Leftist Lie Machine Keeps Pumping

It’s amazing how the left has gaslighted the country. They keep telling us the overblown, continually mischaracterized collusion investigation is going to bring President Trump down. They have many of us convinced that “collusion” is a crime, and they keep telling us the charges that have been filed in the case have real relevance to collusion. None of these things are true!

The charges relate to things like lying to investigators (a crime that, by definition, can’t preexist an investigation and therefore could not have taken place during the 2016 campaign), failure to follow obscure administrative rules governing foreign agents, and purportedly unsavory financial transactions. None of those things could be considered collusion, which, again, is not a crime.

There is no crime called “collusion.” No one seems to understand that. Trump could have called Putin every day and told him to like his Tweets, and it would have been legal.

It’s legal for foreigners to try to influence our elections, as long as they don’t cross certain lines, such as contributing to campaigns (*cough cough* millions in unvetted online foreign contributions to Obama’s 2008 campaign *cough*). If you’re the leader of Russia, you can hold news conferences and beg Americans to vote for whoever you want, and Americans can appear with you and say, “Listen to Vladimir!”

If Trump wants, he can consult with Queen Elizabeth, Putin, Duterte, and the Ayatollah Khameini in 2020. He can do it on national TV. It’s not a great idea, but without more, it would be legal.

At its inception, the point of the investigation was to find out whether foreign governments exercised undue or illegal influence on the 2016 campaign, so we would be able to take measures in the future to protect the integrity (LOL) of our elective process. There were no allegations that Trump had committed crimes. None from responsible non-MSNBC employees who actually knew anything, I mean. The public doesn’t understand that. They seem to think they’re seeing a new Watergate. They seem to think Mueller believes Trump was the mastermind behind a sophisticated, broad attempt to defraud voters by illegal means, and that simply isn’t true or even close to true.

Mueller himself seems to have gone completely off the rails. In moves worthy of Brando’s Colonel Kurtz, he has used his powers to go after people for matters unrelated or only tenuously related to the proper subject of the probe. He has managed to create new criminals, by asking previously innocent people difficult, booby-trap questions and then charging them with lying under oath.

People say Mueller is looking for dirt on people with knowledge, in order to scare them into cooperating. Is that okay? Let’s think about it.

Say your son, who is in college in another state, is a drug dealer. Say Mueller is after him. Mueller calls you in for questioning, and like a good citizen, you go. He asks you a lot of hard questions, and your memory isn’t that great, but you answer “to the best of your recollection” (this is what they said to Scooter Libby, who got convicted anyway).

You make mistakes. Mueller records them.

In addition to that, let’s say Mueller somehow finds out you have a foreign-made firearm, and it has an illegal part in it, which you put in by mistake, meant to remove, and then forgot. The part is 100% identical to legal US-made parts in every way. You are now guilty of lying under oath, and you are a felon under a statute known to gun aficionados as 922(r). Then he finds out you have 20 unpaid parking tickets. Mueller charges you with everything he can, and then he says things would go better for you if you had some “helpful” evidence on your son.

Let’s say your defense costs you $750,000. Your IRA is gone. Your house has to be sold. Your daughter has to leave Harvard and go to the University of Mississippi. You have to look for a job at the age of 65.

Is that okay?

This is what’s happening to people right now.

Being charged with a crime and then being set free without prosecution is not a minor thing. People are losing their homes and fortunes. Inheritances are being transferred to the pockets of attorneys. There may actually be individuals who would be better off pleading to felonies fraudulently than defending themselves.

When the Bill of Rights was drafted, the Founding Fathers were looking to protect us from things like this. They said the government couldn’t take things without due process, for example. People like Mueller spend a lot of their time looking for ways to render the Bill of Rights ineffective. Mueller can say, “I never took anyone’s house or money without due process. I never committed extortion.” But he is twisting due process to do the same thing. Is there a meaningful difference?

Many people think Mueller already knows there is no pot of collusion at the end of the Trump rainbow, and that he is going after Trump’s associates unethically just to justify his budget and avoid damage to his own gargantuan ego. That is not unlikely. Prosecutors think about their images all the time. They reject important cases they think they stand a good chance of losing, because they worry about their statistics. It may be that Mueller thinks this way.

Another factor: Mueller is a deep-stater, and Trump has insulted him and the rest of the deep state pretty much continuously since the beginning of the 2016 campaign. A prosecutor is supposed to be impartial, but are they? Judges are supposed to be impartial, but look at the difference in the records of leftist and conservative judges. Is that really the result of unbiased reasoning? Of course not. Mueller is human, and he may well be motivated by animus toward a president who offended him on a personal level.

Most people don’t know that prosecutors are obligated to protect defendants (and witnesses). A defense attorney has virtually no obligation to help a prosecutor, but prosecutors and judges have to do their best to make sure people aren’t harassed or convicted wrongly. Do they do it? Not always, to put it nicely. Is Mueller doing it when he presses charges most prosecutors wouldn’t bother with?

