{"id":35284,"date":"2019-01-26T12:26:24","date_gmt":"2019-01-26T17:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=35284"},"modified":"2019-01-26T12:26:24","modified_gmt":"2019-01-26T17:26:24","slug":"i-dont-think-this-is-what-they-meant-to-prove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=35284","title":{"rendered":"I Don’t Think This Is What They Meant To Prove"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Review<\/a> today posted an article by Andrew McCarthy about the indictment of Roger Stone. The headline of the article is, “Stone Indictment Underscores That There Was No Trump-Russia Conspiracy.” Since Andrew McCarthy is an experienced prosecutor, he is very familiar with how the law works.<\/p>\n

The article notes:<\/p>\n

Roger Stone is the shiny object. The obstruction charges in his long-anticipated indictment<\/a>, made public on Friday, are not the matter of consequence for the United States.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nor is the critical thing the indictment\u2019s implicit confirmation that there was no criminal \u201ccollusion\u201d conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What matters is this: The indictment is just the latest blatant demonstration that Special Counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s office, the Department of Justice, and the FBI have known for many months that there was no such conspiracy. And yet, fully aware that the Obama administration, the Justice Department, and the FBI had assiduously crafted a public narrative that Trump may have been in cahoots with the Russian regime, they have allowed that cloud of suspicion to hover over the presidency \u2014 over the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to govern \u2014 heedless of the damage to the country.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article continues:<\/p>\n

So now we have the Stone indictment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It alleges no involvement \u2014 by Stone or the Trump campaign \u2014 in Russia\u2019s hacking. The indictment\u2019s focus, instead, is the WikiLeaks end of the enterprise \u2014 i.e., not the \u201ccyberespionage\u201d of a foreign power that gave rise to the investigation, but the dissemination of the stolen emails after the hacking. And what do we learn? That the Trump campaign did not know what WikiLeaks had. That is, in addition to being uninvolved in Russia\u2019s espionage, the Trump campaign was uninvolved in Julian Assange\u2019s acquisition of what Russia stole.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Stone indictment reads like an episode of The Three Stooges<\/i><\/em>. Stone and two associates \u2014 conservative writer and conspiracy theorist Jerry Corsi, and left-wing-comedian-turned-radio-host Randy Credico, respectively denominated \u201cPerson 1\u201d and \u201cPerson 2\u201d \u2014 are on a quest to find out what WikiLeaks has on Hillary Clinton and when Assange is going to publicize it. But that does not suit Stone, who has cultivated an image of political dirty trickster and plugged-in soothsayer. In public, then, Stone pretends to know more than he knows and to have an insider\u2019s view of Assange\u2019s operation; behind the scenes, he scrounges around for clues about what Assange is up to, hoping some insider will tell him.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article concludes with two paragraphs that should give all of us something to think about:<\/p>\n

There is no reason why the special counsel could not have issued an interim report clearing the president of suspicion that he was a Russian agent. Doing so would merely have removed the specter of traitorous conspiracy from the White House. It would not have compromised Mueller\u2019s ability to investigate Russia\u2019s interference in the election; it would not have undermined Mueller\u2019s probe of potential obstruction offenses by the president. (And while it is not Mueller\u2019s job to discourage the president\u2019s puerile \u201cwitch hunt\u201d tweets, if the public had been told that the Justice Department withdrew its highly irregular public statements about Trump\u2019s possible criminal complicity in Russia\u2019s espionage, presidential tirades about the investigation would have ebbed, if not disappeared entirely.)<\/strong><\/p>\n

We are not just talking about having our priorities in order \u2014 i.e., recognizing that the ability of the president to govern takes precedence the prosecutor\u2019s desire for investigative secrecy. We are talking about common sense and common decency: The Justice Department and the FBI went out of their way to portray Donald Trump as a suspect in what would have been the most abhorrent crime in the nation\u2019s history. It has been more than two years. Is it too much to ask that the Justice Department withdraw its public suggestion that the president of the United States might be a clandestine agent of Russia?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is time to clean house in the FBI and the DOJ–too many people have taken part in this charade to bring down a duly-elected President.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The National Review today posted an article by Andrew McCarthy about the indictment of Roger Stone. The headline of the article is, “Stone Indictment Underscores That There Was No Trump-Russia Conspiracy.” Since Andrew McCarthy is an experienced prosecutor, he is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[108,10954,69,790,10155,911,3035,11965,1083,11559,11114,5786],"class_list":["post-35284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-andrew-mccarthy","tag-collusion","tag-department-of-justice","tag-fbi","tag-julian-assange","tag-national-review","tag-robert-mueller","tag-roger-stone","tag-russia","tag-special-counsel","tag-trump-campaign","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35284"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35286,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35284\/revisions\/35286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}