It Was All A Lie

It Was All A Lie

Robert Mueller has come up empty handed, exposing two years
of relentless Russiagate propaganda and the media that sold it.

By Peter Van Buren
Information Clearing House
Wednesday, March 27, 2019

The short version? Mueller is done. His report unambiguously states
there was no collusion or obstruction.

He was allowed to follow every lead unfettered in an investigation
of breathtaking depth.

It cannot be clearer.

The report summary states, “The Special Counsel’s investigation
did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it
conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the
2016 US Presidential Election…the report does not recommend any
further indictments, nor did the Special Counsel obtain any sealed
indictments that have yet to be made public.”

Robert Mueller did not charge any Americans with collusion,
coordination, or criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign
and Russia.

The special counsel also considered whether members of the Trump
campaign “coordinated,” a much lower standard defined as an
“agreement, tacit or express,” with Russian election interference
activities.

They did not.

Everything—everything—else we have been told since the summer
of 2016 falls, depending on your conscience and view of humanity,
into the realm of lies, falsehoods, propaganda, exaggerations,
political manipulation, stupid reporting, fake news, bad judgment,
simple bull, or, in the best light, hasty conclusions.

As with Dorothy’s ruby slippers, the proof of no collusion has always
been with us.

There was a guilty plea from Michael Flynn, Trump’s national
security advisor, on one count of perjury unrelated to Russiagate.

Flynn lied about a legal meeting with the Russian ambassador.

Rick Gates, deputy campaign manager, pled guilty to conspiracy
and false statements unrelated to Russiagate.

George Papadopoulos, a ZZZ-level adviser, pled guilty to making
false statements about legal contact with the Russians.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer, pled guilty to lying to Congress
about a legal Moscow real estate project.

Paul Manafort, very briefly Trump’s campaign chair, pled guilty to
conspiracy charges unrelated to Russiagate and that for the most
part occurred before he even joined the campaign.

Roger Stone, who never officially worked for Trump, awaits a trial
that will happen long after Mueller turns off the last lights in his
office.

Mueller did indict some Russian citizens for hacking, indictments
that in no way tied them to anything Trump and which will never
see trial.

Joseph Mifsud, the Russian professor who supposedly told
Papadopoulos Moscow had “thousands of Hillary’s emails,”
was never charged. Carter Page, subject of FISA surveillance
and a key actor in the Steele dossier, was also never charged.

After hours of testimony about that infamous June 2016
Trump Tower meeting to discuss Hillary’s email and other
meeting around the Moscow hotel, no one was indicted for
perjury.

The short version of Russiagate?

There was no Russiagate.

What Will Happen Next is already happening.

Democrats are throwing up smoke demanding that the full
Mueller report be made public.

Even before AG Barr released the summary, Speaker Pelosi
announced that whatever he decided to release wouldn’t be
enough.

One Dem on CNN warned they would need the FBI agents’ actual
handwritten field notes.

Adam Schiff said, “Congress is going to need the underlying
evidence because some of that evidence may go to the compromise
of the president or people around him that poses a real threat to
our national security.”

Schiff believes his committee is likely to discover things missed
by Mueller, whose report indicates his team interviewed about
500 witnesses, obtained more than 2,800 subpoenas and warrants,
executed 500 search warrants, obtained 230 orders for
communications records, and made 13 requests to foreign
governments for evidence.

Mueller may still be called to testify in front of Congress, as nothing
will ever be enough for the #Resistance cosplayers now in charge.

Overnight, the findings, made by Mueller the folk hero, the dogged
Javert, the Marine on his last patrol, suddenly weren’t worth puppy
poo unless we could all look over his shoulder and line-by-line
second guess him.

MSNBC host Joy Reid, for her part, has already accused Mueller
of covering up the crime of the century.

The New York Times headline “As Mueller Report Lands,
Prosecutorial Focus Moves to New York” says the rest—
we’re movin’ on!

Whatever impeachment/indictment fantasies diehard Dems have
left are being transferred from Mueller to the Southern District of
New York.

The SDNY’s powers, we are reminded with the tenacity of a bored
child in the back seat, are outside of Trump’s control, the Wakanda
of justice.

