Republished with permission from Gary Gindler:
On Monday, October 30, 2017, special counsel Robert Mueller brought official charges [ read the charges ] against Paul Manafort without ever completing an investigation into the collusion of President Trump and Vladimir Putin. He was forced to concoct something in a hurry after it became known that it was Hillary Clinton who paid for the false dossier on Trump which triggered the beginning of the Russian hysteria. Mueller is the former director of the FBI and kept under wraps the deal of the sale of American uranium mines to Russia and Hillary Clinton’s participation in the matter.
Manafort is accused of laundering money, evading taxes, violating the law on the registration of being a foreign agent during his work in Ukraine, and for giving false testimony to federal agents. But the rush led to the fact that the text of the indictment of the special counsel Mueller looks “raw.” For example, in one place the prosecutor states that the crimes were committed until 2016; several pages later – until 2017. But the list of suspicious money transfers from offshore accounts has the latest date of 2014.
Also, the indictment erroneously states that Julia Tymoshenko was the President of Ukraine. Therefore, in general, the credibility of such documents will certainly be low.
To the great disappointment of the Anti-Trumpists, the indictment does not mention either Trump or the election campaign. It does not mention Russia or Putin, even though hysteria over alleged collusion of Trump with the Russians has been going on for more than a year. In essence, Manafort and his subordinate Gates worked for the pro-Russian government of the Ukraine and the pro-Russian Ukrainian Party of Regions, but the money for this work was left mostly in foreign offshore accounts. There is nothing illegal about this.
The supposed violation of the law was committed when Manafort and Gates did not declare these incomes. If we believe that Manafort laundered money and used offshore banks for tax evasion, he faces a long prison term, as a private person who violated the tax laws. Trump may have made a mistake hiring a man with his record as a campaign manager, but that mistake is nothing criminal.
The special counsel did not even attempt to prove that during the three months when Manafort was the head of the Trump election campaign – from May 19 to Aug. 19 of last year – there was a criminal conspiracy between Trump and Putin. The notion that Trump is a puppet of the Kremlin has officially collapsed. And all those who went all-out and had invested all their political capital in this rancid enterprise will suffer as a result.
Information about the finances of Manafort is not something new. They were not obtained in five months by a special prosecutor’s investigation. The information was gathered by the FBI long before, and Mueller simply inherited all the results of the FBI’s years on the case. He had to fall back on this because he had literally nothing else.
Now the case has been referred to the court. At the initial stage, the judge will be Deborah Robinson, known for her conviction of Scooter Libby, and then the relay will go to Judge Amy Jackson. She is Obama’s protege, a donor to Bill Clinton, and was one of Obama’s potential candidates for SCOTUS. She is known for rejecting the lawsuit against Hillary Clinton in 2012 from relatives of the victims of the attack in Benghazi. The piquancy of the situation is also that Judge Jackson is a relative of the Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan.
Manafort, Gates and all those who got hooked to Mueller should prepare for bankruptcy. After all, this is the only thing that the Deep State can offer at the moment. There will be twisting of the hands of political opponents with the help of astronomical legal expenses. The judicial system of the United States has long been operating on this principle. The first victim was, of course, General Flynn – he has run out of money for lawyers, and recently a public foundation was created to cover his legal protection.
There is every reason to believe that Manafort and Gates are destined to repeat the fate of Scooter Libby, who was involved in disclosing the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame. While laying charges against Libby, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald knew in advance that Libby did not disclose the name of the agent (U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had admitted this). Nevertheless, the prosecutor put forward a charge on a very different matter, and Libby was convicted.
One of Trump’s volunteer advisors, George Papadopoulos was charged by Mueller for the same crime that Libby was charged with – providing false testimony to the FBI. He pleaded guilty. But Papadopoulos did indeed meet with several Russians (who, most likely, work for Russian intelligence agencies), but all his attempts were unsuccessful, and the communication channel between Trump’s election campaign and the Russians never took place.
By the way, Manafort was the man who put an end to the attempts of this young volunteer to engage in unapproved and unauthorized activities. And the current employees of the White House even had to use Google to find out who the heck Papadopoulos was. He wasn’t exactly a noteworthy figure in Trump’s orbit.
The struggle on the judicial front in the Washington swamp will continue as usual, but the political consequences of this fight will be completely different for Democrats and Republicans. Republicans are already demanding an “eye for an eye” and are calling for the investigation of Uranium-gate and Hillary’s dirty dealings. They can do this, but the Democrats to fight off the accusations will either have to surrender Hillary or call it quits on their witch hunt.
In any case, the Democrats are facing a crushing defeat in the 2018 elections unless they offer one hundred percent proof of the criminal collusion between Trump and Putin.
To the great regret of Democrats and Republican Anti-Trumpists, there is no ground for impeaching President Trump. Congressional investigations ended in vain, and the first shot of Mueller was a blank.
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