Archive for March 26th, 2019

March 26, 2019

Barrel of Bad Apples

by Steve Dana

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.