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The Witch Hunt is Over;

The Real Investigation Begins

By Gary F. Zeolla

      I already wrote about the Robert Muller report in my two-part article I Told You It Was a Hoax. That was when Attorney General (AG) William Barr released his four-page summary of the primary conclusions of the Mueller investigation. Those conclusions were there was no collusion between President Trump or the Trump campaign with Russia in the 2016 election, and there was insufficient evidence to bring a charge of obstruction of justice against Trump.

      Those conclusions still stand, and I will not be repeating here what I said in that article and elsewhere on this website and in my book Tearing the USA Apart. Instead, in this article, I want to discuss what has happened since then.

Barr Before the SJC

      Barr testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC) on May 1, 2019. As with the Kavanaugh sexual allegation hearing, I watched the entire hearing. And the latter reminded me of the former.

      I discuss the Kavanaugh proceedings in depth in my Tearing Apart book, so I will not discuss it here. But here, I will say, just as with that hearing, you did not need the subtitles to know if the Senator questioning the witness was a Republican or Democrat. That was obvious from the tone of the questioning and the questions themselves.

      Most of the Senators were the same as in the Kavanaugh hearings. Most notable among the Democrats were the three that are running for President: Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Amy Klobuchar.

      I’ve stated previously that these three’s performance in the Kavanagh hearing forever bars them from consideration to be President. That is due to their rush to judgment and ignoring of the rule of law during those hearings. And they continued that pattern here, as did the rest of the Dems on the SJC. Every one of them seemed to ignore Barr’s answers and to continue with their ill-conceived line of questioning, regardless of how strongly and how many times Barr demonstrated they were wrong in their assumptions.

      For instance, they kept repeating the lie that Mueller in his letter to Barr, rebuked Barr for misrepresenting the conclusions of his report. But that is not what Mueller’s letter did. As Barr carefully explained to them, Mueller’s concerns were the way his indecision on obstruction was being mischaracterized in the media. As such, he wanted his 19-page Executive Summary immediately released to correct that mischaracterization.

      However, Barr had previously said he would not release details about the report piecemeal. He wanted to wait until he and his team had the legally necessary redactions of the report completed, then he would release the full report, with those redactions. He did that two weeks later. And that full report included those 19 pages.

      Therefore, Barr responded to Mueller’s concerns as he wanted, except it took him two weeks longer than Mueller wanted. As Republican SJC member Senator Ted Cruz pointed out, all of the Dems’ complaints and their claims of a “cover-up” in the hearing were about those two weeks. But now that the full redacted report has been released, those claims are unwarranted. As Cruz said, if Barr was trying to cover something up, he is doing a bad job of doing so.

      The Democratic members of the SJC also kept insisting that President Trump ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. But that is not what the report says, as Barr carefully and repeatedly explained. What Trump did was to tell McGahn that he wanted McGahn to tell Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein to “remove” Mueller. Barr carefully explain that the former would have implied the President was trying to stop the investigation altogether. That could be taken as evidence of obstruction of justice. But the later could be interpreted as Trump simply wanting Mueller removed and someone else appointed in his place. That would not be obstruction of justice.

      The reason Trump wanted Mueller removed was due to “conflict of interest.” The conflict was Mueller had applied to replace James Comey as Director of the FBI, but Trump chose someone else. The day after Mueller was passed over for that position, he was appointed as Special Counsel. As a result, it was very possible Mueller held animosity toward Trump and thus was “conflicted.” That confliction was seen when Mueller hired almost all Democrats to be part of his team. Most of them had donated to the Hillary campaign and had expressed animosity towards Trump. That bias was then seen in the report.

      The report did its best to hint at some kind of ties between Trump and his campaign and Russia. But even with their biases, they could not find any true evidence of such. But that conclusion did not prevent Mueller from including in his report every possible contact between a member of the Trump campaign and a Russian. But as Barr correctly pointed out in his testimony, you could find just as many contacts between any presidential campaign and Russians, as Americans talk to Russians all of the time, and that is not a crime.

