More than 30 million unemployed—but
probably more, since this number only reflects those who have applied for
jobless benefits—and the unemployment rate expected to be double that of the
worst month 0f the “Great” Recession by June. Infections and deaths by the
COVID-19 now exceeding previous forecasts. What to do now, besides advising
people to drink poisonous chemicals to “kill” the virus and engaging in
mindless tweet storms encouraging a tiny minority of mostly Tea Party-types to
carry rifles into state houses demanding they be “freed” of stay-at-home orders
by governors? Why, engage your Justice Department in finding new “enemies.”
Well, not really “new” enemies,
but those who have committed “crimes”—such as FBI investigators who allegedly
submitted questionable FISA requests and those who had “partisan” motivations, as
if Trump and his familiars have not taken political partisanship to a level not
seen since the run-up to the Civil War. We are told of the “outrage” over the
fact that the FBI decided to continue to pursue Michael Flynn even though an
initial inquiry failed to uncover any major-league wrong-doing, and that agents
were looking to “trap” him into lying to them. But as the investigation of
Flynn’s activities continued, the FBI did find that Flynn had committed more
than one crime, including failing to register as an agent working on behalf of
a foreign government, Turkey, if not Russia as was suspected but could be
proven for certain.
Furthermore, Flynn did
deliberately lie to investigators, whether he was “trapped” into or not. As Fox
News’ Chris Wallace pointed out, "Did the FBI play hardball? Yeah. Guess
what? The FBI plays hardball. And guess what? If you are talking to the FBI —
and a lot of lawyers would say don’t talk to them unless you have to — don’t
lie.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s hyper-partisan
pit bull William Barr and his sidekick John Durham continue to claim that “crimes”
far worse than what the Mueller investigation uncovered were committed by the
FBI and others. But like in the case of Flynn, crimes were committed by Trump
campaign officials looking to gain every edge—including “help” from
dirt-dealing Russians, who the Senate Intelligence Committee did in its recent
report find were engaged in activities designed to help Trump get elected—and would
unlikely to have been uncovered had the non-Barr DOJ refused to do its job. Let’s
recap those crimes committed by Trump associates:
The Russian troll factory,
Internet Research Agency, was charged with conning Americans with fake
pro-Trump and anti-Clinton social media accounts. Two Russian shell companies
and 13 Russian nationals were also indicted in these schemes. Twelve additional
Russians were charged with the hacking of the DNC server and apparently handing
over their trove of stolen emails to WikiLeaks. Trump operative Roger Stone,
convicted of perjury, was apparently in contact with Julian Assange, promising
him that the Trump administration would drop U.S. charges against him if he
helped out (Assange still remains un-extradited).
Trump campaign manager Paul
Manafort was discovered to have hidden tens of millions dollars for work as an
agent for pro-Russia parties in the Ukraine, as well as tax evasion and other financial
crimes. What is interesting about this is that Trump and Putin’s unproven claim
that it was the Ukraine that was “really” behind the election interference is
the bizarre notion that it was the Ukrainians who hacked DNC servers to
supposedly “help” the Democrats—that is to say that was what pro-Russia
Ukrainians wanted to accomplish. In reality, Manafort was working with a
suspected Russian intelligence agent, Konstantin Kilimnik, feeding him “secret”
internal polling information that was likely used to tailor social media
propaganda to targeted audiences in the U.S.
And then there was that string of
Trump associates who deliberately gave false testimony to shield Trump and his
associates: Flynn, Michael Cohen, George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, Alex van der
Zwaan and a few others. This does not count the many who refused to talk or
claimed “amnesia.” A crime was likely committed just in the “set-up” of the infamous
Trump Tower meeting; just because no useful “dirt” was provided doesn’t make it
any less so. And Trump’s attempt to blackmail the Ukrainian president for a
political “favor” was also a crime against the Constitution, regardless of how
Trump’s Republican stooges voted in the impeachment case.
As in the Trump administration’s
belated response to the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming that the “cure” is “worse”
than the disease ignores the fact that the disease would likely have not required
the level of “cure” if Trump had not claimed it was “no big deal” for over a
month. In order to get voters’ minds off the virus and the economic disaster
that Trump is largely to blame for, the same
case is now being made that the initial FBI and subsequent Mueller and
impeachment inquiries, with Trump and Barr now claiming that the crimes found in those
investigations were not as “bad” as the means taken to find them. We should not
be conned by this; Trump and Barr are corrupt to the core, and their motives
follow them like toilet paper stuck to their shoe.
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