No Loss for Words

So if Robert Mueller found no evidence of an improper relationship between Donald Trump’s campaign and agents of any foreign country that rose to a level worthy of indictments for anyone, was there evidence of an improper relationship at any level?  Trump was a businessman with an international reputation so it’s not unreasonable for him to have previous relationships with foreign governments.  Having said that, were any of those relationships such that his patriotism was ever called into question?

This two-year nightmare we just completed should provide some closure for the critics of Donald Trump but it probably won’t.  The question of him possibly conspiring with Russia or any other government should have been determined definitively.  Mueller said there was none.  His job was to find out if Trump conspired with Russia in any way.  He found nothing.  How many ways can you say there was no there there?

The apparent need to exhaustively investigate Trump only calls into questions the motives of the ones calling for the investigation.  If they have knowledge of or evidence of criminal activity by Trump, wouldn’t you think they would have shared it with Mueller?

What the incessant demand for Trump’s hide does for me is to reset the bar for investigation of every candidate.  We need to codify the scope of this investigation so we will never elect a candidate who’s ever accomplished a thing in his/her life.

Imagine what would have happened if anyone in the press demanded to know as much about Barrack Obama as they want to know about Trump.  Fact is, Obama’s list of accomplishments prior to being elected president was non-existent so he wouldn’t have had to worry about much. We still don’t know a lot about him because the press didn’t bother to investigate him for fear of what they might find.

During the Obama years, there was no shortage of topics to investigate if the press was inclined, but they weren’t.  I know I had questions about Fast & Furious that warranted investigation, but we heard nothing by the Department of Justice or the press.  Lois Lerner took the Fifth rather than answer questions about the IRS treatment of conservative organizations. That could have been a good story if the press had bothered to investigate even a little.  Where were the high standards of journalism during those years?  Where was the DOJ investigation of crimes then?

Since we all suffered through two years investigating Trump, I’m okay if we spend a couple more finishing the job. We spent time and money looking into Donald Trump when there wasn’t any evidence that he had committed a crime.  Federal prosecutors told us time and again that before you begin an investigation you need evidence of a crime.  You can’t just start investigating because you don’t like someone; and yet, they did.

In the case of Hillary Clinton, we had lots of evidence of crimes; many of which would send you to prison for many years.  And yet, the DOJ chose not to investigate.  Why?  What we learned with Paul Manefort is it’s never too late unless the statue of limitations has expired.  The clock is ticking.

As we all suffered through the Trump investigation, some because we wanted to find evidence of a crime and others because we needed to certify that there wasn’t a crime, it became clear that we all need closure.  Now it’s time for the other shoe to fall.  Those of us who wanted justice served by investigating Clinton need closure too.

The fact that in the face of a mountain of evidence there was no investigation of Clinton suggested that there were other rotten apples in the barrel.  The things we’ve learned in the course of investigating Trump exposed the corruption in the Obama government more than in the Clinton candidacy.  To what degree her campaign conspired with the Obama administration we don’t know yet.  But because of the efforts to sink Trump we’ve found an unbelievable conspiracy involving members of the Obama administration at the highest levels.  It could be that Hillary Clinton going to jail won’t be the big news when everything is said and done.  The scope of criminal activity seems so vast its mind boggling to contemplate.

What we’ve learned from the Trump investigation is that we start with evidence of a crime and follow the evidence wherever it takes us.  If it had taken down Trump, a lot of folks would have been cheering.  If pursuing the evidence ends up exposing people in high places of crimes, so be it.  I only hope the press is as enthusiastic in pursuit of justice as they were in pursuit of injustice.

Now that the Mueller report has been submitted, what is the next step?  I guess it depends upon what Mueller was actually investigating.

I think we have reasonable agreement that foreign governments or their surrogates have used technology to influence American elections to some degree for several years.  The Mueller investigation was predicated on there being a relationship between Donald Trump and Russian efforts to interfere.

Keep in mind that our government has known about Russian efforts and those of several other countries to interfere in one way or another for years.  President Obama knew about them and yet he still minimized the actual impact on any election we could point to. He never instructed his Attorney General to investigate Russian meddling; probably because he knew Hillary Clinton was actually in bed with the Russians. That should be incorporated into the discussion.  Foreign interference in our elections was never identified as a significant threat to our country before Donald Trump came on the scene.

What we learned in the course of the nearly two-year investigation was that people associated with Donald Trump misled investigators.  Some like Mike Flynn and Paul Manafort might spend years in prison for their lack of candor.  The important conclusion we should arrive at is Trump and his team didn’t interact with Russia inappropriately.

My personal view is that Mike Flynn was targeted because he was a strong advocate for American security evidenced by his dismissal from the Obama Administration for his criticism of the administration’s incompetence. Flynn was a target of the Obama holdovers in the DOJ and FBI from the time he signed on with Trump.  At that time, there was discussion about how Flynn knew where the bodies were buried in the Obama Administration because of his very high position.  His relationship with Trump represented a threat to exposure of evidence that Obama Administration officials were involved in criminal activities, even up to treason.  It was absolutely a priority to discredit Mike Flynn and hopefully silence him.  Surprise, Surprise, Mike Flynn was snuffed.

The good news now is that we might get to see the evidence they tried mightily to keep in the dark.  After two years of this torture there are indications that the new Attorney General might be shifting the attention of the DOJ over to investigating the real crimes committed going back as far as 2014.

We learned that in the pursuit of Paul Manafort that timeliness of the crime is not important.  He is going to jail for crimes he committed years before Trump ever heard of him.  Members of Congress and TV pundits were clear that allegations of criminal acts warrant investigation and if there is actual evidence, prosecution should follow.  Prosecutors squeezed Manafort mightily and they came up with old crimes that would ruin his life moving forward, but they didn’t get a thing implicating Trump in anything dirty.

The lesson is that allegations of crimes by government officials regardless of their timeline or intent are worthy of investigation and if there is evidence of crimes then prosecution is required.  Paul Manafort will most likely spend the remainder of his life in prison for minor crimes so I don’t think it’s improper to demand that every one of the folks at the Department of Justice and FBI who conspired to take down a President (regardless of their suspicions about Trump) are pursued and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

We cannot sweep this under a rug and hope it goes away.  Crimes against our country demand investigation.  Covering up crimes against our country demand investigation.  Conspiring to undermine an election demand investigation.  Destroying evidence of Espionage and National Security crimes demand investigation.  Obstructing justice by anyone in the government or by anyone in a political campaign to prevent exposure of criminal acts by others demands investigation.

The model for the Department of Justice moving forward needs to reflect the aggression and zeal of the Trump-Russia Special Counsel investigation.  We are entitled to justice but more importantly, we need justice to restore the integrity of our institutions.

Attorney General Barr needs to get on with the process.  The time clock is running.  A Presidential election could squelch an ongoing investigation in 2020.  Start with the evidence we all are aware of and work your way up.  Shake the tree.  If you can squeeze lower level rats to sing, we can work our way to the divas at the top of the pyramid.  Let the evidence lead us to the criminals.