Four Observations on the Latest Mueller Bombshell in 'Russiagate'
By Bill Blum
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announces Robert Mueller's indictment
of 13 Russian nationals and several Russian entities. (Jacquelyn Martin /
AP)
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has blown the lid off the Russiagate
scandal. In a 37-page grand jury indictment filed last Friday, Mueller
charged 13 Russian nationals and three Russian businesses with an elaborate
conspiracy to defraud the United States aimed at disrupting the 2016
presidential race. At the intersection of law and politics, it doesnt get
much bigger than this.
Since news of the indictment broke, every interested party on the planet has
worked hard to spin the storyfrom President Trump and Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov to the talking heads on cable news and the nettlesome
trolls who haunt your favorite websites.
Taking to Twitter, Trump has insisted the indictment exonerates him of
collusion and does nothing to tarnish his election, while Lavrov has blasted
the filing as pure blather.
The talking heads have been all over the map, with some on MSNBC and CNN
predicting Trumps inevitable downfall, and others on Fox dismissing the
indictment as insignificant. The trolls continue, as before, to wail about
Mueller and the machinations of the deep state.
If all the noise has left you a bit dazed and confused, here are four
observations to help make sense of the situation:
1. Russiagate isnt a hoax.
Until the indictment, the official position of the White House and the
presidents Fox News echo chamberand even some pundits on the left and
independent groupswas that there was no proof whatsoever to the claim that
Russia or individuals acting on behalf of the Russian government attempted
to intervene in the 2016 election. The scandal was trivialized as a hoax or
fake news, or worse, a witch hunt and a new form of McCarthyism designed to
discredit Trumps victory.
On the right, advocates of this viewpoint were motivated by a desire to
defend Trump at all costs because they supported his positions on
immigration, hostility to the media, rolling back voting rights and the
social safety net, accelerating mass incarceration, dismantling Obamacare
and redistributing the nations wealth even more obscenely in favor of the
super-rich through a combination of tax cuts and economic and environmental
deregulation.
Skeptics on the left were understandably leery of alleged Russian
intervention because of the hypocrisy and lies the country has been fed for
years about foreign policy and the threat of terrorism by the intelligence
community (the federation of 17 agencies, including the FBI and CIA,
responsible for monitoring and protecting national security). Some elements
on the left also were doubtful because of their opposition to the
destructive economic and social consequences of neoliberalism as a governing
philosophy, as represented by the Clintons and the dominant corporate wing
of the Democratic Party.
Some on the left even saw Trump as a peace candidate who would pursue
détente with Vladimir Putin in contrast to Clinton, who would promote
continued U.S. aggression. Some pushed the slogan during the campaign that
Trump is the symptom [of the illnesses of American capitalism], Clinton is
the disease.
Both groups of skeptics argued that if there were any substance to the
theory of Russian intervention, we would have learned the details by now. It
wasnt enough for either group that emails from the Democratic National
Committee or from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta Jr.s personal
account wound up being published by WikiLeaks. The skeptics countered that
the DNCs emails were leaked from the inside rather than hacked from the
outside.
Other instances of Russian meddling, such as the June 2016 meeting at Trump
Tower in Manhattan between Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort
and a collection of Russians led by Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, a
well-connected lawyer with ties to the Russian Federal Security Service,
were derided as inconsequential nothing burgers.
The new Mueller indictment undermines the skepticism. It lays out in
meticulous detail the allegation of a conspiracy to sow discord in the U.S.
political system through a variety of means, including, but not limited to,
the creation and use of false and stolen social media accounts on Twitter,
Instagram and Facebook, and the opening of bank accounts based on Social
Security numbers stolen from unsuspecting Americans. Although the conspiracy
began in 2014, the indictment charges that ultimately it was directed at
helping Trump win the 2016 election.
As alleged in paragraph six of the indictment:
Defendants posted derogatory information about a number of candidates, and
by early to mid-2016, Defendants operations included supporting the
presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump (Trump Campaign)
and disparaging Hillary Clinton. Defendants made various expenditures to
carry out those activities, including buying political advertisements on
social media in the names of U.S. persons and entities. Defendants also
staged political rallies inside the United States, and while posing as U.S.
grassroots entities and U.S. persons, and without revealing their Russian
identities and ORGANIZATION affiliation, solicited and compensated real U.S.
persons to promote or disparage candidates. Some Defendants, posing as U.S.
persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with
unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other
political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.
The individuals responsible for the conspiracy are listed by name. They
include a dozen computer hackers and operatives employed by the St.
Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency LLC (IRA), long considered
Russias premier espionage troll factory. Also named are the IRAs parent
companies, Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord Catering, and
Concords owner, Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, a Kremlin confidant who
reportedly has made a fortune in the food-supply business. Moscow insiders
jokingly have nicknamed Prigozhin Putins chef.
The defendants are accused in eight counts of the crimes of conspiracy
against the United States in violation of federal election laws that
prohibit foreign influence; wire and bank fraud; and aggravated identity
theft.
