Special Counsel Mueller’s report released today concluded that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Nor was there any obstruction of justice by President Trump. But does there need to be a further inquiry into collusion?
By pushing the Russia collusion hoax for two-plus years, the mainstream (fakestream) media colluded with the Democrats in an attempt to sabotage the Trump administration. Can we expect the media to self-examine its standards and practices? And the Obama administration colluded with the Clinton campaign with a paid-for fake Russian dossier to spy on the Trump campaign. Allegations have also emerged that the Ukranian government colluded with the Democrats against Trump. Ex-VP Joe Biden also has some explaining to do over his alleged financial ties to Ukraine.
The federal authorities had less probable cause to investigate Trump than the Florida authorities had in going after Robert Kraft on flimsy misdemeanor charges.
An inspector general in the U.S. Department of Justice is probing FISA abuse, and Attorney General Barr may launch an investigation into the Deep State’s role in this witch hunt. It remains to be scene the DOJ will bring anyone to justice for these unconstitutional misdeeds, an attempted coup on the presidency. No one was ever criminally prosecuted, for example, when the Obama IRS harassed conservative groups applying for nonprofit status in the run-up to the 2012 election, although under Trump, the government apologized and paid financial settlements.
The fact that this investigation ever took place indicates Trump’s huge mistake in naming Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General. The gullible Sessions never should have recused himself from the Russia investigation. Remember how Eric Holder referred to himself as Obama’s wingman and no one in the media made an issue of it?
Far-left journalist and Trump foe Glenn Greenwald, the co-founder of The Intercept, maintains that the Mueller report obliterated all of the conspiracy theories pushed by Rachel Maddow and her like-minded cohorts.
“The result of all of that was that not a single American – whether with the Trump campaign or otherwise – was charged or indicted on the core question of whether there was any conspiracy or coordination with Russia over the election. No Americans were charged or even accused of being controlled by or working at the behest of the Russian government. None of the key White House aides at the center of the controversy who testified for hours and hours – including Donald Trump, Jr. or Jared Kushner – were charged with any crimes of any kind, not even perjury, obstruction of justice or lying to Congress.
“These facts are fatal to the conspiracy theorists who have drowned U.S. discourse for almost three years with a dangerous and distracting fixation on a fictitious espionage thriller…They got the exact prosecutor and investigation that they wanted, yet he could not establish that any of this happened and, in many cases, established that it did not…
“The centerpiece of the Trump/Russia conspiracy – the Trump Tower meeting – was such a dud that Jared Kushner, halfway through the meeting, texted Manafort to declare the meeting “a waste of time,” and then instructed his assistant to call him so that he could concoct a reason to leave…
“Neither the Trump Tower meeting itself nor its participants – for so long held up as proof of the Trump/Russia conspiracy – could serve as the basis for any finding of criminality. Indeed, the key Trumpworld participants who testified about what happened at that meeting and its aftermath (Trump Jr. and Kushner) were not even accused by Mueller of lying about any of it.
“None of this is to say that the Mueller Report exonerates Trump of wrongdoing. Mueller makes clear, for instance, that the Trump campaign not only knew that Russia was interested in helping it win the election but was happy to have that help. There’s clearly nothing criminal about that. One can debate whether it’s unethical for a presidential campaign to have dirt about its opponent released by a foreign government, though anyone who wants to argue that has to reconcile that with the fact that the DNC had a contractor working with the Ukrainian government to help Hillary Clinton win by feeding them dirt on Trump and Manafort, as well as a paid operative named Christopher Steele (remember him?) working with Russian officials to get dirt on Trump.”
Greenwald claims that Trump behaved badly according to the Mueller report, but that’s beside the point:
“As Mueller himself concluded, a reasonable debate can be conducted on whether Trump tried to obstruct his investigation with corrupt intent. But even on the case of obstruction, the central point looms large over all of it: there was no underlying crime established for Trump to cover-up..
“All criminal investigations require a determination of a person’s intent, what they are thinking and what their goal is. When the question is whether a President sought to kill an Executive Branch investigation – as Trump clearly wanted to do here – the determinative issue is whether he did so because he genuinely believed the investigation to be an unfair persecution and scam, or whether he did it to corruptly conceal evidence of criminality.
“That Mueller could not and did not establish any underlying crimes strongly suggests that Trump acted with the former rather than the latter motive, making it virtually impossible to find that he criminally obstructed the investigation.”
And there is the Russia collusion delusion that gained currency in the Trump-hating media:
“And this massive investigation simply did not establish any of the conspiracy theories that huge parts of the Democratic Party, the intelligence community and the U.S. media spent years encouraging the public to believe. Those responsible for this can refuse to acknowledge wrongdoing. They can even claim vindication if they want and will likely be cheered for doing so.
“But the contempt in which the media and political class is held by so much of the U.S. population – undoubtedly a leading factor that led to Trump’s election in the first place – will only continue to grow as a result, and deservedly so. People know they were scammed, that their politics was drowned for years by a hoax. And none of that will go away no matter how insulated media and political elites in Washington, northern Virginia, Brooklyn, and large West Coast cities keep themselves, and thus hear only in-group affirmation while blocking out all of that well-earned scorn.”
Some U.S. House Democrats have vowed to keep the hoax alive through more hearings and some fringe elements are still banging the impeachment drum. As Boston talk show host Howie Carr quipped today, “Muller time — the champagne of bottled smears.” More seriously, Carr wondered out loud if the Deep State operatives can try to frame a president, imagine what could they can do to ordinary Americans.
If Robert Mueller ever testifies on Capitol Hill, hopefully someone will ask him why he hired only Obama- and Clinton-connected lawyers for his prosecuting team.
