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Partisan Political Origin of the Mueller Probe
It has been stated (notably, on the latest Commentary podcast) “There’s nothing illegitimate about the Special Counsel’s probe.” Is that really so? Consider the following:
1. It was begun as a counter-intelligence investigation (carrying on the previously existing counter-intelligence investigation of arguably partisan origins). The Special Counsel statute does not permit authorization of a counter-intelligence investigation. It must be a criminal investigation with the exact criminal events to be investigated explicitly spelled out (and there are limits as to what can be investigated based on evidence uncovered that is not pertinent to those crimes). The original authorization declared no such possible crimes.
2. Two months later, Rosenstein attempted to correct the error in point 1 by naming a specific crime, namely, Paul Manafort’s Ukrainian work (whether he properly registered as a foreign agent and whether he properly reported his earnings for tax purposes). However, this matter is unrelated to the 2016 election. Attorney General Sessions recused himself on matters related to the 2016 election only. If a Special Counsel needed to be appointed to pursue a matter unrelated to the 2016 election, the Special Counsel statute empowers the Attorney General (not his assistant) to appoint one and designate the specific matter to be investigated. Rosenstein may have exceeded the authority that fell to him by Sessions’ recusal.
3. The counterintelligence probe was begun based on sketchy, uncorroborated “evidence” provided by Christopher Steele. We are in a bad way as a country if someone is able to whisper fictitious rumors about someone to the most powerful investigative body in the world (in history) and that body declines to corroborate the rumors but proceeds to invade the privacy of an organization that just happens, not by coincidence, to have a good prospect of unseating the political party empowering the probe and whose political goals widely diverge from the incumbent President’s and his party’s nominee.
4. The provenance and funding of the sketchy, uncorroborated “evidence” implicating the opposing political party’s campaign turns out to have been the presidential campaign whose nominee was a former employee of the sitting President and belongs to his political party and was likely to keep in her employ many of the high-ranking officials who started the investigation in the first place. They had a blatant conflict of interest running from the lower-ranking investigators (Strzok and Page – whose texts belie their disgust with and opposition to Trump and his campaign to the extent that they explicitly declare a motive of hindering the campaign) to the high-ranking investigators who have since explicitly declared their virulent opposition to Trump in no uncertain terms or who had received secret private audience with Hillary Clinton’s husband during the campaign or whose spouse had received sizeable sums of money to run a campaign for office (under the organization of the President’s political party).
5. Rather than declare and disclaim the partisan conflicts of interest so that they could be fairly examined by the supervising judiciary (i.e., FISA court) and legislative bodies charged with oversight (i.e., Gang of Eight), not to mention the people of the United States (nearly 67 million of whom voted for Trump), they kept this information hidden and did their best to obscure the discovery of these conflicts as well as the provenance of the sketchy evidence against the Trump campaign.
6. And after Trump was duly elected by the people of the United States and certified by the Electoral College as the next President, the investigators plotted to hide from Trump that his campaign was under investigation. We know this because Susan Rice memorialized a meeting between high-ranking investigators and then-President Obama the subject of which was the extent to which knowledge of the investigation could be kept from Trump.
7. The investigators (Comey, Brennan, Clapper) have subsequently lied about various aspects of the initial investigation (sometimes under oath). Explanations of the timeline and focus of the initial investigation have shifted over time, from Page in Sept 2016 to Papadopoulos on July 31, 2016, to the launching of a confidential informant at various Trump campaign members in “late Spring” 2016. Each version of events betrayed an earlier beginning and eventually predated the Steele Dossier that contained the bulk of the uncorroborated “evidence” against Trump’s campaign. It is a matter of law that false exculpatory statements can be considered evidence of guilt. In this case, misleading statements used to justify the investigation based on tissue-thin hearsay (as well as material that would have to climb Everest to get to the level of hearsay) can be used to impeach the legitimacy of the investigation.
Yeah, but other than that, there is nothing illegitimate about it.
Published in Politics
The $17 million spent so far on the Mueller probe keeps hitting the news reporting with suggestions that this sunk cost is reason enough for the fishing to continue because a deliverable is needed.
This is the typical statist mindset, that government effort must produce a result regardless of utility or justification. In other words, give me something, right or wrong, the very essence of what identifies what is bad about putting unlimited trust in government.
This must be left behind.
And today at National Review, the always enlightening Andy McCarthy joins in on exposing this entire Special Counsel travesty, and its origins, with … The Papadopoulos Case Needs A Closer Look.
