If You Investigate Anyone Long Enough, You Will Find a Crime

For a long time, I’ve been critical of the non-thinking extremists who have been calling for Trump’s impeachment, but it’s starting to look like they might finally have a hook to hang their hopes on.

One of the unfortunate characteristics of the impeachment enthusiasts is their lack of familiarity with the law and the concept of due process. They seem to think you can impeach a president simply because you don’t like him or because he does things you disagree with. Of course, this is not the way it works.

The Constitution says, “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Leftists need to be aware that this list does not include things like getting a draft deferment for bone spurs, banning travel to the US from Muslim countries, being rich, enforcing immigration laws, marrying models, or calling backward African countries mean names. You have to do something illegal in order to get in trouble. For example, Bill Clinton committed perjury.

It’s also important to point out that impeachment is not removal from office. If it were, Clinton would have been forced out. Impeachment is like being indicted. The House impeaches and refers the matter to the Senate, and the Senate functions as a court and holds a trial.

A lot of people who know virtually nothing about the law think Trump should be impeached based on “collusion” with Russia prior to the election. That’s wrong. Collusion is not a crime. If Trump had wanted, he could have made a promise to collude one of his campaign planks, and no one could have done anything about it.

Robert Mueller is investigating collusion; that’s true. But that’s not because collusion itself is illegal. It’s because it’s a public policy concern. We don’t want the Russians or anyone else deciding who wins our elections, even if they do it legally. We were okay with it when Obama put up websites that allowed the Chinese to contribute to his campaign without security checks, but now, somehow, we care.

Several people have been indicted, but none of them have been indicted for collusion per se. They have been indicted for illegal acts which are not collusion.

Some of those acts were not even committed until Mueller applied skillful pressure.

Mueller can’t prosecute anyone for collusion, so it’s a little weird that he was appointed in the first place. Why appoint someone to investigate something which is not a crime? I don’t know the answer. One would expect Congress to take up such matters, just like they get involved in things like protecting kids from music albums with dirty lyrics.

Here’s something else that’s weird: we don’t have a complete description of the things Mueller is allowed to investigate. Why is that? The secrecy is disturbing. Isn’t this the kind of thing the Bill of Rights was supposed to prevent? It reminds me of The Count of Montecristo.

We have some snippets from Rod Rosenstein, indicating that Mueller is allowed to see if Paul Manafort “committed crimes by colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.” That makes it seem like there is a crime called “collusion,” but there isn’t. The wording is unfortunate. It should say, “committed crimes while colluding.” As far as I know, you can collude all you want, but if you commit crimes while you’re at it, you have a problem.

Rosenstein may have the mistaken belief that collusion is a crime. Let’s assume he thinks it is. The fact that he mentioned it in a memo to Mueller doesn’t mean anything at all. Rod Rosenstein doesn’t write our laws. He may have made a huge blunder.

Collusion could involve things like bribes, fraud, illegal contributions, and so on. On the other hand, it appears it can be done without committing any crimes at all. Banning collusion itself would probably be unconstitutional, based on all sorts of issues, including the right to free expression and the right to free association. It would also be awfully hard to define collusion well enough to put it in a written statute.

If I were wrong about this, surely someone would have pointed to an applicable law by now. The left is jam-packed with people who desperately want collusion to be a crime, and many of them are attorneys, but if anyone has come up with such a law, it has not made the news.

I’m no expert, and I have done no research, but I do have a little common sense, and besides, Alan Dershowitz agrees with me. He’s a pretty sharp guy, and I have considerable faith in him.

No one has been indicted for “collusion.” All the people who have gone down have been indicted for other things Mueller discovered while he was supposedly investigating collusion.

That’s where Trump’s problem comes in.

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen got himself indicted for a number of things. None could be considered collusion. Mueller had some issue with Cohen, which has not been revealed, and somehow the FBI was able to turn it into a warrant of astounding reach. Generally, law enforcement can’t grab all your files and then go through them to see if there’s anything incriminating. The Constitution calls that “unreasonable search and seizure.” They have to come up with evidence that you may have something juicy, and they have to limit the scope of their warrants. This is especially true when they go after a lawyer’s files, because lawyers and clients are entitled to confidentiality. In Michael Cohen’s case, they were able to barge in and take everything he had.

The feds have Cohen hanging by a hook in his nose, and Cohen knows just about everything about Trump’s dumbest move.

Trump apparently slept with Stormy Daniels, an aging porn star, and he directed Cohen to pay her to go away. The feds say this is a violation of federal campaign law, because it constitutes a contribution.

It’s a little odd. If Trump paid the money, the payment was legal, because you can spend whatever you want on your own campaign. If Cohen footed the bill, it’s a felony, but Cohen, not Trump, is the criminal. We are now being told that Cohen paid and Trump reimbursed him secretly. That brings up a question: is it legal to contribute to your own campaign through a straw man? I have no idea.

What if Trump expected Cohen to absorb the loss? Is there such a thing as “conspiracy to make an illegal campaign contribution”? Maybe that would be a crime. Still, Trump was relying on a licensed attorney’s advice. Is making a bad decision based on bad legal advice, and then committing a highly technical violation of obscure laws, something that would ground a felony conviction?

Dinesh D’Souza went to prison for straw man contributions, but he was contributing to another person’s campaign, and his scheme was his own idea. He didn’t have a leg to stand on. Trump spent money on his own campaign, which is legal, and he did it on the advice of an attorney. Can he get indicted for telling Cohen to pay, when he secretly intended to reimburse him? Is this something election law expressly prohibits? Does it fall under the general scope of catch-all laws againt fraud? If so, impeachment may be on the table after all.

