Hard Rain

The trained hamsters in the mainstream media are already looking for squirrels—anything that allows them NOT to cover the coming evidence (and possible indictments) of partisan Democrats who participated in a soft coup to sabotage the Trump election campaign in 2016 and destabilize the new Trump presidency after his upset victory. The same media that demanded transparency in all things Trump when Russian collusion was alleged, now think that any attempt at transparency to determine how the collusion hoax (per Robert Mueller) was transformed into a 2+ year "investigation" is somehow ill-advised. "A threat to national security!" cry the perpetrators (Comey, Brennan, Clapper, et al). The trained hamsters join the chorus, suggesting that "investigating the investigators" is a "threat to democracy."

How conveeeenient. How blatantly hypocritical!

In an opinion piece, aptly titled, 'A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall,' Charles Lipson writes about the soft coup charges:

These are very serious charges, and, if proven, serious crimes. What makes them worse — far worse — is that they may well be connected to each other. If they are, they would represent a high-level conspiracy by government officials, appointed by one party and directed at political opponents during and after an election.

This assault on democracy has not been proven, but the evidence emerging in dribs and drabs strongly suggests the possibility. If it is proven, and if the Obama White House was directly involved, as some FBI texts plainly say, the scandal would be one of the biggest in American history.

How big? Big enough that major news organizations, which always favor transparency (“Democracy Dies in Darkness”), are now deeply troubled by the release of any secret documents. They know the stakes are too high and transparency too dangerous for their side, politically.

Right now, we don’t know how big the scandal is, how extensive the coordination was, and how far up it went. But we certainly need to know, just as we needed to know if Donald Trump won the presidency by cooperating with a hostile foreign power. He did not, according to the Mueller report. Now, we need to know if the U.S. government itself worked secretly and illegally to prevent his election and, when that failed, to damage his new presidency. That conspiracy would be equally serious, and for the same reasons. It needs to be rooted out, exposed, and punished.

The fundamental problem was identified by James Madison, who led the drafting of our constitution. “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men,” he wrote in Federalist Paper 51, “the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." Under Comey, Lynch, Brennan, and Clapper, under Obama and Biden, it failed to control itself.

The Dems are trying desperately to run out the clock, hoping against hope that Trump will lose in 2020 and a Democrat president will bury the soft coup investigation. It's their only play, so you can bet that delays, obfuscation, and outright lies will rule the day as news of wrongdoing—and there was wrong doing—comes out. Even more interesting ... you'll note that talk of impeachment out of the House is escalating in direct proportion to the probability that "hard rain's gonna fall." I predicted that a few posts back. The Dems are looking increasingly scared and increasingly desperate, but in the end, their strategy may yet have a chance of burying the biggest political scandal in U.S. history.

UPDATE-1:
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As if to assist in the escalation of impeachment talk, Robert Mueller gave his farewell news conference in which he stuck it to Donald Trump, suggesting that he had reason to indict, but just couldn't bring himself to do so. What nonsense. Two years, tens of millions of dollars, and yet, no indictment? His excuse that such a move would violate longstanding tradition is B.S. He didn't have a winnable case and he knew it. The editors of the Wall Street Journal [often #Nevertrumpers] comment:

... Mr. Mueller’s analysis of the obstruction evidence in his own report makes clear that no investigation was obstructed. Not the FBI’s counterintelligence probe, and not his own. No witnesses were interfered with, and Mr. Mueller was allowed over two years to issue nearly 500 search-and-seizure warrants and interview anyone he wanted, including anyone in the White House.

Mr. Trump sometimes showed his exasperation, and bad judgment, in suggesting to more than one adviser that Mr. Mueller be fired, but no one acted on it. The special counsel probe rolled on without interference. Yet on Wednesday Mr. Mueller would only say that “if we had had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.” Since when do prosecutors make it their job to pronounce whether someone they investigate is exonerated? Their job is to indict, or not, and if not then keep quiet.

Mr. Mueller finished his statement with an ode to “the attorneys, the FBI agents, and analysts, the professional staff who helped us conduct this investigation in a fair and independent manner.” These individuals, he said, “were of the highest integrity.”