      Mueller’s bias can also be seen in him including not just that one possible incident of obstruction but also ten others. But when each one of the ten are considered carefully, the conclusion is the same—they are not actual evidence of obstruction of justice. Each one can be explained in a less than criminal manner. As such, they do not rise to the criminal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

      However, the SJC Dems tried to say the “whole of the evidence” needed to be weighed, and that together, the eleven instances showed a “pattern” of intent to obstruct justice. But no matter how many zeros you add together, you still get zero. Moreover, the only pattern I see in those eleven events is a President who was outraged that his presidency was being hampered by a “witch hunt.”

      President Trump knew he and his campaign did not collude with the Russians. But he also knew the Special Counsel investigation would seriously hinder his Presidency. That is why, when he heard about the Special Counsel investigation, Trump uttered an expletive and then exclaimed, “That is the end of my Presidency.” He was not expressing a fear his guilt would be discovered. He (like I) had lived through the Clinton investigation in the late 1990s and knew how it seriously hindered the Clinton administration.

       Trump has accomplished much in his now over two years as President. I outline many of his accomplishments on this website and in my Tearing Apart book. But much has been left undone. That has been in part due to the total lack of support from Democrats and the media. But it has also been due to this Trump/ Russian collusion hoax.

      Think back, for instance, to the Vietnam Summit with North Korean Chairman Kim Sun Jung. While that very important Summit about denuclearizing North Korea was occurring, what did the Dems do? Did they support Trump in those vital efforts? Not even close. Instead, they held a hearing at the exact same time with Trump’s former lawyer and convicted felon Michael Cohen.

      There is no doubt in my mind (and that of many others) that that hearing seriously hindered the Summit. It showed Kim that Trump did not have the full support of his government. That embolden Kim to reject Trump’s attempts at reaching an agreement. Since then, Kim has gone back to his weapons testing. Thus, due to the Dem’s animosity towards Trump and their ongoing attempts to “get” Trump on something, the world is now a more dangerous place.

      There has also been no progress on stopping the flow of illegal aliens through our southern border, no progress on the opioid epidemic (which is related to the first, as most illegal drugs come through the southern border), no progress on the rising prices of prescription drugs, no progress on our failing infrastructure, and no progress on many other issues that would actually benefit Americans. Instead, there has been this ongoing witch hunt that the Dems and the media will not let go.

Barr Refuses to Testify before the HJC

      William Barr had volunteered to testify before the House Judiciary Committee (HJC) the day after his testimony before the SJC, on May 2^nd. But the evening after his SJC hearing, he cancelled his planned appearance before the HJC. His stated reason for doing so was because of the planned format of the hearing. As I explain in my Tearing Apart book, the format for such hearings is for each member of the Committee to have five minutes to ask questions. That format is frustrating, as often, a Senator or Congressperson will not have time to fully explore an area of interest. But it is the bipartisan agreed upon format.

      However, for this hearing, after all of the Congresspersons had had their time, the Dems wanted an additional hour for House Democratic lawyers to question Barr. But Barr refused to submit himself to such a cross-examination by non-committee members. His main reason for not doing so is that format is what is used for impeachment proceedings. Thus, the Dems wanted to hold an impeachment hearing without having to vote on impeachment. Dems know that talk of impeaching the President is not popular with the majority of voters, but they nevertheless wanted the optics of an impeachment proceeding to appease their base.

      Some are trying to compare the Dems wanting to have House lawyers question Barr to what the Republicans did during the Kavanaugh proceedings. But there, the Republicans ceded their time to sex crime prosecutor Rachel Mitchell. They did not have Mitchell question Ford after they had had they say. I explain the reason for them doing so in my book.  If the Dems wanted to do that here, they could have. But they wanted to have both their time before the cameras and to have experienced lawyers to question Barr. It must also be noted that the majority of the Democratic members of the HJC are lawyers themselves, so it would have been redundant to have a second set of Democratic lawyers question Barr.

