Friday, May 1, 2020

Right-wing "outrage" at methods aside, let’s not forget one thing—Trump campaign officials DID commit serious crimes


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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