RUTHFULLY YOURS

Friday’s grand jury indictment in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election destroys Democratic claims that the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russia to win the race, and that the Russian interference cost Hillary Clinton the election. It is now time for Mueller to look into real election interference and collusion with the Russians by the Democrats.

The grand jury indicted 13 Russians and three Russian entities for their alleged efforts to interfere with the 2016 election. The indictment says the Russians hid their involvement in this scheme and communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign. There was no allegation in the indictment that any American was a knowing participant in the scheme.

Boom. The Democratic Trump-Russia collusion narrative is dead.

But the left will continue to argue that Russia handed the presidency to Donald Trump. Expect them to claim this is proven by two things: the sophistication of the election interference effort; and the allegation that the accused Russians promoted the Trump campaign and worked to disparage Hillary Clinton.

Don’t be fooled. The indictment says the Russian election interference effort started in 2014. It says that the Russians staged rallies for and against Trump after the election and also promoted the Bernie Sanders campaign.

These facts strongly indicate this was a Russian campaign to sow confusion in the United States and to undermine Clinton, who Russian officials expected to win the election.

If you ask after every latest mass shooting why the US won’t ‘do something, anything’ about guns, a refresher course in American law and history is in order. Also worth bearing mind is that Americans, unlike Australians, don’t see themselves as submissive subjects of the State.

Apparently, there are some 300 million legally-held guns in the United States. Who knows how many illegally-held guns there are? Lots I imagine. In the wake of the latest horrific school shooting in Florida, the usual suspects are calling for tighter gun control. The Republicans and the NRA are blamed for having always resisted such calls.

For the first two years of Obama’s presidency, the Democrats had an overwhelming majority in the House and close to a filibuster majority in the Senate. For four months, they had 60 votes in the Senate and therefore absolute control. Why did they not act to impose additional controls on gun ownership, if the current laws are such a burning affront to public safety? There are, I suggest, two principal reasons.

First, beyond emotional cheap talk, it is very difficult to identify specific amendments to the law which would both reduce the risk of gun violence and be enforceable.

Second, it’s not the Republicans in Congress or the NRA that represents the biggest obstacle to imposing anything which smacks of seriously restricting gun rights, it is gun-owning voters. The latest Gallup poll (Oct 2017) reported that 42% of US households had a gun. That would clearly mean well over 50% of adults have access to guns. Moreover, many of those gun owners are passionate about their right to bear arms. “Out of my cold dead hands,” the late, great Charleston Heston put it, while holding up his rifle.

One further complication is that federal law overlays state laws, which differ from state to state. Federal law bans a convicted felon from owning a firearm, also someone who is involuntarily committed to a mental institution or declared mentally incompetent by a court or government body. The interpretation of this law can vary from state to state, which perhaps creates an opportunity for legislators at a federal and state levels to close off any obvious loopholes. Though this would have made no difference in this most recent school shooting.

Closing loopholes aside, the difficulties of taking substantive measures should not be lost from sight. Take mental illness, which has occupied the attention of commentators urging that something more be done.

Lewis Carroll once wrote in praise of adjectives, saying that “adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs.” That is certainly true with the latest indictments by special counsel Robert Mueller of 13 Russians for interfering with the 2016 presidential election. For the White House, the entire report comes down to a single adjective. Let’s see if you can spot it: The Russian defendants “communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign.”

Despite a 37-page indictment with a long narrative on a coordinated Russian campaign of interference, the most newsworthy fact comes from the carefully placed adjective “unwitting.” It confirms that the special counsel has found no knowing coordination or collusion between these hackers and Trump officials. The indictment names 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities in alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election. It describes a coordinated effort by Russians, including the shadowy Internet Research Agency, to wage “information warfare” against the United States.
The charges themselves are not particularly novel or exotic. They involve identity fraud, wire fraud and other conventional charges. However, the context is anything but conventional. This is the largest indictment of a foreign effort to interfere with our elections, and the clear import is that the hand of the Russian government was behind this effort. Moreover, it is clear that the Russians were acting to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.

While the indictment is historic, it is hardly a surprise. Few people were questioning the Russian interference with and hacking of the election. Both Democratic and Republican leaders were in agreement on this fact, as were all of the administration’s top intelligence figures. The one hold-out seemed to be the president himself. He routinely referred to the “fake news” of the Russian investigation.

On Friday night, Dr. Sebastian Gorka gave Special Counsel Robert Mueller some unsolicited advice regarding his ongoing investigation.The former deputy assistant to President Trump and now Fox News contributor insisted that “nothing’s going to happen” as a result of the recent indictments of 13 Russian nationals because they’re already in Russia and “we can’t extradite them.”

Well, Gorka came up with an alternative for the special counsel.

“I’ve got a tip for Robert Mueller,” Gorka said. “Some other people messed with our elections, and they’re right here in America. It’s Hillary Clinton. There’s the DNC. There’s Fusion GPS. And there’s Hillary’s lawyer. They messed with the election. They stole the candidacy from Bernie Sanders and then they gave false information to a FISA court. So Mr. Mueller, if you want to actually put some people in prison, start with the Americans that perverted our election here in America.”

“Well said,” Sean Hannity reacted.

Fox News contributor Sara Carter piled on with the politicization of the Justice Department, citing FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page as well as former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, accusing them of “having an agenda.”

Thirteen people living in Russia were indicted today by the Department of Justice for conspiring to impact our elections, apparently over the Internet. No link to any American citizen and no impact on elections were found. Is that it?

