=========
=========
Promoted from the diaries by streiff. Promotion does not imply endorsement.
=========
=========

Robert Mueller by DonkeyHotey, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0/Original

To hear the mainstream media talk, the recent plea deal by former Trump campaign operative Paul Manafort is a watershed moment in the Mueller “investigation.”  In exchange for a guilty plea on charges having nothing to do with Russian collusion, obstruction of justice or any other such “high crime and misdemeanor,” Manfort has promised to “cooperate with Mueller’s investigation.”  His guilty plea on the “obstruction” charge was in response to alleged “witness tampering” which came very close to the “preparing a defense” line.

For Manafort, a guilty plea in lieu of another trial- again, on charges having nothing to do with Trump other than Manafort was associated with Trump- makes perfect sense.  The man is 69, faced up to 80 years in prison and is already out a fortune. Cut your losses and “cooperate.”

Something becomes abundantly clear at this point: Robert Mueller basically has nothing.  Those indictments against Russian troll farms explicitly state there is no connection to the Trump campaign.  Recent messages between lovers, the deranged and scary looking Peter Strozk and Lisa Page, indicate that before there was a Robert Mueller, the FBI itself had no evidence of collusion.  Because Mueller is on the job, the Resistance and their handy enablers, the Never Trump crowd, now expect him to uncover what the FBI could not. There are three possibilities here: (1) there is no collusion to uncover, (2) there is collusion but the FBI is more inept than originally believed, or (3) Mueller is truly a knight in shining armor who will uncover what others could not.

On point (3), after almost 2 years of investigation, not to mention the almost infinite number of investigations by journalists and Congressional oversight committees, Mueller continues to spin his wheels and secure plea deals and convictions against people simply because they associated with Donald Trump at some point.  They have nothing to do with alleged collusion, unless we are talking about events involving Ukrainian officials more than a decade before 2016.

The Manafort plea deal is the latest “Aha- gotcha” moment for the folks at CNN and MSNBC.  One can rest assured that Don Lemon is gleefully jumping up and down right now- at least two weeks of commentary to fill his otherwise dull show.  

They said the same thing about George Papadopolous, the low-level Trump campaign adviser who flew around Europe playing super-spook looking for dirt on Hillary Clinton, meeting with dubious characters, being duped into further meetings only to find out in the end he was being played.  But, it was great for padding his resume should the impossible happen and Trump actually win come that November in 2016. Hours after his first interview with FBI and one week into the new administration, he sent that resume seeking a job in the Energy Department.

For these “heinous” crimes, he received all of 14 days in jail, supervised probation, community service and a $9,500 fine.  In exchange, he offered full cooperation with the Mueller probe. The “most recent” domino to fall in the Russian collusion probe offered what?  After completion of his sentence, he intend to head to Hollywood, turn his story into a movie and make some money. Along the way, he distanced himself from his lawyers and their comments about Trump in court.  In short, Papadoplous has nothing on Trump either.

As for Manafort, his “cooperation” makes little sense given his plea deal.  After all, Mueller has had his partner, Rick Gates, for months “cooperating.”  These two are joined at the business and political hip and it is unreasonable to believe that Manafort knows “something” Gates does not know.

The whole investigation is a sham.  There must be an underlying crime to appoint a special counsel.  Mueller entered this thing with none. Collusion with Russian operatives has morphed into obstruction of justice which has morphed into campaign finance violations which morphed into payments to a porn star.

Firing an Executive Branch official (Comey) or even harassing one (Sessions) is not a crime.  Neither is criticizing a special counsel investigation or contemplating ending the whole charade.  We can make a case that the President should not do such things, but it is a fact the Constitution grants him the authority to do them.  If you do not like it, then the solution is to vote him out of office- not support a prosecutorial coup in the name of “justice.”

The true focus on any probe into the 2016 campaign should not focus on Trump, but on his opponent.  The Democratic Party and their allies in the media repeatedly have told us that the whole alleged scheme is a threat to democracy.  Almost two years after Trump’s victory in 2016, they are still shell-shocked by the outcome and they are still looking for any excuse other than the most obvious- Hillary Clinton.

And that is where any probe should focus.  If Clinton had won in 2016, would we have ever heard of the Steele dossier, or Fusion GPS?  Christopher Steele would not be in hiding in Great Britain, but a continued FBI source. Nobody would have heard of Bruce and Nellie Ohr, Peter Strozk would be a high level investigator in the FBI carrying on an affair with Lisa Page.  Joseph Misfud would be lecturing at some European think tank.

There would be no coordinated leaking of stories by FBI operatives to the New York Times or Washington Post.  James Comey would not have leaked secret memos of meetings with Hillary Clinton in order to get a special counsel appointed.  Paul Manafort would be wallowing in the $46 million he gave up in his plea deal, Papadoplous would have joined some energy consultancy, and Russia would not be the bogeyman under everyone’s bed today.  

Of course, the folks at Google would have been back-slapping for a job well done and Don Lemon would have less to talk about.  The only purpose behind this entire investigation is that the fall-back strategy was put into place: push the Russian collusion angle if, God forbid, Trump actually won the election.  The ante was upped after the Billy Bush tape failed.

And it all comes back to Hillary Clinton.  This entire sham is a classic example of the lengths the Left will go to in an effort to subvert American democracy.  The obviously preferred candidate did not win in 2016. Robert Mueller, that paragon of virtue and professionalism, is a dupe in the whole scenario.  It is not Russia that was the true threat in 2016; it was and is the enablers of this shameful modern day Inquisition who are the real threats to democracy.