight, who grew up in California, went to Choate Rosemary hall in Wallingford, Conn., and lived for a number of years in Hanover, is not exactly pondering in terms of her closing Olympic video games or retiring or anything else like that simply yet. “Who is aware of?” Knight stated. “I don’t comprehend. We’ll see. We received to that world stage (in 2018). successful the remaining Olympics become impressive, surprising. You form of feed off that, and you need to go do it once more.” The U.S. women received the Olympic gold medal in 2018 in South Korea, beating their archrivals, the Canadians, 3-2, in a shootout after finishing 2nd to Canada in 2014 and 2010. They played Canada on Monday on the XL middle in Hartford as part of the “My Why” Tour, as a pre-Olympic buildup, dropping 3-2. The 2022 video games will take location Feb. 4-20 in Beijing. crew united states of america misplaced to Canada on Friday nighttime within the first game of the tour in Allentown, Pa., 3-1. This summer, Knight grew to be the leader in career dreams on the ladies’s world championships when she scored her 45th goal, towards Russia. The U.S. lost to Canada, 3-2, in additional time in the last. Knight is just happy to be lower back together with the national team after the pandemic shut down the sport for a while. She became also sidelined 10 weeks in the iciness after foot surgical procedure. and she’s satisfied to be lower back in Connecticut, where she has fond recollections of Choate, from which she graduated in 2007. “I should give that event so a lot credit score for who i'm as an individual, for preparing me to be successful,” she mentioned. She also performed for the Polar Bears, an elite women hockey crew in Connecticut. Knight went on to play on the tuition of Wisconsin, where she helped the Badgers go to the Frozen 4 four times and win two NCAA titles. In 2010, she took a year off from college to play in the Olympics, and at age 20, she became the youngest member of the U.S. group. In 2018, the americans eventually were capable of cling off the Canadians on the biggest stage and win their first gold medal due to the fact the U.S. won the inaugural Olympic women’s ice hockey competitors in 1998, “When Maddie (Rooney) stopped the puck that became inching its manner closer to the aim line on that final shootout effort become when it sunk in that we had been going to win,” Knight observed. “but it surely wasn’t except we type of obtained again (to the U.S.) that it become like, ‘Oh. We won.’ We neglect — we’re over there, it become simply us. Our households get to come back over, so there’s a little bit greater circle, but then there’s a bigger circle of all and sundry who comes as much as you when you’re doing random things for your lifestyles, and they’re like, ‘I stayed up till 2 a.m., 3 a.m., observing you guys. Wow, that was fairly a victory.’ “That turned into truly cool. You comprehend it’s so a whole lot greater than you.” Knight was in Canada in March 2020, so she packed up and moved to her domestic in Idaho earlier than the border closed as a result of the pandemic. She built a health club in her storage so she was able to sustain her training, but she didn’t skate until the end of July. “the way I looked at it become less tread on the tires,” she stated. “It’s effortless to sit down there and go, ‘Oh man, I’m in my prime. …’ I get to play longer now. That’s how I checked out it. “i was touring each 2½ weeks before that. i used to be like, ‘here is basically nice, to reside domestic.’ My canines get unhappy after I leave.” It has been a bit extra complicated to build chemistry on this team as a result of the boundaries originally positioned on the gamers due to COVID-19. “It’s difficult to replicate the chemistry you enhance simply doing things together,” she mentioned. “you could possibly go to apply, put your masks on and just about depart the rink. then you’d see each person on Zoom. It’s now not the identical. I believe our group did a pretty good job, all things regarded, trying to reside connected.” Monday’s video game turned into simply an additional stepping stone towards Beijing. “It gifts a very good probability to learn the way to problem-remedy on the fly,” Knight pointed out. “It gives us variety of a measuring stick, where we are and the place we want to go. It’s magnificent to get the competitive juices flowing towards a person who’s similar to us.” 먹튀검증

#먹튀검증 #토토사이트

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gchoate17 · 3 years

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My New Year’s resolution for 2020 was to document – in writing – one whole day per month. I had no idea at the time what 2020 would become, but now that we do know, my journal serves as a kind of pandemic progress report for my own life. The entry for April 2020 documents the fourth anniversary of my marriage to Liz as well as the first stages of the coronavirus. Staying home still seemed like a novelty to me – unexpected days of homegrown adventure with our toddler, and every night felt like date night. Those first few weeks were beautiful. I’m glad I wrote about that day because it was a good one and I don’t ever want to forget it. And I’m honored that Mud Season Review published the journal entry in its latest issue.