Does that include Andrew McCabe, the former deputy FBI director who is being investigated for lying to investigators? Does he mean Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the FBI paramours whose antipathy for Donald Trump is obvious from their text messages? Mr. Strzok was part of Mr. Mueller’s investigating team until those texts were discovered.

Does Mr. Mueller also mean the FBI officials who used the politically motivated, and since discredited, Steele dossier to persuade a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to issue a warrant to spy on Trump adviser Carter Page? Mr. Mueller didn’t appear to want to investigate that part of the Russia story. Was that behavior of “the highest integrity”?

Mr. Mueller would have better served the country and his own reputation if he had simply done what he claimed he wants to do and let his report speak for itself. Instead he has weighed in for the Democrats who want to impeach the President, though he doesn’t have to be politically accountable as he skips town. This is the core problem with special counsels who think they answer only to themselves.

Everytime you hear Pelosi, Nadler or Schiff talk about "the rule of law" or "threats to democracy" or "the good of the American people," ask this—Why are these clowns NOT interested in a soft coup directed at a sitting president by high level government officials, and would they be interested if the president was a Democrat? You know the answer before you ask the question.

UPDATE-2:
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In a scathing rebuke of Mueller's subtle attack on Trump, Law Professor Alan Derschowitz writes:

No prosecutor should ever say or do anything for the purpose of helping one party or the other. I cannot imagine a plausible reason why Mueller went beyond his report and gratuitously suggested that President Trump might be guilty, except to help Democrats in Congress and to encourage impeachment talk and action. Shame on Mueller for abusing his position of trust and for allowing himself to be used for such partisan advantage.

Heh. Partisan? That's what many of us have been saying for the past two years.

UPDATE-3:
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Law Professor Jonathan Turley harshly criticizes Robert Mueller's decision to imply wrong-doing but never actually alleging it. He writes:

[Mueller's] instructions and mandate were crystal clear. His position is even more nonsensical when you look at what he has already done. Mueller declared that “we concluded that we would not reach a determination one way or the other about whether the president committed a crime.” Yet, Mueller contradicted that statement when he declared that “if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime we would have said so.”

So which is it? Mueller actually did reach a “determination one way or the other” on crimes related to collusion. In his special counsel report, he found that he could “not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” In effect, Mueller ultimately came across as almost coquettish in his declaration that he would not make a clear finding of a possible crime but could not rule out criminal conduct by the president.

In other words, Mueller can produce hundreds of pages of evidence of possible criminal conduct and repeatedly refer to not exonerating Trump of crimes but somehow cannot reach a conclusion on the weight of the evidence. Of course,Mueller did not address such questions because he would not tolerate questions. The media simply listened obediently as he claimed that he was only being “fair” when he repeated that he could not clear Trump of the crime. That, of course, led the media to declare that Mueller really was searching for criminal conduct with a wink and a nod.

Whatever space Mueller occupied in maintaining such a position, it was neither created nor countenanced by federal law or Justice Department policy. Instead, he accepted the job of special counsel and then radically redefined it, without telling anyone outside of his staff. In that sense, he failed as special counsel. Mueller was not appointed to be a chronicler of allegations. Mueller was appointed to perform a prosecutorial function in the investigation of a president and his associates. Moreover, he does not get to dictate what Congress can investigate, or to stonewall the media.

As I've stated from the onset, this entire episode stinks. It sets a precedent that clearly defines the new approach to any elected president that the opposition party doesn't like or countenance.

-- Create a phony allegation;
-- Demand a special counsel;
-- Allow the special counsel to staff his investigation with partisans;
-- Make a continuing stream of false claims while the special counsel does his work;
-- Use a friendly and biased media (only the Dems can achieve this] to magnify those claims;
-- Allow the special counsel to drift far afield, indicting people, but never on charges even remotely associated with the original (phony) allegation; -- Hope that the special counsel finds evidence/wrongdoing, but if he doesn't,
-- Claim that the target worked to :"obstruct" the investigation;
-- Move to impeach the target.

No matter that this hurts the country, hurts the office of the presidency, destabilizes the Congress, and otherwise thumbs its nose at a legitimate election, only power matters.

Someday, the tables will be turned, and I fear that what goes around will come around. The Democrats are either too stupid, too power hungry or too full of hubris (or maybe all three) to believe it couldn't happen to their future president. It can, and now given their craven actions, it will.