Well, Robert Mueller finally dropped his explosive indictments. And his lame indictments not only have all the power of a wet firecracker, but they tell us something we already know...that the real collusion with Russia during the campaign came from the Democrats. And that today's travesty was designed to obscure it, provide a distraction,get the real story out of the headlines and protect the guilty parties involved.
The charges focus on three men. Two of them, Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates are charged not with anything to do with the Trump campaign. Instead they're being charged with money laundering and tax evasion that occurred years before Paul Manafort had anything to do with President Trump or his campaign...or as the president himself tweeted:
Well, we all know the answer to the first question. The focus isn't on the completely corrupt Clinton and the Democrats because their trained seals in the media are doing their very best to get the real collusion by the Clinton Campaign and the DNC out of the headlines and because of Robert Mueller's own probable collusion in the Uranium One deal
And remember, Mueller was supposed to be investigating collusion in the 2016 campaign with Russia. The indictments of Manafort and Gates have nothing to do with that. Odd he hasn't indicted any Democrats yet for collusion, isn't it?
Manafort and Gates have both pled not guilty to the charges. Manafort is free on $10 million bond, and Gates agreed to $5 million. Both are on 'home confinement' as a condition of their pretrial release and have surrendered their passports.
The charges against Manafort involve his lobbying work for Viktor Yanukovych, the former president of the Ukraine and one of Manafort’s former clients. The feds alleged he illegally funneled millions of dollars of payments into offshore bank accounts in order to avoid detection by U.S. authorities. Manafort is also accused of failing to have registered as a lobbyist for Yanukovych in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”). In view of what the Podestas and Mrs. Clinton appear to have done in the Uranium One scandal, let alone the Fusion GPS scandal, this is hilarious.
Another fact that might even prove more humorous is that a lot of the evidence against Manafort could be thrown out of court because it was obtained illegally.
The Feds did a surprise raid on Manafort's home Alexandria, Virginia on July 26th. The warrant they had explicitly allowed them to search for documents and other materials related to the FBI probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. It didn't cover anything else.Not only that, but in order for the feds to obtain a warrant for that search in the first place, a federal judge would need to determine that probable cause existed that a crime was committed. And as part of the warrant,the FBI would have been required to attach an affidavit which contained a list of items that FBI agents hoped to collect. So evidence was collected that was probably not covered by the warrant.
But wait, there's more. During the raid, Mueller’s FBI agents took documents covered by attorney-client privilege. And this is fairly egregious, because Manafort's attorneys explicitly warned Mueller’s office before the raid that their search warrant didn’t allow access to documents covered by that attorney-client privilege. The feds took these materials anyway and shared it with Mueller's prosecutors, after which they returned it.
There are numerous precedents where this kind of tainted evidence has been thrown out of court, because it is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, and constitutes unreasonable search and seizure. The fact that the agents at the Famous But Incompetent returned them after Mueller's prosecutors (who should have known better) had a thorough chance to peruse them doesn't change that one bit.
So the entire case against Manafort might result in a mistrial.
There is one more thread we should explore here. One other former peripheral member of the Trump campaign, a foreign policy advisor named George Papadopoulos has already pled guilty to making false statements during a January 27, 2017 interview with the FBI. Those false statements concern meetings Papadopolos had with a professor who had ties to the Russian government and who discussed “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton, as if that was hard to find. Papadopoulos has agreed to cooperate with Mueller's team in exchange for immunity. He has admitted that his contacts with the professor and other Russian nationals came after he started advising the campaign and that he apparently made numerous attempts to convince then candidate Trump to travel to Russia in order to have an “off the record” meeting with Russian officials.Which of course never happened.
Moreover, the Mueller team says that a “Campaign Supervisor” told Papadopoulos, 'I would encourage you’ and another foreign policy advisor to the Campaign to ‘make the trip, if it is feasible.'
So let's recap what this is all about. The Famous But Incompetent set a trap for someone who was a foreign policy adviser and a peripheral figure in the Trump campaign who had unauthorized contact with a professor and perhaps some other people connected to the Russian government, and who may have tried to set up a meeting, which never happened. Moreover, someone connected with the Trump campaign told Papadodoulos that he could make the trip if he wanted to.
Guess what? None of this is illegal, although the way the Dems and their media allies are carrying on about this, you'd think they caught Papadodoulos green lighting Russian control over a big part of America's uranium production or divulging our secret missile defense technology to them.
The stuff about Papdodoulos being encouraged by a 'Campaign Supervisor' is simple hearsay. And we know what that's worth in court. Even if it occurred, again, there's nothing illegal about someone telling someone else, 'yeah sure, make a trip toRussia if you want.'
The sole crime here is that Papadopoulos lied to the FBI about meeting with this professor. The rest smacks of the sort of thing Mueller's partisan team would cook up by putting words in the mouth of someone they already had by the testicles:
" If we're going to give you immunity, we need more. Someone from the Trump campaign authorized you to make the trip and contact the Russians, right?"
"Oh, yes! Well, really, they didn't exactly authorize it, but someone encouraged me to do it."
"Well, not exactly what we were looking for, but I guess that's enough."
The idea here is pretty clear. Nothing Papadopoulos says will likely be actionable in court, but it will provide a distraction to the real scandals involving collusion with Russia by the Democrats. And of course, material for the Left's fever swamp mentality...let's call it the legend of a unicorn rather than a real one that actually exists.
This nonsense is what Mueller and his pals have spent a year and millions of taxpayer dollars putting together. This isn't a Hallow'een thing unless you count the masks and costuming going on. More like April Fool's although I doubt it's fooling anyone who isn't vested in pushing this stuff at all costs and has a fighting chance of a two digit IQ.
It's high time this travesty was ended, and that Jeff Sessions appointed a special prosecutor to go after the people really involved with collusion with Russia. And that likely includes Robert Mueller, who has a few questions about the Uranium One scandal he needs to answer under oath.
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