#writing #mud season review #lit #literary journals #creative nonfiction #nonfiction #pandemic life #covid #parenting #guy choate #writers #i know but this is nice

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dreamofstarlight · 2 years

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Do you guys think if Jack had lived he would have wanted John to go to Choate instead of Phillip’s Academy?

#if everything stayed the same with moving to NYC #choate is much closer than Andover #but I feel like living in NYC was a very Jackie thing #and after the presidency jack would have wanted to stay in DC/VA or go back to MA

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chiseler · 5 years

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All the World’s a Stage

In 1988, a socio-linguist at the university of Pennsylvania posted a note on the departmental bulletin board announcing she had moved her late husband’s personal library into an unused office. Anyone who wanted any of the books should feel free to take them. Her husband had been the chair of Penn’s sociology department. They’d married in 1981, and he died the following year at age sixty. Normally you’d expect the books and papers to be donated to some library to assist future researchers, but she’d recently remarried, so I guess she either wanted to get rid of any reminders of her previous husband, or simply needed the space.

At the time my then-wife was a grad student in Penn’s linguistics department, and told me about the announcement when she got home that afternoon.

Well, had this professor’s dead husband been any plain, boring old sociologist, I wouldn’t have thought much about it, but given her dead husband was Erving Goffman, I immediately began gathering all the boxes and bags I could find. That night around ten, when she was certain the department would be pretty empty, my then-wife and I snuck back to Penn under cover of darkness and I absconded with Erving Goffman’s personal library. Didn’t even look at titles—just grabbed up armloads of books and tossed them into boxes to carry away.

As I began sorting through them in the following days, I of course discovered the expected sociology, anthropology and psychology textbooks, anthologies and journals, as well as first editions of all of Goffman’s own books, each featuring his identifying signature (in pencil) in the upper right hand corner of the title page. But those didn’t make up the bulk of my haul.

There were Catholic marriage manuals from the Fifties, dozens of volumes (both academic and popular) about sexual deviance, a whole bunch of books about juvenile delinquency with titles like Wayward Youth and The Violent Gang, several issues of Corrections (a quarterly journal aimed at prison wardens), a lot of original crime pulps from the Forties and Fifties, avant-garde literary novels, a medical book about skin diseases, some books about religious cults (particularly Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple), a first edition of Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip, and So many other unexpected gems. It was, as I’d hoped, an oddball collection that offered a bit of insight into Goffman’s work and thinking.

Erving Goffman was born in Alberta, Canada in 1922. After entering college as a chemistry major, he eventually got his BA in sociology in 1948, and began his graduate studies at The university of Chicago.

In 1952 he married Angelica Choate, a woman with a history of mental illness, and they had a son. The following year he received his PHD from Chicago. His thesis concerned public interactions and rituals among the residents of one of the Shetland Islands off the coast of Scotland. Afterward, he took a job with the National Institute for Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. His first book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, which evolved out of his thesis, came out in 1956, and his second, Asylums, which resulted from his work at N.I,M.H., was released five years later. In 1958 he took a teaching position at UC-Berkeley, and was soon promoted to full professor. His wife committed suicide in 1964, and in 1968 he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania as the chair of the sociology department, a post he would hold until his death in 1982.

