"The nation’s floundering government is now administered by a gangster regime. It is helpful to have this made obvious as voters contemplate renewing the regime’s lease on the executive branch. Roger Stone adopted the argot of B-grade mobster movies when he said he would not “roll on” Donald Trump. By commuting Stone’s sentence, Stone’s beneficiary played his part in this down-market drama, showing gratitude for Stone’s version of omertà (the Mafia code of silence), which involved lots of speaking but much lying."- George Will, The Washington Post, 'The Nation Is In A Downward Spiral - And Worse Is Yet To Come'
In his Washington Post op-ed piece of July 11th, former special prosecutor Robert Mueller was blunt in his defense of his probe, after arch criminal Roger Stone was sprung by Traitor Trump:
"The work of the special counsel’s office — its report, indictments, guilty pleas and convictions — should speak for itself. But I feel compelled to respond both to broad claims that our investigation was illegitimate and our motives were improper, and to specific claims that Roger Stone was a victim of our office. The Russia investigation was of paramount importance. Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.
Russia’s actions were a threat to America’s democracy. It was critical that they be investigated and understood. By late 2016, the FBI had evidence that the Russians had signaled to a Trump campaign adviser that they could assist the campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to the Democratic candidate. And the FBI knew that the Russians had done just that: Beginning in July 2016, WikiLeaks released emails stolen by Russian military intelligence officers from the Clinton campaign. Other online personas using false names — fronts for Russian military intelligence — also released Clinton campaign emails."
Adding:
"The jury ultimately convicted Stone of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress and tampering with a witness. Because his sentence has been commuted, he will not go to prison. But his conviction stands.
Russian efforts to interfere in our political system, and the essential question of whether those efforts involved the Trump campaign, required investigation. In that investigation, it was critical for us (and, before us, the FBI) to obtain full and accurate information. Likewise, it was critical for Congress to obtain accurate information from its witnesses. When a subject lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government’s efforts to find."
Those words are powerful and direct, but clearly ought to have been enunciated loudly and directly when Mueller was being questioned by the House back in May, 2019. Instead, the congressional questioners faced an almost wallflower special counsel - having had to pry response after response out of Mueller's mouth. "Almost like pulling teeth" -- in Janice's parlance. Worse, Mueller's punting and resistance to provide an aggressive response earlier had given AG Trump personal Bill Barr the opening to spin the Mueller investigation conclusion in his own way - i.e. as an "exoneration" of Trump. It also energized the Trumpies and Barr to then begin bogus investigations to go after the investigators. These are still going on in the background.
That ought to alarm Mueller even now, and one reason why he needs to do a 180 in his presentation style if called to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He can begin by pointing out that he not only defined a conspiracy in an indictment of 12 GRU agents filed back in 2018, e.g.
[Read the indictment here.]
But also made it abundantly clear - in Part 1 of his Mueller report, i.e.
www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf
that Trump was involved. The failure to press this case, in particular to demand Trump answer questions in person allowed the traitor to escape. In the words of Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe at the time:
"What we have here is a situation where the Mueller report shows without any doubt that a hostile foreign power attacked the United States in this (2016) election. That Donald Trump welcomed that attack, benefited from it and then - the last couple of years - tried to cover it up every possible way. "
In addition, former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah, appearing January 25, 2019 on 'All In' didn't mince words:
"There's just so many facts in this indictment about the coordination of the Trump campaign with Wikileaks, through Roger Stone. Remember that GRU indictment - if you go back to that- one of the objects of the conspiracy is not just hacking but hacking and disseminating. You can't look at them alone, you have to go back to everything we know, the Trump Tower meeting, the calling out by Trump to Russia (to grab Hillary's emails)...there's just so many other things."
A de facto conspiracy by any other name.
All of which is 'ammo' and a template Mueller can use to energetically justify his probe, especially as Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham has vowed to call him after his WaPo piece. ("If he can write that in the Washington Post he can appear before our committee!") . He can then directly assert why he is absolutely not accepting the Trump twaddle that it was "an illegal witch hunt that should never have taken place.".
Indeed, we who were disappointed by Mueller's passive, halting, pathetic performance last year want to see more of the junkyard dog we know (from his past) he can be: roaring, snarling and not taking any guff or recycled spin and conspiracy bunkum from Lindsey Graham or any other Repuke Senators. Particularly as we know they will claim the investigation went overboard or was part of a conspiracy to damage Trump. This would echo the codswallop that the WSJ's top conspiracy -spinning hack (Kimberley Strassel) has been pushing for the past three years e.g.
This despite the 434-page report issued by Justice Department's Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluding the FBI had an “authorized purpose” when it initiated its investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, into the Trump campaign.
In the words of MSNBC All In host Chris Hayes, when the IG report highlighted above came out, referring the the Right's cockeyed "Fusion GPS-Steele dossier- Hillary- Comey- FBI" conspiracy to take down Trump:
In the words of MSNBC All In host Chris Hayes, when the IG report highlighted above came out, referring the the Right's cockeyed "Fusion GPS-Steele dossier- Hillary- Comey- FBI" conspiracy to take down Trump:
"The obvious problem with this theory is that it makes no sense. Remember this, during the campaign the only investigation that became public was the one regarding Hillary Clinton, which arguably lost her the election. But the FBI was investigating Trump at the very same time. No one uttered a word about it. If they were so desperate to bring Trump down you'd think someone would have said something. They didn't. So the whole conspiracy theory doesn't even hold together."
Indeed, Mueller must smash this insipid balderdash so completely into oblivion that it's never promoted again by any Trumpies. One other thing: no genuine patriot wants to see any weak reading from sections of the Mueller report. Or advising any senators to do so, referring to "X chapter and section." No, what we want is to see the same spirit and direct, no-nonsense replies such as manifest in the WaPo op-ed: a non-reading, non-droning, electric recitation of why Mueller was right to conduct such an investigation of Trump's criminal clique and especially Stone. Also, why any specious, DOJ- sponsored counter probe into the Mueller team or former Obama DOJ personnel is giving protection to the enemy and purely in the service of the traitor fouling the White House.
See Also:
And:
