This week, we learned that former FBI Director James Comey will probably be a witness in any proceeding brought by his close friend Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Rod Rosenstein, a former Mueller staffer, appointed Mueller because Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who handed the oversight of this matter to his Deputy Rosenstein, had recused himself and that recusal was based on a misreading of the law by career Department of Justice attorneys. Sessions’s recusal, moreover, was engendered by illegal leaks. And the investigation by Mueller is being fanned by more of them.
At the center of the narrative is James Comey, who, in a girlish recital, testified about a brief conversation he had with the President in which he was told General Flynn was a “good guy” and that the President hoped the FBI investigation would “let this go.”
Comey has a long history of prosecuting questionable obstruction cases. Among other overreaches, it was Comey, who with almost certain knowledge (as I have explained previously) that there was no leak of a covert CIA agent by Dick Cheney or any of his staff, sicced former colleague, Southern District of New York (SDNY) prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald on Lewis Libby and got a conviction on a dubious process crime.
He also confessed to having leaked through a third-party friend, Columbia University Law Professor Daniel C. Richman, his version of the discussion with the President.
His explanation was self-serving and inconsistent.
Comey wanted to prevent the appointment of a special counsel for Hillary Clinton, who was the subject of an FBI investigation, but he wanted to “prompt” the appointment of a special counsel for President Trump, who was not the subject of an FBI investigation.
He understood that the appointment of a special counsel “would send the message, ‘Uh-huh, there’s something here’” and that it would be “many months later or a year later” before the special counsel would announce that, in fact, “there was no case there.”
Any questions?
Here’s one: Is President Trump alleged to have done anything illegal or is this investigation just war, by any means necessary, against someone who has put a lot of swamp creatures out of power and out of work?
Comey revealed to Congress in March that the bureau was investigating “possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign,” yet he flatly refused to tell the public, until his testimony on Thursday, that Trump wasn’t under investigation.
Comey testified that after he was fired, he orchestrated a selective leak in order to prompt a lengthy special counsel investigation of the president, knowing full well that the FBI had found no reason to place the president under investigation.
That is genuinely deplorable.
In the first place, the "Russian collusion" accusation is utterly pretextual, concocted by the media and the Democrats, and it began when President Obama ordered the intelligence chiefs to compose a report on Russian Interference. The Obama administration then spread the flimsy report, hastily put together across the intelligence community, through a supine if not complicit media.
If these leaks are investigated and come from Mueller’s shop, the leakers should be prosecuted. But they could come from many sources -- congressmen and senators on the relevant committees, their many staffers (most of whom supported Hillary) their colleagues in the Department of Justice, the FBI and Intelligence Agencies -- in other words, the Deep State. They may think they are only harming the President, but to my eye they are harming their ally, Mueller as well.
Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein warned this week about relying on stories attributed to “anonymous officials”. But I am certain given the partisan interests of the press and the leakers, they will continue.
In the meantime, Comey, who leaked at least one or more of his self-serving memos -- memos he surely wrote in anticipation of buttressing his testimony in any criminal trial as “recollection recorded,” an exception to the hearsay rule -- turned them over to the FBI. That agency has refused a FOIA request to hand them over on the grounds that releasing them could “reasonably interfere with enforcement proceedings” because they are part of “a pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding”.
President’s Trump’s “one great advantage in all of this is that he has done nothing wrong, notes Spengler. Let’s hope that advantage outweighs all the dishonest maneuvering by the Deep State.
The New York Times characterizes special prosecutor Robert Mueller as being independent and fair:
Robert S. Mueller III managed in a dozen years as F.B.I. director to stay above the partisan fray, carefully cultivating a rare reputation for independence and fairness.
Let’s fact-check the Times …
Anthrax Frame-Up
Mueller presided over the incredibly flawed anthrax investigation.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office says the FBI’s investigation was “flawed and inaccurate”. The investigation was so bogus that a senator called for an “independent review and assessment of how the FBI handled its investigation in the anthrax case.”
The head of the FBI’s anthrax investigation says the whole thing was a sham. He says that the FBI higher-ups “greatly obstructed and impeded the investigation”, that there were “politically motivated communication embargos from FBI Headquarters”.
Unsure About Assassination of U.S. Citizens Living On U.S. Soil
Rather than saying “of course not!”, Mueller said that he wasn’t sure whether Obama had the right to assassinate Americans living on American soil.
Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley commented at the time:
One would hope that the FBI Director would have a handle on a few details guiding his responsibilities, including whether he can kill citizens without a charge or court order.