Citing intellectual influences from anthropology and psychology as well as sociology, Goffman was nevertheless a maverick. Instead of controlled clinical studies and statistical analysis, Goffman based his work on careful close observation of real human interactions in public places,. Instead of focusing on the behaviors of large, faceless groups like sports fans, student movements or factory workers, he concentrated on the tiny details of face-to-face encounters, the gestures, language and behavior of individuals interacting with one another or within a larger institutional framework. Instead of citing previous academic papers to support his claims, he’d more often use quotes from literary sources, letters, or interviews. He created a body of work around those banal, microcosmic day-two-day experiences which had been all but ignored by sociologists up to that point. After his death he was considered one of the most important and influential sociologists of the twentieth century.

Without getting into all the complexities and interpretations of Goffman’s various theories (despite his radical subjective approach, he was still an academic after all), let me lay out simpleminded thumbnails of the two core ideas at the heart of his work.

Taking a cue from both Freud and Shakespeare, he employed theatrical terminology to argue that whenever we step out into public, we are all essentially actors on a stage. We wear masks, we take on certain behaviors and attitudes that differ wildly from the characters we are when we’re at home. All our actions in public, he claimed, are social performances designed (we hope) to present a certain image of ourselves to the world at large. The idea of course has been around in literature for centuries, but Goffman was the first to seriously apply it in broad strokes to sociology.

His other, and related, fundamental idea was termed frame analysis, the idea being that we perceive each social encounter—running into that creepy guy on the train again, say, or arguing with the checkout clerk at the supermarket about the quality of their potatoes—as something isolated and contained, a picture within a frame, or a movie still.

He used those two models to study day-to-day life in mental institutions and prisons, note the emergence of Texas businessmen adopting white cowboy hats as a standard part of their attire, analyze workplace interactions and the complicated rituals we go through when we run into someone we sort-of know on the sidewalk.

I first read Goffman in college when his 1964 book, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, was used in a postmodern political science course I was taking. In the slim volume, Goffman studied the conflicts and prejudices ex-cons, mental patients, cripples, the deformed and other social outcasts encountered when they stepped out into public, as well as the assorted codes and tricks they used to pass for normal. When passing was possible, anyway. At the time I was smitten with the book and these tales of outsiders, being a deliberately constructed outsider myself (though as a nihilistic cigar-smoking petty criminal punk rock kid, I had no interest in passing for normal). I was also struck to read a serious sociological study that cited Nathaniel West’s Miss Lonelyhearts—my favorite novel at the time—as supporting evidence.

Thirty-five years later, and after having read all of Goffman’s other major works, I returned to Stigma again, but with a different perspective. Although my youthful Romantic notions about social outcasts still lingered, by that time I’d become a bona-fide and inescapable social outcast myself, tapping around New York with a red and white cane.

Goffman spent a good deal of the book focused on the daily issues faced by the blind, but in 1985 those weren’t the outsiders who interested me. Now that I was one of them myself, I must say I was amazed and impressed by the accuracy of Goffman’s observations. He pointed out any number of things that have always been ignored by others who’ve written about the blind. Like those others, he notes that Normals, accepting the myth that our other senses become heightened after the loss of our sight, believe us to have superpowers of some kind. (For the record, I never dissuade people of this silly notion.) But Goffman took it one step further, noting that to Normals, a blindo accomplishing something, well, normal—like lighting a cigarette—is taken to be some kind of superhuman achievement, and evidence of powers they can barely begin to fathom.

(Ironically, he writes in Asylums that the process of socializing mental patients is a matter of turning them into dull, unobtrusive and nearly invisible individuals. Those are good citizens.)

Elsewhere in Stigma Goffman also points out—and you cannot believe how commonplace this is—that Normals, believing us to have some deep insights into life and the world, feel compelled, uninvited and without warning, to stop the blind on the street or at the supermarket to share with them their darkest secrets, medical concerns and personal problems as if we’d known them all our lives. He also observed the tendency for Normals to treat us not only like we’re blind, but deaf and lame as well, yelling in our ears and insisting on helping us out of chairs.