      Moreover, with that format, Barr would have had to had answer the same set of questions over and over again, all being the same dumb questions he had already answered during his testimony before the SJC. Personally, I think that was another reason he backed out from testifying before the HJC. His appearance before the SJC showed him it was futile to explain nuances of the law to people who already had their minds made up due to their hatred of Donald Trump. No matter what he said, they would still hate Trump and think he should be impeached.

      To that end, in the hearing, Dems made up a new standard for impeachment. Rather than the Constitutional standard of the President needing to be proven guilty of “Treason, high crimes, and misfeasors” to be impeached, they repeatedly asked Barr if what Trump did was “immoral.” Barr would answer that each action cited in the Mueller report did not rise to the level of being criminal “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But Dems ignored that longstanding legal standard and tried to substitute their own standard of “immoral” without ever defining what that standard entailed. They just knew Trump did something wrong and should be indicted and impeached for it.

Barr Held in Contempt of Congress

      After Barr’s refusal to testify before the HJC, Dems in the House voted to hold Barr in contempt of Congress. Their reason for doing so was not because he did not make that appearance. It was because he refused to release the full, unredacted Mueller report. But in this, their hatred of Trump has driven the Dems just plain crazy.

      The Mueller report released to the public was only 8% redacted in Book One (on alleged collusion) and 2% in Book Two (on obstruction of justice). It is very doubtful the basic conclusions of the Mueller report that there was no collusion and no obstruction of justice would be changed in that tiny amount of redacted material. That is even more the case with the version of the report made available for private reading in a secure location for members of Congress. That version has just 2% and 0.1% redacted, respectively. If the Dems in Congress think the 8% and 2% redactions made that much of a difference, you would think they would be flocking to read this less redacted version. But to date, exactly zero Democratic Senators or Congresspersons have read that less redacted report.

      That complete lack of interest in the almost completely unredacted report already available to Dems in Congress shows beyond any doubt that the Dems’ efforts in this regard have nothing to do with the Mueller report. In fact, it would be illegal for Barr to release the full, unredacted report, as the redacted parts contains grand jury testimony and material that the FBI says would compromise national security. As such, why are Dems holding Barr in contempt of Congress for not breaking the law and releasing the unredacted report? It has to do with degrading the reputation of Barr. Why? Because of the real investigation Barr has now started.

      The Mueller investigation and the idea of Trump/ Russian collusion was a hoax, a witch hunt. There was no probable cause for it to ever begin. It should never have happened. All it did was to unnecessary add to the tearing apart of the USA. The only crimes it uncovered were those created by the investigation or ones that will never been persecuted, as detailed elsewhere on this site. And that includes any alleged obstruction of justice by the President.

      To be clear, if there never was a Mueller investigation, which there should not have been, no one would now be talking about obstruction of justice by the President. As with all of the convictions Mueller attained against Trump personal, he created their crimes by his illicit investigation. Worse, that investigation was in fact an attempted coup. Trump knew that. That is why he reacted so strongly against it. That is all that is seen in those supposed eleven instances of obstruction of justice in the report; the President of the Untied States reacting to an attempted coup.

      It is the roots of that coup that Barr is now investigating, and Dems are shaking in their boots. They know the roots of the Trump/ Russian collusion hoax began under the Obama administration. As Barr uncovers the players in the coup, many beloved Democrats could be seeing indictments. Those involved could even go all the way up to President Obama or VP Joe Biden, who of course is now running for President himself.

      If Obama or Biden are shown to have knowledge of the illicit manner in which this hoax began, it could derail Biden’s presidential run and forever tarnish Obama’s legacy (as if that was not tarnished enough already). It would definitely put to the lie Biden’s claim “There was not a whisper of scandal” in the Obama/ Biden administration. In saying that on The View, he seemed to have forgotten about the Benghazi tragedy, the IRS scandal, Fast and Furious, and the $150 billion ransom payment to Iran. But this scandal will dwarf all of those scandals.

