Summary: This post will save you a great deal of time by revealing the key news about the Mueller Report. As an alternative to the endless stream of chatter about RussiaGate, I enclose some K-Pop. It is equally informative and more entertaining.
Alice looks at RussiaGate.
See the Attorney General’s letter to Congress about the Mueller Report. It tells us a few tidbits. Bottom line: It weakly resolves the most important question. It leaves unanswered other big concerns.
(a) Mueller spent a great deal of money on his investigation.
(b) They investigated the primary charge against President Trump.
“The report explains that the Special Counsel and his staff thoroughly investigated allegations that members of the Presidential Campaign of Donald Trump, and others associated with it, conspired with the Russian government …”
(c) The Report recommends no further indictments. {Mueller’s indictment made so far are irrelevant to the primary charge against Trump.}
(d) The Report repeats accusations of Russian interference in the election that have been decisively disproved by hard information released by the major social media companies. Mueller’s indictment of 12 Russians is showmanship, since Mueller provided no evidence and most will never risk their fates to the corrupt and dysfunctional US courts.
“The report outlines Russian efforts to influence the election and documents crimes committed by people associated with the Russian government in connection with those efforts.”
(e) The Report equivocally clears Trump of the charges in (d). They also did not prove the nonexistence of dragons.
“The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that Trump or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with the Russians in its {sic, s/b “their”} efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election. As the report states, ‘{The} investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.’”
(f) The Report repeats disputed (and imo, implausible) claims about the DNC hack (with the FBI’s uncharacteristically gentle and gullible response to it).
“The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations …”
(g) Mueller punted on whether Trump obstructed the investigation. This gives the Democrats in Congress an opening to continue the crusade.
“The Special Counsel therefore did not draw a conclusion – one way or another – as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction. …this leaves it to the Attorney General to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime.”
How much of the report will they release to us?
No more than they want us to know. They will probably use the “protect secrets” gag as an excuse. The FBI has used that before during RussiaGate, only for us to eventually learn they were lying (see Greenwald’s brutal revelation of the Stefan Halper affair).
Which brings us to the key issue: What is RussiaGate? We do not know. We might never know. All we have are questions.
(a) What was the nature of what looks like a conspiracy within the FBI and DoJ to prevent the election of Trump – since there was little evidence he was a Russian agent?
(b) Why did so many people believe the core of RussiaGate, the Steele dossier? Large parts were old news. Other key parts were obviously fake. Among the many reasons, why would Russian officials blow the biggest intel ops ever? Supposedly they told Steele that Trump was in their bag just to be friendly. When will Putin have them slowly and painfully executed for treason?
(c) Why did the RussiaGate hysteria spread so widely and quickly, despite the lack of evidence for it? Why did so many journalists and political analysts make bold certain claims about Trump and Russia that were (to be generous) exaggerated or delusional? Not just by loons, like CNN’s Rachel Maddow, but sensible stalwarts on the Left.
“There’s really no question about Trump/Putin collusion, and Trump in fact continues to act like Putin’s puppet.”
— By Paul Krugman on 17 November 2017.“We’ve basically crossed the line into treason now – and a whole party is acquiescing”
— Tweet by Krugman on May 19 about GOP efforts to unmask the intel operative placed in the Trump campaign. See Glenn Greenwald’s decisive rebuttal.
(d) Why have the Democratic Party’s leaders elected to chase the RussiaGate chimera, rather than attack Trump’s far-right policies — breaking the remnants of America’s unions, weakening protections for the environment, breaking the government’s solvency with tax cuts for the rich and corporations, etc? They could attack him for breaking most of his campaign promises, revealed him to be a faux populist? Perhaps their policies do not differ much from Trump’s, as both parties are supported by the same plutocrats — so they needed something else to distinguish Tweedledee from Tweedledum.
(e) What is the Deep State’s involvement in RussiaGate? Did they exploit it for their own purposes (assuming it can be seen as a unitary entity)? Did they create it? Many actions of government officials look like political interference (even agitprop), not investigations. Some were both incendiary, false – and appear designed to ruin US – Russian relations. For example, see Caitlin Johnstone’s description of their actions before the Trump – Putin summit. Such as this …
“The nation’s top intelligence officer said on Friday that the persistent danger of Russian cyberattacks today was akin to the warnings the United States had of stepped-up terror threats ahead of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”
— NYT on 18 July 2018. One of an endless stream of hysterical warnings by US intel since 9/11, all exciting but false.
What does it all mean?
We have to accept the greater truth: in today’s America we do not know what is happening. We know only the tidbits fed us by the powerful groups that rule us. Some are nourishing facts. Some are tasty nothings. Some are drugs to stupify us, to make us stupid, or to put us in a frenzy.
RussiaGate is a virus that has infected America. The damage has been immense during the past two years. The Mueller Report will not stop it. Leading Democratic Party leaders plan to continue their investigations into Trump’s past, back to his infancy if necessary. The news media corporations have benefited greatly from RussiaGate and have every reason to continue to feed its fires.
I doubt we can see its end. Perhaps the carefully edited excerpts from the Muller opus eventually released to us will end the RussiaGate story with a definitive victory for one side. But I doubt it.
Two years into this, and there are still more questions than answers. That’s our America. Best of all, the partisans on both sides are happy with the RussiaGate festival. It’s fun! But information often bursts into the light, inadvertently. The major event of President Trump’s term might when America’s Deep State came out into the open, for all to see.
Some useful sources of insights about the Muller Report, and what’s next
“Trump is a psychopathic criminal who feels cornered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, so he is lashing out in every direction.”
— This is “journalism” in modern America. By James Risen at The Intercept, 22 December 2018.
I will update this as I find more insights. So far I have seen mostly bold guessing.
Andrew McCarthy (a former Federal prosecutor) asks for full disclosure: the broad disclosure of Mueller’s findings, the and metadata about the inquiry. It is the only way to end the public’s concern.
The best summary of the RussiaGate campaign I have seen is by Matt Taibbi, an excerpt from his book coming soon: Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another. It is a blow-by-blow account, showing the decay of several key American institutions. Including the press.
“It’s official: Russiagate is this generation’s WMD. The Iraq war faceplant damaged the reputation of the press. Russiagate just destroyed it.”
Some still hope to find smoking guns: “Trump allies await results of two internal probes that could expose Russia investigation backstory.” Color me skeptical. Cover-ups are the Deep States core competence.
More useful to us than the endless articles about RussiaGate
A music video by the talented K-Pop group “Twice.”