Ah, but one thing he brought up, which I’ve never seen anyone else mention before, is the fate awaiting those blindos (or cripples of any kind) who actually accomplish something like writing a book. It doesn’t matter if the book had absolutely nothing to do with being a cripple. I’ve published eleven books to date, and only two of them even mention blindness. It doesn’t matter. If a cripple makes something of him or herself, that cripple then becomes a lifelong representative of that entire class of stigmatized individuals, at least in mainstream eyes. From that point onward he or she will always be not only “that Blind Writer” or “that Legless Architect,” but a spokesperson on any issues pertaining to their particular disability. I was published long before I developed that creepy blind stare, but if I approach a mainstream publication nowadays, the only things they’ll let me write about are cripple issues. Every now and again if I need the check, I’ll, yes, put on the mask and play the role. But I’m bored to death with cripple issues, which is why whenever possible I neglect to mention to would-be editors that I’m blind. And I guess that only supports Goffman’s overall thesis, right?

Well, anyway, a series of four floods in my last apartment completely wiped out my prized Goffman library (as well as my prized novelization collection), so in retrospect I guess that professor at Penn probably would have been better off donating them to the special collections department of some library.

by Jim Knipfel

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Mueller Rejects Trump’s ‘Witch Hunt’ Label and Warns of Russian Meddling

https://nyti.ms/2YiERaF

"There is one incontrovertible truth about the Mueller Report. It establishes, together with the FBI and CIA investigations, that your President was elected, in part, by Russia. That, together with the fact that three million more Americans preferred his opponent, will forever taint this President. His legitimacy is, and should always be, a massive question mark."

JOHN DAVID JAMES, CANADA 🍁

"Has anyone reported on why Senator MCConnell refuses to allow any legislation that would safeguard the 2020 election to even come up for a vote?" JOANNA SMITH, SANTA FE, NM

"Robert Mueller is an old-style, patrician Republican who devoted much of his life to serving the interests of the United States. People such as him have been driven out of today's Republican Party. But what he did was impart damaging information about this President and his actions. There was obstruction and there was no exoneration. Perhaps more significant, he elicited responses from Republican Members of Congress that highlighted how the Republican Party has devolved into a Trump Cult that cares little about truth, integrity or foreign attacks on our Democracy." PAT CHOATE, TUSCON AZ

"Mueller did not say Russia would attack our election again, he said they were attacking us "as we speak." Meanwhile, Democrats have already passed the Election Security Act and have sent it to the Senate, which would help states defend their election systems from attack and require a paper ballot back-up. But McConnell refuses take it up in the Senate. The outcome of the 2020 election hinges on battleground states like Michigan, Ohio and Florida, which Russia targeted last time (with help from the Trump campaign). It appears that McConnell does not care to prevent Russian hacking in these states, perhaps because he knows they will help Trump win." SHERRY, WASHINGTON

"My takeaway from today’s hearings is that impeachment can wait. Trump is not going to be convicted by the Senate. Democrats should focus on defeating him at the ballot box. Mueller and everyone else in this country knows that the Russians will be back to to help Trump win again. That is why Mitch McConnell, the traitor of the Senate, one of many Republicans who put party over patriotism, is refusing to allow a bipartisan bill to shore up and protect our election machinery. No paper trails will tell us if the count in closely contested states or any other state is accurate. Should the results be close , particularly if the Democrat loses, who but Republicans will believe it. Democrats should start demanding this bill be passed. Mitch has gotten away with enough obstruction. Put the pressure on him every day. That includes during his month vacation in August." MARY BETH, MA

"Several GOP panelists derided the Mueller investigation as prolonged and costly. Cost of Mueller investigation? ... through seizures of ill-begotten assets (eg Manafort forfeitures), it has more than paid for itself! Contrast the GOP Benghazi investigation on Clinton that went on for 4 years! ... with no indictments and no counts ... none (and no asset seizures)! Mueller’s investigation wasn't even 2 years, and already with 37 indictments and 199 counts and several in trump’s inner circle charged and in prison with more imminent." JOHN TOWNSEND, MEXICO

"In much the same way Trump demeaned, denigrated a former First Lady and Secretary of State; today the Republican Party did the same to another public servant. No 74 year old, War Veteran, public servant deserved to be spoken to the way Mueller was by the Republicans who questioned him. But then again, we saw with McCain how much this administration respects veterans. Never wandering far from the low moral bar their POTUS has set, Republicans today once more demonstrated how much they respect what were once established values."