      In any case, Dems are trying to preempt this exposure of their illegal activities by disparaging the reputation of Barr, in hopes that when evidence of their crimes are released, the public will not pay any attention to them due to having no respect for the AG. But their efforts will fail, as Americans are not that stupid.

Mueller to Testify

      Robert Mueller might testify before Congress sometime this week (of May 13^th). But nothing is certain at this writing. If he does, I hope the Republicans questioning him ask him why he invented the new idea of a prosecutor having to “exonerate” a defendant, rather than the longstanding standard of a defendant being considered innocent, and a prosecutor needing to prove the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

      Along those lines, the Republicans should chide him for not reaching a decision on obstruction of justice. Mueller should have either charged Trump or said he was innocent due to not being able to be proven guilty. And that would have been the end of that. But with his indecision, Mueller left that idea open to Democratic hysteria.

      Mueller should also explain to the Dems what he really meant by his letter to Barr, to correct their misrepresentations of it. But most of all, I hope his testimony ends this whole witch hunt, but I doubt it, as the Dems have nothing else to run on in 2020.

Trump No Longer Cooperating

      Despite knowing the Mueller investigation was a witch hunt, the Trump administration was fully cooperative with it. The Trump administration released 1.4 million documents to the Special Counsel. Twenty White House personal were allowed to be interviewed by Mueller’s team, with eight of them being from the White House counselor’s office.

      President Trump never invoked executive privilege over any materials or persons. Muller had full access to everything he wanted to see and everyone he wanted to interview. A substantial amount of materials could have been withheld via executive privilege, but it was not. Legally, Trump could have even fired Mueller, but he never did. The only person Mueller wanted to interview but did not was the President himself. But even then, Trump answered written questions submitted by Mueller. All of this argues strongly against the idea that Trump obstructed justice.

      It should be noted, Trump was right in not submitting himself to an interview, as it would have just been a perjury trap, as it was with most of those who have faced jail time from this witch hunt.

      But now, Trump, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put it, considers the Muller investigation “Case closed.” As such, Trump is no longer cooperating with the ongoing efforts by Democrats to continue to beat this dead dog. And in that, he is totally correct.

      The Dems are trying to extend this hoax to the 2020 election, but Trump is under no obligation to aid their efforts. There have now been four investigations into alleged Trump/ Russian collusion in the 2016 election—by the HJC, by the SJC, by the Inspector General (IG), and now by the Special Counsel. All four reached the same conclusion—there was no such collusion. As such, it is time for Dems to end this nonsense and to work with Trump on areas of concern to Americans, like the items previously mentioned.

      Moreover, Dems and the media should apologize to President Trump for calling him a traitor, a puppet of Putin, a Russian asset, and all of the other nonsense that has been propagated over the last two years, over and over again, with breathless hysteria. But instead of apologizing, like reputable politicians and media personal would do, they are simply switching their attacks against Trump from collusion to the absurd idea of obstruction, with no acknowledgement of being so very wrong on the former. By having been so wrong, it is their reputations that have been tarnished.

Conclusion

      The USA has been experiencing an attempted coup. I warned about it two years ago, but few listened (see Warning! Coup in Process). That is why people still do not get the seriousness of these ongoing attacks by the Dems. They are still in coup mode. That is the real “Constitutional crisis” that is occurring. It is not Barr not releasing the unredacted Mueller report, and it is not Trump no longer cooperating with Dems in Congress in their ongoing attempted coup, as Dems and the media are claiming. Don’t fall for it. The only way to end this coup attempt will be to vote Dems out of power in 2020.

References:

Standard References.

The Witch Hunt is Over; The Real Investigation Begins. Copyright © 2019 by Gary F. Zeolla (www.Zeolla.org).

The above article was posted on this website May 12, 2019.

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