He appeared unclear whether he had the power under the Obama Kill Doctrine or, in the very least, was unwilling to discuss that power. For civil libertarians, the answer should be easy: “Of course, I do not have that power under the Constitution.”
Spying on Americans
Mueller participated in one of the greatest expansions of mass surveillance in human history. As we noted in 2013:
NBC News reports:
NBC News has learned that under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, the government has been collecting records on every phone call made in the U.S.
On March 2011, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee:
We put in place technological improvements relating to the capabilities of a database to pull together past emails and future ones as they come in so that it does not require an individualized search.
Remember, the FBI – unlike the CIA – deals with internal matters within the borders of the United States.
On May 1st of this year, former FBI agent Tim Clemente told CNN’s Erin Burnett that all present and past phone calls were recorded:
Torture
FBI special agent Colleen Rowley points out:
Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any “war crimes files” were made to disappear. Not only did “collect it all” surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller’s (and then Comey’s) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.
Post 9/11 Round-Up
FBI special agent Rowley also notes:
Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political pressures. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the “post 9/11 round-up” of about 1,000 immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI “progress” in fighting terrorism. Consequently, some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that none turned out to be terrorists.
9/11 Cover Up
Rowley points out:
The FBI and all the other officials claimed that there were no clues, that they had no warning [about 9/11] etc., and that was not the case. There had been all kinds of memos and intelligence coming in. I actually had a chance to meet Director Mueller personally the night before I testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee … [he was] trying to get us on his side, on the FBI side, so that we wouldn’t say anything terribly embarrassing. …
Mueller’s FBI also obstructed the 9/11 investigation in many other ways. For example, an FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location. And see this.
And Kristen Breitweiser – one of the four 9/11 widows instrumental in forcing the government to form the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 2001 attacks – points out:
Mueller and other FBI officials had purposely tried to keep any incriminating information specifically surrounding the Saudis out of the Inquiry’s investigative hands. To repeat, there was a concerted effort by the FBI and the Bush Administration to keep incriminating Saudi evidence out of the Inquiry’s investigation. And for the exception of the 29 full pages, they succeeded in their effort.
Conclusion
Rather than being “above the fray”, Mueller is an authoritarian and water-carrier for the status quo and the powers-that-be.
As Coleen Rowley puts it:
It seems clear that based on his history and close “partnership” with Comey, called “one of the closest working relationships the top ranks of the Justice Department have ever seen,” Mueller was chosen as Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want him to do.Mueller didn’t speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn’t speak out against torture. He didn’t speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn’t tell the truth about 9/11. He is just “their man.”
And:
While not the worst of the bunch, neither Comey nor Mueller deserve their Jimmy Stewart ‘G-man’ reputations for absolute integrity but have merely been, along the lines of George ‘Slam Dunk’ Tenet, capable and flexible politicized sycophants to power, that enmeshed them in numerous wrongful abuses of power along with presiding over plain official incompetence. It’s sad that political partisanship is so blinding and that so few people remember the actual sordid history.
It’s another week in Washington and another horror show. This time it was Attorney General Jeff Sessions being grilled by Senators on whether, when, and how he might have met with certain Russians, or any Russian, or someone who might actually know a Russian. In addition to fishing for any inconsistency that could be used to support an accusation of obstruction of justice or perjury – the usual sleazy methodology of politically motivated investigations here – the transparent aim was to further poison the well on any possible initiative to improve ties with Moscow.
The strategy appears to be working. The Russian Embassy in Washington confirms that for the first time since the Russian Federation’s founding the State Department did not send pro forma national day greetings. Perhaps the bureaucrats were afraid they would be tainted and themselves become targets of multiple investigations into «collusion» with the Kremlin. (Luckily, this intrepid Washington analyst has no qualms about such associations.)
Or more likely, they themselves are part of the Russophobic mob undermining the White House.
It has been reported that soon after the inauguration Trump sought to open dialogue with the Kremlin and set an early summit with President Vladimir Putin. This produced a hysterical counteraction from the Deep State.
As reported by conservative columnist and former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan:
«The State Department was tasked with working out the details.
«Instead, says Daniel Fried, the coordinator for sanctions policy, he received ‘panicky’ calls of ‘Please, my God, can you stop this?’.
«Operatives at State, disloyal to the president and hostile to the Russia policy on which he had been elected, collaborated with elements in Congress to sabotage any detente. They succeeded.
«‘It would have been a win-win for Moscow,’ said Tom Malinowski of State, who boasted last week of his role in blocking a rapprochement with Russia. State employees sabotaged one of the principal policies for which Americans had voted, and they substituted their own».