DENISE, NM

"Today, it was reiterated that the sitting US President, Donald Trump, is guilty of the "high crimes and misdemeanors" of colluding with the Russians to attain the US Presidency in 2016, and of committing and continuing to commit the obstruction of justice in covering up his collusion. What we also learned today is that the rump GOP that remains, after all this Trump carnage, of what used to be the proud party of Lincoln, is willing to lie, to shill and to defend this narcissistic Russian owned clown to their bitter end. Sad. Humiliating. Depressing." JOE MIKSIS, SAN FRANCISCO

"That Special Counsel Robert Mueller III made a very grave statement about Russian tampering in the 2016 election for President and Vice President of the United States should be a very loud, resounding alarm to every citizen of this country demanding the assurance from every Board of Election in each state that their vote casting system is tamper-proof. And if there is not a very vocal public outcry to demand free and safe elections in this country, we are sunk as a democracy. There is no democracy of one person - one (tamper-proof) vote in the United States if we have Russian or any other outside interference. And yes, I continue to believe Donald Trump's tax returns will see a direct link between Russian interference - in many forms - vote tampering, money schemes, loans, and potentially blackmail that will bring this house of cards down. I think Trump knows this and continues his daily and relentless twittering directed toward whomever is disturbing his house of cards at the moment . All of his twittering behavior is simply to distract from the truth - which will be found in his taxes. And finally, Special Counsel Mueller, in his 11 minute televised address two weeks ago stated:, "if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so." Another shocking statement that should be sounding very loud alarms. That statement is yet another reason to issue court orders to subpoena Trump’s taxes." KKM, NYC

"Some of the media coverage of Mueller’s testimony today bothers me as a person who appreciates the American Constitution. The idea that the testimony was ineffective is ludicrous. The house majority did an excellent job of refuting Trump’s claim that there was “no collusion”. They also did an excellent job of meticulously outlining the actions that constituted that collusion. When Republican representatives pushed Mueller on making a political statement with his report, he pushed back vehemently. The American people who watched this testimony now have the truth as opposed to the spin that came from the White House. Hopefully citizens who love this country will uphold our democracy in the next election and today’s testimony gives us all some truths to take to the ballot box as we make our individual decisions." RMWARD, CONNECTICUT

"This is the best account I've read about what I witnessed on the live stream today. The one thing that no news articles have mentioned — I am not seeing hard core critique of the questions that were asked and statements made. The Republicans have so intimidated news media by attacking everything as "partisan" and "political" that the media posit a false equivalency between what one party does versus another, so as to refer to the parties equally. Thus there is not one word spoken about the odiously misleading and false statements and questions by the Republicans, oftentimes loaded with conspiracy theories. It is a disgrace that legislators feed these accusations to the public, and the press says nothing. Nunes telling Mueller to his face that the investigation was a hoax??? These guys are out front with Trump feeding delusions to the public. Many media are making the big news that Mueller seemed indecisive or shaky in his answers, all the while this public disgrace of Republican accusations that are completely disconnected from reality parades before the cameras and goes unmentioned — or else portrayed as equal to the serious and studential questions and comments of the Democrats. There are dangers headed towards U.S. democracy like a freight train. Please do more to wake everyone up to the dangers of claims that flagrantly violate known facts."

ANNE SHERROD

"The fact is, there is no law to say you can't indict a sitting president, neither is there anything in the constitution to that effect. It is simply a DOJ opinion that has been passed down over the years. It is not a high bar to expect that your president has not committed a crime. The simple answer: render the president accountable to criminal justice just as every American is."

YesIKnowTheMuffinMan, NEW HOPE PA

"If Russia can do it to Clinton, China will do it to Trump (and I expect they will). The GOP are unbelievably naive. China is much more experienced and skilled."

