US

The Hill: Mueller indictments still miss the mark on Trump-Russia collusion


 

Time to can the investigation, and ignite a new Special Council to dig into the Obama/Clinton/DOJ/FBI Dossier scandal…

Not only did the indictment clearly say that no one in the Trump campaign was wittingly or knowingly involved with the Russians, it explains how the Russians used fake names and groups to hide their real identities.  […]
There is still no evidence of anyone “wittingly” or knowingly colluding with these Russians. Moreover, the indictment says that the Russian efforts began in 2014, long before the candidacy of Trump.

Mueller indictments still miss the mark on Trump-Russia collusion

Lewis Carroll once wrote in praise of adjectives, saying that “adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs.” That is certainly true with the latest indictments by special counsel Robert Mueller of 13 Russians for interfering with the 2016 presidential election. For the White House, the entire report comes down to a single adjective. Let’s see if you can spot it: The Russian defendants “communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign.”

 

Despite a 37-page indictment with a long narrative on a coordinated Russian campaign of interference, the most newsworthy fact comes from the carefully placed adjective “unwitting.” It confirms that the special counsel has found no knowing coordination or collusion between these hackers and Trump officials. The indictment names 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities in alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election. It describes a coordinated effort by Russians, including the shadowy Internet Research Agency, to wage “information warfare” against the United States.

 

The charges themselves are not particularly novel or exotic. They involve identity fraud, wire fraud and other conventional charges. However, the context is anything but conventional. This is the largest indictment of a foreign effort to interfere with our elections, and the clear import is that the hand of the Russian government was behind this effort. Moreover, it is clear that the Russians were acting to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.

 

While the indictment is historic, it is hardly a surprise. Few people were questioning the Russian interference with and hacking of the election. Both Democratic and Republican leaders were in agreement on this fact, as were all of the administration’s top intelligence figures. The one hold-out seemed to be the president himself. He routinely referred to the “fake news” of the Russian investigation.

 

While Trump seemed to be focusing on the specific allegations of collusion by his campaign, he will now have a chance to make that distinction more clearly and concretely. This indictment is incredibly detailed and damning as to the effort of the Russians to interfere in the election and then hide their tracks once the FBI went into the field looking for the hackers.

 

More here.

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