The new holy land is called Obstruction of Justice, though pressing
a case against Trump in a process that ultimately exonerated him
will be a tough sell.

In a sentence likely to fuel discussion for months, the attorney
general quotes Mueller, “While this report does not conclude that
the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

It sounds dramatic, but in fact it means that, while taking no
position on whether obstruction took place, Mueller concluded
that he did not find enough evidence to prosecute.

In the report, he specifically turns over to the attorney general
any decision to pursue obstruction further.

Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, meanwhile,
have already determined that the evidence does not support
prosecution of the president for obstruction of justice.

Mueller also specifically noted that obstruction of justice
requires proof of intent, and since he found that Trump,
et al, did not conspire with Russia, there can be no intent
to obstruct an investigation Trump knew could not lead to
anything.

The case is thus closed judicially (Mueller having essentially
telegraphed the defense strategy), though Democrats are
likely to quixotically keep pursuing it.

What’s left is corruption. Politico has already published a list of
25 “new” things to investigate about Trump, trying to restock the
warehouse of broken impeachment dreams (secret: it’s filled with
sealed indictments no one will ever see).

The pivot will be from treason to corruption: see the Cohen
hearings as Exhibit A.

Campaign finance minutiae, real estate assessment questions, tax
cheating from the 1980s, a failed Buffalo Bills purchase years ago…
how much credibility will any of that have now with a public
realizing it has been bamboozled on Russia?

At some point, even the congresswoman with the most Twitter
followers is going to have to admit there is no there there.

By digging the hole they are standing in even deeper, Dems will
only make it more obvious to everyone except Samantha Bee’s
interns that they have nothing.

Expect to hear “this is not the end, it’s only the end of the
beginning” more often, even if it sounds more needy than
encouraging, like a desperate ex checking in to see if you
want to meet for coffee.

Someone at the DNC might also ask how this unabashed desire to
see blood drawn from someone surnamed Trump will play out with
potential 2020 purple voters.

It is entirely possible that the electorate is weary and would like
to see somebody actually address immigration, health care, and
economic inequality now that we’ve settled the Russian question.

That is what is and likely will happen.

What should happen is a reckoning.

Even as the story fell apart over time, a large number of Americans
and nearly all of the mainstream media still believed that the
president of the United States was a Russian intelligence asset—in
Clinton’s own words, “Putin’s puppet.” How did that happen?

A mass media that bought lies about nonexistent weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq and then promised “never again!” did it again.

The New York Times, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, et al, reported
falsehoods to drive a partisan narrative.

They gleefully created a serial killer’s empty wheel-like bulletin
board covered in blurry photos connected by strands of yarn.

Another generation of journalists soiled themselves.

They elevated mongerers like Seth Abramson, Malcolm Nance,
and Lawrence Tribe, who vomited nonsense all over Twitter
every afternoon before appearing before millions on CNN.

They institutionalized unsourced gossip as their ledes—how often
were we told that the walls were closing in?

That it was Mueller time?

How often was the public put on red alert that
Trump/Sessions/Rosenstein/Whitaker/Barr was
going to fire the special prosecutor?

The mass media featured only stories that furthered the collusion
tall tale and silenced those skeptical of the prevailing narrative,
the same way they failed before the Iraq war.

The short version: there were no WMDs in Iraq.

That was a lie and the media promoted it shamelessly
while silencing skeptical voices.

Now Mueller has indicted zero Americans for working
with Russia to influence the election.

Russiagate was a lie and the media promoted it shamelessly while
silencing skeptical voices.

The same goes for the politicians, alongside Hayden, Brennan,
Clapper, and Comey, who told Americans that the president they
elected was a spy working against the United States.

None of that was accidental.

It was a narrative they desperately wanted to be true so they
could profit politically regardless of what it did to the nation.

And today the whitewashing is already ongoing (watch out for
tweets containing the word “regardless”).

Someone should contact the ghost of Consortium News’s
Robert Parry, one of the earliest and most consistent skeptics
of Russiagate, and tell him he was right all along.

That might be the most justice we see out of all this.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51336.htm