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Title: Mueller Mugs Again – The Roger Stone Farce
Source: [None]
URL Source: https://original.antiwar.com/David_ ... s-again-the-roger-stone-farce/
Published: Jan 30, 2019
Author: David Stockman
Post Date: 2019-01-30 09:34:18 by Ada
Keywords: None
Views: 55

There is nothing more grating than the constant sanctimonious carping by partisan Dems, beltway lifers and their mainstream media megaphones about upholding the "rule of law". Robert Mueller is held to be the very quintessence of it – meaning that his bully-boy prosecution must be permitted to grind to a conclusion unimpeded and unchallenged come hell or high water.

We beg to differ. Profoundly.

The real U.S. election meddling event was conducted at the highest levels of the Obama Administration by rogue elements of the FBI, CIA and DNI, and was designed to thwart Donald Trump’s election and then to undermine his presidency once the voters had spoken. So the entire RussiaGate/Mueller witch-hunt is not merely an affront to the rule of law; it’s an attack on the heart of America’s constitutional democracy itself.

After all, the essence of the latter is free elections and the absolute neutrality of the organs and agencies of the state during the course of their conduct.

Needless to say, the very opposite has transpired. Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies have weighed in blatantly and heavily against Donald Trump every step of the way.

That includes the utterly unjustified opening of an FBI investigation of the Trump campaign in July 2016 based on virtually nothing but hearsay; the subsequent embrace of the Clinton funded oppo research embodied in the groundless Steele dossier; the abuse of the FISA courts to conduct an illegal wiretap of Carter Page and the Trump campaign; and the orchestrated Brennan and FBI leaks about alleged Russian influence to the press in the run-up to the election.

It also encompasses the framing of General Flynn for doing his job speaking with the Russian Ambassador during the transition; the attempted sabotage 0f the President-elect at the infamous Trump Tower "briefing" by Clapper and Comey on the eve of the inauguration; the launching of the counterintelligence investigation in May 2017 by unaccountable permanent bureaucrats at the FBI and DOJ; and the opening of the Mueller investigation itself essentially on the grounds that the permanent government apparatchiks involved loathed the duly elected president and wanted revenge for his exercise of his constitutional authority to fire FBI director Comey.

What we are saying is that the entire narrative is upside-down and rotten; and that it therefore obfuscates what is important while legitimizing and exaggerating the trivial minutia and irrelevancies that have formed the entirety of the Mueller investigation to date.

For instance, Baby George Papadopoulos is an irrelevancy and would have been so even if he was Putin’s houseboy. That’s because he was a no-count volunteer drafted from the phone book to fill a campaign advisory committee that Trump had no intention of listening to and that was essentially disbanded after its initial photo-op launch in March 2016.

We have shown the same thing to be true elsewhere about Carter Page, the St. Petersburg troll farm, the alleged Russian security service hackers and the whole Paul Manafort contretemps. Indeed, the latter not only had nothing to do with Russia, but involved standard beltway influence-peddling, which in this case was actually designed to bring the former government of Ukraine into the NATO/EU/Washington orbit rather than its historic fealty to the Kremlin.

But now comes the final farce of it: An absolutely pointless process crime case against a long ago discredited beltway stuntman and self-promoter who actually had no role in the Trump campaign after August 2015 – which is to say, he was booted out of the Trump campaign just weeks after its improbable start.

True to form, however, Roger Stone colorfully described the hideous dawn raid by a FBI SWAT team. Appearing in court last Friday, following this show of force on his manicured lawn, Stone said,

This morning at the crack of dawn, 29 F.B.I. agents arrived at my home with 17 vehicles with their lights flashing, when they could simply have contacted my attorneys and I would have been more than willing to surrender voluntarily.

They terrorized my wife, my dogs.

After a two-year inquisition, the charges today relate in no way to Russian collusion, WikiLeaks collaboration or any other illegal act in connection with the 2016 campaign.

I am falsely accused of making false statements during my testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. That is incorrect.

Any error I made in my testimony would be both immaterial and without intent. I find it disturbing that the special counsel’s office released a press release prior to informing my attorneys that I would be charged today.

He’s right about the triviality of the charges, and also about the FBI wasting more money arresting him that the judge actually thought appropriate for his bail. As Alan Dershowitz aptly stated on Newsmax TV shortly thereafter,

“You arrest this guy in a dawn raid, handcuff him, put him in shackles, and then you don’t even ask the judge to raise the bail. $250,000, which is nothing bail. Clearly, this was just a show, an attempt to put pressure on him.”

For crying out loud, it was actually just a signature bond. Stone did not have to put up any money at all or even pay a bail bondsman. He simply promised to pay it if he does not show up for court later.

That the Mueller hit squad thought this raid-style arrest is an appropriate use of DOJ resources tells you all you need to know about the pure theatrics which underlies this so-called ‘investigation."

As Georgetown law professor Jonathan Turley put it:

Despite the breathless news coverage, the indictment is underwhelming and far from what many predicted. As for the media, it seems to be only counting heads of Trump associates indicted, as opposed to what they were actually charged with. The media has long described Stone as the possible Trump campaign conduit to WikiLeaks and the Russians, citing his presumed communications with Julian Assange and his advance knowledge of the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign email hacks.

Yet, none of that was confirmed or even suggested in the indictment. There was no charge of collusion. No hint of meetings or arrangements with Assange. Not even a charge as an unregistered foreign agent of the Russians. Just collateral crimes with nary a mention of collusion and a defendant who alternatively presents himself as the tragically comic and the comically tragic figure mired in the special counsel investigation.

In fact, Stone’s purported crimes all happened long after Trump was duly elected President and had sworn the oath. But for the Russia collusion hoax itself, Stone’s crimes wouldn’t have even happened because they stem from his appearance before a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) investigation in September 2017 – long after the fact.

This 12 month time gap is of crucial importance because Mueller’s charges are based on Stone’s recollections of phone calls and emails during the final few months of the 2016 election – not anything he did or any one else did at the time.

That is, he’s not charged with colluding with the Trump campaign or any Russians – just allegedly "lying" about his interaction with two absolutely marginal figures – a comedian and a whacko right-wing conspiracy theorists – who had exactly zero impact on the 2016 election.

Indeed, the only reason these two bit players – Credico and Corsi (see below) – show up in Mueller’s comic book prosecution is that they were peripherally involved in one of Stone’s self-promoting publicity stunts during the campaign.

To wit, Stone had publicly claimed that he was in direct communication with WikiLeaks and its editor Julian Assange. It turns out, however, that he wasn’t and that his claims were based on brief communications with Credico and Corsi about second hand knowledge they may have obtained from WikiLeaks or Assange about further leaked materials from the DNC.

In short, it is plainly evident to anyone who reads the indictment that the ballyhooed "Roger Stone" link to the Russians never happened; his campaign period statements to that effect were merely Stone’s own self-promoting bombast of the type that he had practiced in Washington for more than four decades.

But rather than just admit that the Stone Connection was a dead-end like most of the rest of Mueller’s investigation, his legal thugs plowed forward attempting to muddy the waters by teeing-up a link to Steve Bannon, who was then part of the Trump campaign.

Upon reading about Stone’s bogus claims to be in touch with WikiLeaks, Bannon apparently contacted Stone and urged him to find out if WikiLeaks would be releasing new batches of emails that had been obtained from the Democratic National Committee.

But so what?

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