The investigation is interesting, and it has gotten more interesting because a federal judge just poked a hole in Mueller’s balloon. Money quote from a UPI story, regarding the Manafort case:

“I don’t see what relationship this indictment has with anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis in the Eastern District of Virginia said.

That’s from UPI, which is basically a leftist organization. It’s not a tweet from Ted Nugent. Isn’t the judge saying pretty much what Trump and his allies have been saying for a long time?

Here’s a quote from the story itself (not the judge, Manafort, or Manafort’s attorneys):

None of the charges relate, however, to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign or possible collusion with Russia.

That’s not opinion. That’s a statement of fact, like, “Melania Trump wore a red dress.” You have to sit up and take notice when an MSM organization says something like that. You can’t say, “Shut up, Russian bot.”

Another interesting quotation regarding the judge:

He also asked the special counsel’s office to share privately with him a copy of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein’s August 2017 memo elaborating on the scope of Mueller’s Russia probe. He said the current version he has been heavily redacted.

That’s BAD for Mueller. It means he can’t go forward until he proves he has the legal right. The judge gave him the burden of proof, and he clearly did it because he thinks Mueller is going to lose. He believes a regular prosecutor should be handling the case. And why is Mueller redacting materials he gives a judge? Ordinarily, we trust judges to do the redacting! How did Mueller get the power to hide things from judges, and why would he do it? Is that acceptable?

Once a regular prosecutor takes over, what will happen? Suddenly the matter will be in the hands of a busy person who has no use for Manafort’s cooperation. The new prosecutor will not have Mueller’s unique motivation to go forward, and he will have to worry about being perceived as a partisan hack. Manafort may be turned loose or given a slap on the wrist.

Another problem for Mueller: precedent. Once a judge decides he’s abusing his power with a defendant, the lawyers for every other defendant will start writing motions. “The prosecution can’t do this or that with regard to my client because…Manafort!” The precedent may not be binding, but any judge worth his salt will give it great weight.

Judges don’t like to do their own homework (which is why post-adolescent clerks do it), and they don’t like bucking a trend. When a judge sees a heavily researched opinion slapping Mueller down, he will have a lot of motivation to follow it. That will be even more true if he’s the same judge who issued that opinion. Citing a judge’s own rulings to him is more persuasive than citing God himself. My dad taught me that. “Didn’t you say, in an earlier case…”

It has worked for me.

The salivating of left-wing pundits is very tiresome. The country needs another issue to talk about. Or maybe it doesn’t. I think Trump is getting a lot of things done simply because the press won’t shut up about collusion. They only have so much bandwidth with which to obstruct him. If they were talking more about the things he is trying to accomplish, they might have a better chance of impeding him.

Is Trump worried? I doubt it. An insider was quoted thus, with regard to Trump’s anxiety over legal problems: “He does. Not. Care.” I thought that was funny. Imagine how many times a billionaire gets sued by the age of 70. It must mean nearly nothing to him. He’s not going to be charged. He won’t be impeached. He will probably win in 2020, based on the bustling economy. If he were impeached, he would probably force the Senate to try him, and that would go nowhere. He may be eccentric, but he’s not stupid or cowardly.

Giuliani is on his team now. I thought that was great news when I heard it. Now I’m not so sure. Giuliani made some startling admissions about the porn star payoff. He says Trump repaid Michael Cohen, who paid a porn star to be quiet about Trump. Had Trump not repaid Cohen, the payment could have been cast as a violation of campaign finance law. Giuliani says the repayment clears Cohen. Now people claiming to know a few things are saying it’s still a violation.

I thought Giuliani was a very, very sharp lawyer who would find the answer behind closed doors and then make his move only after he was sure of his aim. Is that true? It sort of looks like he did a few minutes of Googling on his smartphone and then blurted out a half-baked conclusion that may hang somebody.

I hate seeing lawyers talk to the press. It’s wrong. It prejudices potential jurors. It gives opposing counsel ammunition. I believe it’s unethical, and it is definitely a bush-league tactic. Giuliani shouldn’t do it. They say he’s the guy who invented the perp walk, though, so he must feel differently.

Did the payment violate the law? I can’t judge. I don’t know the law or the facts. Not my field. Maybe Giuliani knows exactly what he’s doing. If so, we will probably see more of him. If not, he will disappear, and we will see more of that new guy Trump hired. I forget his name.

A good lawyer doesn’t shoot from the hip. I do it here, where it doesn’t matter, but if I were being paid, I would be logging a whole lot of research hours, and I would never say anything without preparation and some assurance that I was making things better, not worse.

Giuliani was a government employee, and that kind of work doesn’t draw the best people. Sometimes a bright person slips through, though. I don’t know what the truth is.

I look forward to the judge’s decision on Manafort and Mueller. It could be a beautiful thing.