But now it gets even worse. This week Congress moved legislation designed to codify in statute sanctions imposed on Russia by Barack Obama over Ukraine and evidence-free charges of Russian election interference. Provisions for a presidential waiver, which are standard in any sanctions legislation, are unusually narrow. Congressional proponents are clear that their aim is to take the matter out of the president’s hands. Democrats, seemingly devoid of any other policy agenda or ideas, vow to keep banging the Russia drum through the 2018 Congressional elections.
When all is said and done, there are lots of reasons the political class hates Trump. His heresies on immigration and trade are near the top of the list. But make no mistake: for the Deep State and its mainstream media arm, demonizing Russia and Vladimir Putin personally is a dangerous obsession. (There is reason to suspect «Russian collusion» figured in the thinking of a fanatical Leftist’s shooting attack on Republican Congressmen: «The shooter also signed a petition calling for an investigation into Trump-Russia ties, confirming he was radicalized by the mainstream media’s obsession with conspiracy theories about Russia interfering with the election».)
With regard to substance, relatively little attention has been accorded in American media to Putin’s flat accusation that U.S. «special services» have supported terrorists, including in Chechnya. Of course anyone paying attention would know that arming jihadists is a standard part of U.S. policy, going back at least to Afghanistan in the 1980s and repeated in Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, and today in Syria. Indeed, as early as the 1950s the U.S. had established a very close relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist elements as a weapon against Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and Baathists in Syria and Iraq, who Washington thought were a little too cozy with the Soviet Union and far too socialist and secular for the taste of our pals in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.
We can only imagine how completely different the world would be if the U.S. were to recognize that Russia is a country that in many respects is not that different from the United States or Europe and that we had common interests. But for the U.S. Deep State, that would amount to switching sides in a global conflict, where we see jihadists essentially as «freedom fighters» against a geopolitical adversary. These same clueless «elites» are then puzzled when their carefully nurtured, cuddly, «moderate» jihad terrorists attack us back here at home.
This irrational pattern is at the root of the hostility of American policymakers toward Russia and any prospect of normalizing bilateral ties. In large part, it’s what underlies the «soft coup» being directed against Trump, of which the Sessions pillorying was an episode. (A late report based on unreliable, unverified sources suggests that Special Counsel on the Russia probe, Robert Mueller, is expanding his investigation to include potential obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump. Mueller, a close personal friend of ousted FBI Director James Comey, has already packed his team with partisan Democrats.)
Those behind this attempted coup think we can continue to treat Russia as though it were a minor power of the magnitude of Serbia, Iraq, Libya, or Syria, or even Iran. They think if we just keep pushing, pushing, pushing, either the Russians will collapse or back down. They will do everything possible to box Trump in and prevent him from pursuing any path other than the disastrous course laid out by Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barack Obama. They can see no other outcome than removing Putin and returning Russia to the condition of a Yeltsin-era vassal state – a term Putin used in the Stone interview – or, better yet, its territorial breakup along the lines suggested by the late Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Will the Oliver Stone interview change any minds? It’s too soon to tell. But if the soft coup against Trump succeeds, it might not matter, since then America could not be considered a self-governing constitutional republic even in a residual sense. We may have already passed our own Rubicon and just don’t know it yet.
After the Washington Post-New York Times-CNN axis got the public worked into a lather by effectively trying President Donald Trump and his administration in the court of public opinion, Americans are desperate to see somebody held accountable for…wait…what is it again? Collusion? Obstruction? The narrative changes so quickly, it's difficult keeping track.
Enter Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who told Fox’s Sean Hannity on Friday that the investigators who’ve been hired by Special Counsel Robert Mueller won’t quit until they’ve found their own Scooter Libby-type figure to play the role of political pariah.
"Somebody" will likely go to jail following the FBI's investigation into Russian election meddling, but said it won't be President Trump.
“There are too many lawyers who are high powered to go home without a scalp. They're going to get somebody. I don't think they're going to get the president, but they're going to get somebody, and they're going to get him for something. And they're probably going to go to jail," Gingrich told Fox News's Sean Hannity.
Investigators smell blood in the water, Gingrich said. And it’s making them desperately hungry for what will likely be a historic bust.
"This is like watching an old-fashioned Western movie. This is an Indian hunting party," Gingrich said. "They're out looking for a couple scalps, and they're not going to go home until they get some."
The hypocrisy of the investigation into Trump’s inner circle is staggering, as Gingrich rightfully pointed out. Even high-ranking Democrats are now questioning whether one of their own, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, illegally tried to influence the outcome of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information. Former FBI Director James Comey admitted as much during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in May that the suspicious “impromptu” meeting inspired him to unilaterally announce the end of the Clinton investigation because he was worried about the optics.
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