It’s been two years now. No collusion and plenty of changed stories regarding such criminal evidence necessary in order launch this now in hindsight witch-hunt concocted by the 0bama/clinton machine and in cahoots with all the tools of the police and espionage powers of the Federal Government. Can you say “coverup”? Sure you can.
In order to continue to support this farce and travesty that is the Mueller Special Counsel, one really has to require a “willing suspension of disbelief”.
I don’t know what the criterion is for a ‘matter’ to get on the DoJ Inspector General’s list to look into but several significant questions have been raised regarding improper actions in initiating the current Special Counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller. Makes sense to me for the IG to take a look. Seems like exactly the kind of situation for which IG’s were established.
Andrew McCarthy really tore into this point, and he caught the curious wording of the charge.
Is Mueller psychic? Can he really know what impression Papadopoulos was under? How did he determine that?
Once a total stranger in a bus station told me that his girlfriend was a witch for the CIA. He was quite emphatic about it. Can Mueller tell me what I made of this particular piece of intelligence? What impression that I was under?
Sharyl Atkisson’s been keeping a “collusion against Trump” timeline.
Sundance at Conservative Treehouse, too. He make an important point:
which may answer D.C. McAllister’s question:
Sundance (emphasis added):
Clapper’s connections in British Intelligence became useful here.
Tom Fitton at Judicial Watch:
Left Coast on comments from Sundance at the Conservative Tree House:
Bingo. I think we have a winner.
Sundance has nailed the reason for the spying. Mike Rogers put an end to the “CIA Subcontractors” misusing the massive CIA data mining database which has detailed and potentially embarrassing or damaging information on every single American citizen on April 16th, 2016. ( He began the audit in March). It appears this “CIA Subcontractor” ploy allowed the Obama Administration to spy deeply into the personal lives of any American citizen it viewed as a potential political threat. Right after Rogers shut this atrocity down, Brennan called a ‘working group” made of the Obama loyalists in the CIA, NSA, FBI and Justice to find another way to spy on the American people and it looks like they stumbled upon using “human sources”.
Sorta kinda Corroboration of DC Mc Allister from that noted right wing rag “The Hill” by John Solomon:
“The bridge to the Russia investigation wasn’t erected in Moscow during the summer of the 2016 election.”
“It originated earlier, 1,700 miles away in London, where foreign figures contacted Trump campaign advisers and provided the FBI with hearsay allegations of Trump-Russia collusion, bureau documents and interviews of government insiders reveal. These contacts in spring 2016 — some from trusted intelligence sources, others from Hillary Clinton supporters — occurred well before FBI headquarters authorized an official counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016.
The new timeline makes one wonder: Did the FBI follow its rules governing informants? –The Hill”
From Zerohedge:
“The revelation of purposeful contact initiated by alleged confidential human sources prior to any FBI investigation is troublesome,” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), an ally of President Trump and chairman of a House subcommittee that’s taking an increasingly aggressive oversight role in the scandal, told me. “This new information begs the questions: Who were the informants working for, who were they reporting to and why has the [Department of Justice] and FBI gone to such great lengths to hide these contacts?”
Uh-OH!
More from Zerohedge:
“Retired assistant FBI director for intelligence Kevin Brock also has questions. Brock supervised an agency update to their longstanding bureau rules governing the use of sources while working under then-director Robert Mueller. These rules prohibit the FBI from directing a human source to perform espionage on an American until a formal investigation has been opened – paperwork and all.”
THE SPY WHO CAME IN TO BE TOLD
Complete speculation alert: I suspect that Operation Collusion! is really only a diversion away from these affairs. We’re they counting on this much cooperation from the stablishment politicians and establishment press? I suspect they’re all pleasantly surprised by just how easy this has been for them . Someone might face some consequences for Collusion! (Comey or McCabe), but it’s getting less and less likely that any action will ever be taken on any of those other scandals. Mission accomplished, with some added political benefits.
From Doug Ross at the Daily Caller:
“Simona Mangiante tells me that George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to Mueller after being told he would be charged as a foreign agent of Israel. Special Counsel declined comment.”
Well, well, well. Mueller again gets a conviction not on the evidence but through threats of greater convictions of crimes he knows did not happen. Justice be damned. He is determined to get that Trump scalp by any means necessary.
Some in certain quarters were beginning to doubt the honesty of Papadoulos and others who were indicted by Mueller because they went down too easy. Well, I guess maybe not.
The behavior of Mueller using these ” standard prosecutorial practices” that use the heavy hand of our way too powerful government with a nearly complete disregard for the truth and actual justice implicates the whole of our justice system as being out of control. Conviction rates are way too high ( above 99%), which is not statistically viable in any sense. Just another case of our government run amok.