Trump arrived on the scene as an amateur politician. When his campaign started blowing up, he had no idea what he was doing. He was probably amazed to see himself succeeding, and he had to rush around to find a team to guide him. In all likelihood, he knew very little about campaign laws when he paid Daniels off. He probably thought it was completely legal. Obviously, he did not consult a qualified attorney. Cohen is a fixer; he went to the country’s worst law school, and he is probably not an expert on anything. Election law is a specialty, and Cohen is not someone you can rely on to help you avoid violations.

Dershowitz (a Democrat) actually does research, and he thinks Trump has not committed any crimes. He knows much more than I do, so maybe I should just listen to him and leave it at that. Still, I have not seen anyone discussing the issues I’m bringing up, and they seem very obvious to me.

If I were on the impeachment bandwagon, I would be trying to find ways to go after Trump for fraud or conspiracy. If I were Mueller, I would be exploiting this angle. If I were a New York state prosecutor in Manhattan, I would be waiting for Mueller or other federal prosecutors to come up with something, and then I would see if I could do anything under state law (because if I were a New York state prosecutor, I would almost certainly be a leftist).

Let’s see. What would I ask?

1. Was the payment to Daniels a campaign contribution? If not, everyone goes home. If so, on to question 2.

2. Did Trump direct Cohen to make the payment? If not, Trump goes home, and maybe Cohen goes to prison. End of story. If so, on to question 3.

3. If Trump directed the payment, did he say up front that he would reimburse Cohen? If so, things look pretty good for Trump, and maybe Cohen has an out because he didn’t actually make a contribution, but we still have to ask question 4.

4. Is it illegal to make a clandestine contribution to your own campaign, using a straw man? If so, trouble for Trump and Cohen. Now comes question 5.

5. If it’s illegal to make a clandestine contribution to your own campaign, using a straw man, can you be held accountable, as an ignorant layman, when you do it on the advice of your inept attorney? If not, Trump goes home, and Cohen faces the bar association and the feds. If yes, Trump has a problem, and impeachment may happen, if Democrats decide that alienating 50% of the country and focusing America’s attention on Trump and not their own message are good ideas.

6. If Trump is impeached, will he leave office? No. Don’t be stupid. He doesn’t care at all. It’s barely conceivable that he might step down under immense pressure, in order to allow a more viable candidate to run in 2020, but that doesn’t sound like Trump. Impeachment might make him more viable, because angry Republicans would make an unprecedented effort to get to the polls to teach Mueller and the Democrats another lesson.

7. If he doesn’t leave office, will be be convicted in the Senate and forced to quit? No. The GOP controls the Senate.

Whatever the law and facts turn out to be, it doesn’t seem likely that Trump will be impeached. It’s a bad political move for the left. I think they’re stuck with him until at least January of 2021, no matter what.

It’s interesting to see the disastrous effect the ill-advised special counsel appointment has had. At the start, you would have thought Mueller would look for evidence of illegal tactics used in collusion, and that would have been the end of it. Far from it. Mueller has turned his mandate into an excuse to attack every close Trump associate with regard to every misdeed they have committed in their entire lives. I didn’t see that coming. It didn’t happen in Watergate or the Ken Starr investigation. Think of the people Ken Starr could have put away, had he been as ruthless as Mueller.

When Mueller was appointed, Trump associates who had nothing to do with Russia must have felt safe. They didn’t realize he was going to do his best to get them prosecuted for everything they had ever done.

Imagine being a Trump associate who did wrong in the past and then cleaned up his act before getting caught. Think how you would feel. At first, you would feel wonderful about cleaning up your life, and you’d be looking forward to a life of atonement and safety, Then after Mueller started taking people down for things completely unrelated to Russia, you would realize your neck was on the chopping block after all, simply because you decided to work with Trump.

The Mueller investigation is a dream come true for deep state Democrats who work for the feds. They have carte blanche to investigate people they hate, in just about every area of their lives, and they’re doing it. They’ll get some people indicted, and they’ll ruin the rest financially, because they have to pay lawyers.

Think how discouraging this will be to other conservatives who may want to work for GOP candidates. If you’re a big wheel, by the time you hit 45, you will probably have done something a prosecutor can work with. At the very least, you will have done something a deep stater can use as justification for investigating you and making you sink your entire net worth into attorney fees. There go your kids’ college funds.

When they can’t find old crimes, the investigators can create new ones. They put people in front of microphones and ask them hard questions requiring supernatural recall, and when they make mistakes, perjury charges become a threat. Once that happens, the feds make the terrified witnesses sing for their freedom. It’s a very nasty business.

The Mueller appointment was a stupid move. Congress could have handled this just fine, and they should have. After all, they’re the ones who make the laws. If reform is required, Mueller and the FBI are powerless to implement it. It requires legislation. Collusion is not a crime. If we need laws to limit it, Congress, not the FBI, will have to make them.

Wouldn’t it have been something if Ken Starr had acted this way? Federal prisons would have had to stay open late to process Clinton cronies. Whitewater, Hillary’s illegal enemies list, the corrupt use of Arkansas state troopers to procure women for Bill…the prosecutions would have gone on for years.

I hope we’re not seeing a pattern for future special counsels, but I guess we are. They will all want to measure up to Bob the Terrible.

Planning to run for office some day? I admire your guts. Maybe you should just stay in the private sector.