The specific overt acts the defendants allegedly undertook in furtherance of
the conspiracy are meticulously laid out in the indictment one by one,
paragraph after lengthy paragraph, perpetrator by perpetrator, deed by deed,
date by date, place by place. Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod
Rosensteinthe special counsels Justice Department supervisor, who
announced the indictment at a Friday afternoon news conferencebelieve they
can prove each and every allegation beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of
law.
Although the chances are virtually nil that the defendants will ever be
extradited, the indictment is clear and precise, and by no means the product
of a hoax.
2. Although the indictment does not charge Trump and members of his inner
circle with criminal conduct, it by no means clears them.
In his news conference, Rosenstein emphasized that no Americans were named
as defendants in the indictment. Under the terms of the indictment, he
explained, no Americans are accused of wittingly or knowingly
participating in the conspiracy.
On the heels of the news conference, Trump and his supporters have seized on
Rosensteins remarks to claim that the indictment clears the president and
his campaign of any charges of colluding or plotting with the Russians.
They could not be more wrong.
The truthalways an elusive commodity in the hands of the 45th commander in
chiefis that the indictment is silent on the criminal liability of any
Americans. It does not prove there is no liability.
We know this because Mueller also disclosed on Friday that he and his team
had secured a guilty plea earlier this month from a California man named
Ricky Pinedo on charges of identity fraud for using stolen identities to set
up bank accounts that he later unwittingly sold to the Russians to
facilitate their social media mischief.
Nowhere is Pinedo, who has entered into an agreement to cooperate with
Mueller, mentioned in the new indictment filed against the Russians. It is
simply wishful thinking on the presidents part to conclude that additional
Americans, including some possibly linked directly to the Trump campaign,
wont be subsequently prosecuted. Trump and his minions also seem to have
forgotten, or wish the rest of us have, that Mueller also has secured guilty
pleas from two other former Trump advisersGeorge Papadopoulos and Gen.
Michael Flynnfor lying to the FBI. Like Pinedo, they have promised to
cooperate with Mueller in his ongoing probe.
In another late-breaking development, former Trump adviser Rick Gates is
expected to plead guilty to money laundering charges, and agree to testify
against ex-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in a trial slated for early
May.
As such cases illustrate, the Mueller investigation as a whole is concerned
with far more than Russian efforts to disrupt the elections by infiltrating
social media platforms. Most critically of all, the investigation is focused
on the presidents personal liability for obstruction of justice stemming
from the May 2017 firing of former FBI Director James Comey, and possible
money laundering involving his business dealings with Russian interests both
here and abroad.
3. The indictment does not prove the election was stolen from Clinton, but
neither does it establish the opposite.
As the old saying goes: Even a broken clock is right twice day a day. In
at least one respect, Trump was correct in asserting in a weekend tweetstorm
on Mueller and the FBI that nothing alleged in the new indictment shows the
conspiracy affected the outcome of the election. In his news conference,
Rosenstein made the same observation, although without the histrionics.
Still, nothing alleged in the indictment will lift the cloud of illegitimacy
that has surrounded the Trump presidency. In all likelihood, the indictment
will have the opposite long-term effect, as it alleges that the Russian
disinformation operation managed to reach millions of Americans.
The election was decided by under 78,000 votes in the swing states of
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Clinton may have been the worst
candidate the Democrats could have nominated, but had she prevailed in all
three, she would have won the Electoral College by a tally of 278 to 260.
4. For the moment, Rosenstein and Mueller are safe.
Since his appointment, Mueller has been a constant thorn in Trumps side.
According to The New York Times, he threatened to fire Mueller last June,
when stories first circulated that Mueller was looking into the obstruction
issue. Trump reportedly stopped short of giving the termination order only
because White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II threatened to resign.
Its also no secret that Trump distrusts Rosenstein. Because Attorney
General Jeff Sessions recused himself in March 2017 from overseeing the
Russia investigation, Rosenstein is Muellers boss. Under the law, only
Rosenstein has the authority to carry out a presidential order to fire
Mueller, and he may do so only for good cause.
Should Rosenstein refuse, Trump could fire him or force his resignation, and
command the official next in line in the Justice Departments hierarchy to
get rid of Mueller. With the impending retirement of Associate Attorney
General Rachel Brand, the task would fall to Solicitor General Noel
Francisco, whose basic responsibility is to represent the administration
before the Supreme Court. Francisco is a movement conservative long
affiliated with the Federalist Society.
Its by no means certain that Francisco would agree to fire Mueller, but if
he did, he would follow in the footsteps of Robert Bork, who as Richard
Nixons solicitor general fired Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox
in the infamous Saturday Night Massacre of 1973.
Whether by design or not, the new Russia indictment, with all the details it
sets forth, should stave off a repeat of the massacrebut only for the time
being. With Mueller negotiating with Trumps attorneys to set up a
face-to-face interview of the president under oath, anything could happen in
the coming months.