Okay, some people like Sundance still don’t know if Papa is a spy or not , largely I think because he agreed to spy for Mueller on Trump to avoid further convictions and because his girlfriend/wife Simona was connected to Halper.
However, a couple of points:
A. Simona’s charge is an explosive one. It helps build the case that Mueller is out of control. Why if Papa is working for Mueller or on Mueller’s side would he have her do that? Simona is not helping Mueller now. Not at all.
B. Papadopoulos had written papers on Eastern Mediterranean oil drilling as early as 2014. That is the subject that Halper paid Papa to write a paper on because that was Papa’s “expertise” but allegedly Halper was paid by Israel for that paper so that is how Mueller was able to charge Papa as being an agent for a foreign government, (Israel). It so reeks of a set up.
C. Papadopoulos had worked for the Ben Carson campaign before Admiral Rogers put the kabosh on the CIA “subcontractors” exploitation of the CIA datelining database, where the CIA under Brennan was allegedly investigating political opponents. As an political opponent of Hillary, it is likely the CIA had a deep file on Papadoulos. Perhaps, something in Papa’s file led the CIA to believe Papa could be exploited or was vulnerable for a set up. The now disappeared “Maltese Fulcrum”, CIA connection Joseph Misfud targeted Papa as one of the first targets in the spring of 2016 and we don’t really know why.
D. From Sundance at the Conservative Tree House:
“On January 27th, 2017, after over a year of covert surveillance on Trump campaign officials [via FISA searches, FISA(702) Title-1 surveilance, SIGNIT and HUMIT), the FBI first sat down to interview low level campaign aide George Papadopoulos. (likely FBI Special Agent Jennifer Zelski Edwards, and/or FBI Agent Peter Strzok, participated)”
“Six months later, July 27th, 2017 the FBI arrested George Papadopoulos at the airport and charged him with giving false information to FBI investigators during that interview. The very next day, July 28th, 2017, the DOJ filed a motion to seal with the DC federal court to hide the arrest. (FBI Agent Jennifer Zelski Edwards)”
“From the motion to seal, we discover Robert Mueller leveraged the July 27th, 2017, charges against George Papadopoulos to make him a cooperating witness for the special counsel. The July 28th, 2017, motion to seal was transparently intended to disguise the arrest of Papapdopoulos and his subsequent role as a “proactive cooperator”:”.
What if Papadopoulos is telling the truth, which I believe he is, btw. What we have then is the CIA out of blue targeting him, setting him up and then charging him with a crime; all to get him to work as a “proactive cooperator” against Trump. This operation is so like out of a Police State saga from Hitler’s Gestapo.
It is so thoroughly disgusting.
What? Sorry, that makes no sense. If I am paid for perfectly legal work, and the source of the funds are the Red Chinese and those funds are paid to me by Peter Robinson, who hired me, that does not make me an agent of Red China! I’m pretty sure one of the elements of that crime is, you to to be aware you are acting on behalf of a foreign power.
Maybe Mueller has sufficient evidence to make an arguable case he is an agent of Israel. Or, maybe this is more fifteenth hand speculation based on what someone read in the New York Times.
Steve C. “What? Sorry, that makes no sense.”
You are correct, it does not make sense, but as some sort of excuse to charge Papadopoulos as an agent of foreign power it does.
Sorry for the long post from DC McAllister, but one of things if you read her post carefully, is that Mueller has to find someone who is “an agent of a foreign power” otherwise his investigation does not conform to what is allowed and is illegitimate. Who amongst those in and around Trump can honestly be indicted as an “agent of a foreign power”? No one that’s who. That’s the problem for Mueller.
However, as others have pointed out, Mueller’s investigation long ago jumped the rails as a criminal investigation; none of his evidence could in the end hold up in court. He has violated too many laws, too many rights, and too many required legal procedures to the extent that his whole investigation would all be throw out if he proceeds to trial. But that apparently is not his goal. His goal is to drum up some sort of “impeachable” high crime and/or misdemeanor that the Progressives and the GOP Establishment can use to impeach Trump. This is a political witch hunt masquerading as a criminal investigation, which wants only to find something/ anything to nail Trump with. Damn proper legal procedure and rule of Law, the Left and the GOPe want their Trump scalp! But that is also why this “investigation” is so illegitimate and dangerous.
It’s one thing for Mueller to wave the charge of lying to the FBI under his nose. I’m guessing there’s enough “proof”. But, assuming he’s not an agent of a foreign power, what sense does it make to threaten him with that charge? This just seems silly.