“I am Yahweh; that is My Name! I will not give My glory to anyone else, nor share My praise with carved idols.” (Isaiah 42: 8)
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New York Post—Robert Mueller should resign:
Forgive yourself if you are confused about developments in the Russia, Russia, Russia storyline. In fact, there are so many moving parts that you shouldn’t trust anybody who isn’t confused.
Consider this, then, a guide to the perplexed, where we start with two things that are certain. First, special counsel Robert Mueller will never be able to untangle the tangled webs with any credibility and needs to step aside.
Mueller, whose office is apparently leaking the “secret” news that a grand jury has approved charges against an unidentified defendant, assumed his role with one big conflict, his relationship with his successor at the FBI, James Comey. That conflict has morphed into several more that are fixable only by resignation.
That became obvious last week when events showed that any honest probe must examine the Obama White House and Justice Department. Mueller served as head of the FBI for more than four years under President Obama and cannot be expected to investigate his former colleagues and bosses.
But without that necessary step, his work would be incomplete at best. So it’s time for him to say bye-bye.
The second thing we know for certain is that Hillary Clinton had a worse week than Mueller. Much worse.
The revelation that her campaign and the Democratic National Committee secretly funded the discredited dossier on Donald Trump’s supposed connections to Russia rocked the political world. The Clinton connection, denied by the campaign for a year, throws more doubt on the entire Trump-Russia-collusion narrative and shows that Clinton worked with Russian officials to meddle in the election.
The Washington Post reported that her campaign and the DNC paid millions of dollars to a law firm, Perkins Coie, which hired a shadowy company called Fusion GPS, which hired a former British spy, Christopher Steele, to compile the dossier, much of which was said to be based on Kremlin sources.
The bombshell sent Clinton into hiding, and no wonder. She probably thought three degrees of separation from the dossier would be enough to insulate her. In her absence, her defenders offered a dog’s stew of evasions, half-truths and diversionary attacks.
Their claim that nobody in the campaign or the DNC knew anything about the deal doesn’t pass the smell test. When as much as $12 million goes out the window for a document that aimed to win the election — and failed — everybody knows something.
While the link to Clinton answers some questions, it raises others. For example, while it is certain her campaign spread the dossier among the media last summer, it remains uncertain whether the dossier was used by the White House and the FBI to justify snooping on the Trump campaign.
One hint that it was is that Comey, while still in office, called the document “salacious and unverified,” but briefed Obama and President-elect Trump on its contents last January. And the FBI never denied reports that it almost hired Steele, the former British spy, to continue his work after the campaign.
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To continue reading, click here.
For Another Take
See this article from The New Yorker: “Robert Mueller Sends a Message: He’s Deadly Serious”:
On Friday night, CNN reported that a grand jury in Washington, D.C., has approved the first charges arising from the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign and the Russian government. Citing “sources briefed on the matter,” the network said that a judge had ordered the charges kept under seal, but that at least one arrest could take place as early as Monday.
Details were scant. The CNN report didn’t specify what the charges were or whom they had been brought against. But the news created an immediate furor, as other news organizations sought to follow up the story, and people on television and social media began speculating about the nature of the charges. Shortly before midnight, the Wall Street Journal confirmed CNN’s scoop, without providing any additional details.
Speaking on CNN, Michael Zeldin, a lawyer who served as a special assistant to Mueller when he was director of the F.B.I., suggested that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, might be the person charged. Zeldin imagined Mueller taking such a step to pressure Manafort to coöperate. “There is a lot of pressure on people who are under investigation to coöperate with Mueller after this indictment,” Zeldin said. Well before Mueller was appointed special counsel, the F.B.I. had been investigating Manafort’s financial ties to a pro-Russia party in the Ukraine. Mueller took over that investigation after he was appointed, in May. In July, F.B.I. agents staged a pre-dawn raid on Manafort’s home in Alexandria, Virginia.
Manafort isn’t the only name being speculated about. Other commentators suggested that Carter Page, a former adviser to the Trump campaign who had his own extensive Russian ties, or Michael Flynn, the former national-security adviser who was ousted from the White House over his post-election contact with Russia, might be subjects of the charges. It has been reported that the former F.B.I. director James Comey, when he was leading the Russia investigation, secured permission from a secret court operating under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to tap the communications of Page and Manafort. It has also been reported that Mueller’s team demanded White House documents about Flynn.
A key political question is whether these charges are related to things that happened as part of the Trump campaign, or whether they relate to alleged wrongdoings that occurred before it began or separate from it. If there are direct ties between the charges and the campaign, that will obviously have huge ramifications on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. But if the charges concern alleged actions on the part of Manafort or others that were unrelated to the 2016 campaign, the White House may well accuse Mueller of moving beyond his remit. That allegation wouldn’t be accurate—the terms of Mueller’s appointment gave him license to investigate “any matters that arose or may arise directly” from the Russia probe—but accuracy has never concerned Trump much.
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To continue reading, click here.
Yet Another Take
See this article from Fox News: “Gowdy slams Mueller team over leaks about charges in Trump-Russia probe”:
Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, the leader of the House’s top investigative committee, slammed special counsel Robert Mueller on Sunday for allowing the news media to learn that he and his legal team now have charges in their Russia investigation.
“In the only conversation I’ve had with Robert Mueller, I stressed to him the importance of cutting out the leaks,” Gowdy, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, told “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s kind of ironic that the people charged with investigating the law and the violations of the law would violate the law.”
Mueller and his team have for roughly the past five months been leading a Justice Department investigation into whether anybody associated with the President Trump’s 2016 White House campaign colluded with Russia to influence the election outcome. On Friday night, CNN reported that Mueller’s team has filed the first charges in the case with a federal grand jury.
“Make no mistake, disclosing grand jury material is a violation of the law. Somebody violated their oath of secrecy,” Gowdy, a South Carolina lawmaker and former federal prosecutor, also told Fox News on Sunday.
To continue reading, click here.
Now About Paul Manafort
See the articles below:
- Manafort surrenders to FBI after 12-count indictment
- Manafort and former business partner charged with conspiracy in connection with special counsel probe
- Manafort, Gates charged with conspiracy against US
SnyderTalk Comment:
Attorney General Sessions should resign, but special counsel Mueller should continue his probe into wrongdoing of various sorts.
In the end, Muller’s investigation may be the tool President Trump needs to drain the swamp with political cover. Don’t underestimate his value in that regard.
In due course, his investigation will get to others including Hillary Clinton. If it doesn’t, another special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate Muller and his team.
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SnyderTalk Comment:
Watch Debbie Wasserman Schultz in this video. She has lawyered-up, and she’s been told to say nothing and to claim complete ignorance.
I don’t doubt her ignorance, not about the dossier, though.
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“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)
See “His Name is Yahweh”.