When the real scandal was still being uncovered by the Nunes Memo, James Comey said “That’s it?” Now it is we the people who are saying “Is that it?” regarding the Russia collusion scandal.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions must have been happy today, having recused himself from the Russia investigation, when he left the job of reporting to the American people on “the greatest collusion scandal in American history” to his Deputy Rod Rosenstein.

Is that all that has been found in the “Russia collusion investigation,” which put our country, our President and political system in non-stop daily political turmoil for close to two years? If that is all, thirteen Russians on the Internet, the American people should be really more than disappointed. Is that a good reason for our federal law enforcement to put our whole system on hold, keep our administration hostage under a cloud of suspicion while the media was having daily field-day assault and hate speech against our “treasonous” President? This did not just hurt Trump, but it hurt our country, our priorities, our ability to fix what is necessary and our reputation in the eyes of the world.

If that’s all they have on this supposed scandal, the American people should feel scammed and cheated with the fake news, not only from the media, but worse, promoted by US law enforcement, which leaked information (by Comey) to get this investigation started by a special counsel.

It has become more urgent to ask: Why is there a special counsel in the Russia investigation? At this point, that question should be put to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel — in the federal government, it’s the lawyers’ lawyer. To get down to brass tacks: May the president of the United States be charged with obstruction based on non-criminal discretionary acts that are unquestionably within his constitutional authority as chief executive?

Readers of these columns may recall that I opposed the appointment of a special counsel and have argued that the appointment was illegitimate. This has nothing to do with Robert Mueller, who has had a distinguished law-enforcement career for which he is justly admired. It has to do with first principles and clear regulations. As a matter of principle, the law-enforcement arm of government must operate on a presumption of innocence. Therefore, in this country, a prosecutor should be assigned only if there is strong evidence that a crime has been committed; in the absence of such evidence, a prosecutor should never be assigned to investigate whether an American may have committed some unknown crime.

This, as we’ve repeatedly observed, is reflected in the regulations that control when the Justice Department may appoint a special counsel. The question should never come up unless there is some “criminal investigation or prosecution” that creates a conflict of interest for Justice Department leadership. A special counsel may be appointed only for purposes of this “criminal investigation or prosecution.” In the absence of strong evidence of a crime, there is no basis for a criminal investigation or prosecution.

The Justice Department on Friday indicted three Russian companies and 13 individuals for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the man who should be most upset is Donald J. Trump. The 37-page indictment contains no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it does show a systematic effort to discredit the result of the 2016 election. On the evidence so far, President Trump has been the biggest victim of that effort, and he ought to be furious at Vladimir Putin.

The indictment documents a broad social-media and propaganda campaign operating out of Russia and involving hundreds of people starting in 2014 that “had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system.” It certainly succeeded on that score, as Democrats and the media have claimed that Mr. Trump’s election is illegitimate because he conspired with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton. The charge has roiled American politics and made governing more difficult.

The good news for Mr. Trump is that the indictment reveals no evidence of collusion. The Russians “posted derogatory information about a number of candidates,” the indictment says, and by 2016 “included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump” and “disparaging Hillary Clinton.” But it adds that the Russians “communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign,” and it offers no claims of a conspiracy.

Readers of the indictment will be amused at the comic opera details. In or around June 2016, for example, Russians posing online as Americans “communicated with a real U.S. person affiliated with a Texas-based grassroots organization.” This “real U.S. person” vouchsafed the deep political secret that the Russians “should focus their activities on ‘purple states like Colorado, Virginia & Florida.’” Sure enough, the Russians thereafter referred to targeting “purple states.” Someone actually paid Russians to collect this insight.

“Hillary paid Steele to assemble a “salacious and unverified” dossier, with help from Blumenthal and Shearer, and paid Russian informants…..Indict them.”
On Friday, February 16, Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted thirteen Russian nationals and several Russian companies for “interfering” with the 2016 election. Paragraph one of the indictment reads:

The United States of America, through its departments and agencies, regulates the activities of foreign individuals and entities in and affecting the United States in order to prevent, disclose, and counteract improper foreign influence on U.S. elections and on the U.S. political system. U.S. law bans foreign nationals from making certain expenditures or financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing federal elections. U.S. law also bars agents of anyforeign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General. And U.S. law requires certain foreign nationals seeking entry to the United States to obtain a visa by providing truthful and accurate information to the government.

The indictment does not charge that Russians colluded or conspired with Donald Trump or the Trump campaign. The indictment does not allege that Russia affected the results of the election. The indictment does charge that Russia started its campaign in 2014, before Trump announced, so that its intent to interfere did not matter as to the candidates.

Russia denigrated Hillary, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio and generally favored Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, and Donald Trump.

The main thrust of the indictment is that the Russians “failed to register as foreign agents carrying out political activities within the United States, and obtaining visas through statements.” Had the Russians registered and stated so in their visa applications, then presumably there would be no violations, except for stealing the identities of Americans.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has brought charges against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections.

The explosive new charges allege that the Russians created false U.S. personas and stole the identities of real U.S. people in order to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, an assessment previously reached by U.S. intelligence agencies.

“This indictment serves as a reminder that people are not always who they appear to be on the Internet,” Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein said at a press briefing announcing the indictments.

“The indictment alleges that the Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy.”

President Trump, who has repeatedly cast doubt on whether Russia interfered with the election, has been briefed on the indictments, the White House said.

The efforts, which began in 2014, were connected to the so-called Internet Research Agency, a shadowy Russian operation based in St. Petersburg that leveraged Facebook and other social media platforms to spread divisive messages leading up to the 2016 election.