CHARACTER COUNTS, USA

"Putin is grinning ear to ear." CINDY, SAN DIEGO CA

"The best we can do is gather a great Democratic Party strategy, pick a candidate that can stand up to trump and beat him solidly in the 2020 election. Muellers report should provide plenty of reasons why trump and his cronies must go. The Democratic Party must insure that the Russians or any foreign country does not hack our election again." DR B, BERKLEY, CA

"Most questions were long winded, hard to follow and self served, aimed to impress the electorate base and embarrass Mueller. Republicans in particular excelled in irrelevancy, ranging form brash accusations to white noise generators. To his credit, Mueller chose not to play along and stayed within the scope of even the least cohesive question. Posterity will remember, hopefully, Mueller for his uncompromising and professional stance, focus on the job and carelessness for his public image. Picture him side by side with the president, and try to take in the difference." MIROCAL, SEATTLE WA

"They’re doing it as we sit here,” Facebook knows more about you than your parents. And they package that knowledge as a target for the highest bidder. As a Target. You and I are Targets. Cambridge Analytica leveraged those Targets to help Trump win. The Russian Government leveraged those Targets to help Trump win. Dear regulators, as a part of the Facebook settlement, how about banning Targeted political ads? Sure, the Supreme Court has ruled, in Burson v Freeman, that blackout periods for political ads are unconstitutional. But, it says nothing about Targeted ads. When I'm shown an ad for or against a candidate, I want to see what everybody else sees. I want to see everybody's response to that ad. Is it fake? Is it fair? One of the worse policies for political speech was the removal of the fairness doctrine -- where broadcasters were required to give free time to opposing views. Well, at the very least, it should be a requirement that ads for public office are truly public. Not some kind of guided missive keyed to my private data. Regulators, are you listening?"

IKO, HERE

"I believed Mueller. I wouldn't believe Trump if my life depended on it. Indeed, I would depend on this fact: Trump will always lie. He THINKS his lies are a "force of nature." I suppose we will found out just how strong they are. Because they are now exposed. Anyone who believes them now has no more excuses. Whoever believes Trump belongs to Trump. They are bought and paid for." PAUL GLASSON, GA

"I am frankly beyond being disgusted with these shameful Republican congresspeople. While they may believe the best defense is a good offense, and are aggressively trying to steamroll and invalidate a legitimate investigative process, I am not buying what they are selling. No amount of money or power could make me behave in such a despicable fashion, and the fact that they seem to be immune from self loathing for their behavior indicates what type of people they are to their cores. They dishonor this country."

GMR, ATLANTA

Mueller Rejects Trump’s ‘Witch Hunt’ Label and Warns of Russian Meddling

By Mark Mazzetti | Published July 24, 2019 | New York Times | Posted July 24, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — Robert S. Mueller III on Wednesday publicly rejected President Trump’s criticism that the special counsel’s investigation was a “witch hunt” and defended his conclusions about the sweeping Russian interference campaign in 2016, warning that Moscow will again try to sabotage American democracy.

The partisan war over his inquiry reached a heated climax during hours of long-awaited testimony by Mr. Mueller before two congressional committees. Lawmakers hunted for viral sound bites and tried to score political points, but Mr. Mueller refused to engage on those fronts, returning over and over in sometimes halting delivery to his damning and voluminous report.

Mr. Mueller remained a spectral presence in Washington over the past two years as the president and his allies subjected the special counsel and his team of lawyers to withering attacks. Speaking in detail for the first time about his conclusions produced occasionally dramatic moments where he ventured beyond his report to offer insights about Mr. Trump’s behavior.

When asked whether Mr. Trump “wasn’t always being truthful” in his written answers to the special counsel’s questions, Mr. Mueller responded, “I would say generally.” He called Mr. Trump’s praise of WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign “problematic” and said it “gave a boost to what is and should be illegal activity.” He said that he and his team chose not to subpoena Mr. Trump out of concern that a battle over a presidential interview might needlessly prolong the investigation.

Democratic lawmakers had hoped that Mr. Mueller’s nationally televised testimony would provide a dramatic culmination to a yearslong saga: the special counsel translating the dense jargon of his report into a bleak portrait of the Russian interference operation and the president’s behavior since winning the election. The testimony would, in their minds, make the report both more authoritative and more vivid for Americans who had skipped reading it.

Some television pundits built up the drama by comparing Mr. Mueller’s appearance to some of the most galvanizing moments of the Watergate era.

For the most part, Mr. Mueller did not play along. He gave clipped answers to lengthy questions, and forced lawmakers to give their own dramatic readings of parts of his report rather than reciting the conclusions himself. He sometimes gave a forceful defense of his investigation and his team in the face of the Republican fusillade, but his answers were at times faltering. Throughout, he was careful to avoid straying from his report’s conclusions.

Mr. Trump has spent months characterizing the special counsel’s report as a “total exoneration,” though Mr. Mueller was careful on Wednesday to state that he and his team had drawn no such conclusion. The special counsel’s 448-page report, released in April, laid bare that Mr. Trump was elected with the help of a foreign power, and on Wednesday, Mr. Mueller was most impassioned when describing the contours of the Russian interference playbook.

“They’re doing it as we sit here,” he said of Russia’s tampering in American elections.

Looming over the hearing was the question of whether Mr. Mueller’s testimony might shift the ground in Congress and propel more lawmakers to push for Mr. Trump’s impeachment. Only one new call emerged for impeachment hearings by late afternoon Wednesday, from Representative Lori Trahan, Democrat of Massachusetts, and lawmakers will soon depart Washington for a summer recess. It was too soon to say whether the spectacle would change Americans’ opinions about Mr. Mueller and his work that have only hardened over time, and whether Democrats would return to their districts and encounter more vigorous calls for Mr. Trump’s removal.

The questioning on Wednesday reflected a bitter philosophical divide, both on the committees and in the country as a whole: whether it was Mr. Trump, or those investigating him, who committed crimes. Throughout the day, the Democrats hit the high points from Mr. Mueller’s report: the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, the efforts by Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Mueller, the discussions between Michael T. Flynn and a Russian ambassador about Obama-era sanctions, the strategy by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to sow chaos before the election.

The Mueller report cataloged numerous meetings between Mr. Trump’s advisers and Russians seeking to influence the campaign and the presidential transition team — encounters set up in pursuit of business deals, policy initiatives and political dirt about Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent.

Mr. Mueller concluded that there was “insufficient evidence” to determine that the president or his aides had engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the Russians, even though the Trump campaign welcomed the Kremlin sabotage effort and “expected it would benefit electorally” from the hackings and leaks of Democratic emails.

On Wednesday, Mr. Mueller was asked about the Trump Tower meeting, WikiLeaks and the decision by Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, to share campaign information with a Russian oligarch, and whether these episodes were a new normal for political campaigns.

“I hope this is not the new normal,” Mr. Mueller said, “but I fear it is.”

Republicans tried to flip the lens, peppering Mr. Mueller with questions about what they have long argued, with little evidence: that the F.B.I. opened a politically motivated investigation in 2016 with the aim of preventing Mr. Trump from becoming president. They focused on the research firm that commissioned the dossier by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer. They focused on Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic identified by the special counsel as linked to Russian intelligence, and advanced unsubstantiated claims that Mr. Mifsud was actually under the sway of Western spy services.

Mr. Mueller mostly deflected those questions, saying the origins of the F.B.I. investigation predated his time as special counsel and was outside his purview.

Mr. Mueller was a reluctant witness and had tried to avoid the spectacle of a congressional hearing. In a brief public statement in May, he urged the public — and, by extension, members of Congress — to read his report, which he said “speaks for itself.” “The report is my testimony,” he said.

House Democrats were unmoved and chose to take the aggressive step of compelling Mr. Mueller’s testimony under subpoena.

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