Because Sessions is an inherently decent, kind, and friendly person, he thought his former colleagues in the Senate would treat him fairly during his confirmation hearings. He had apparently forgotten that in 1986, Democrats had engaged in a nasty partisan attack to block his nomination by President Reagan to be a federal judge. True to form, after President Trump’s election, left-wing senators attacked Sessions over minor discrepancies in his Senate testimony about whether or not he met or contacted any Russians while working on the presidential campaign. In fact, he had spoken with Russians in his normal capacity as a U.S. senator—but not through the Trump campaign. Democrats ignored this important distinction and smeared Sessions in order to hurt Trump.
Sessions tried to appease the Democrats by agreeing to recuse himself on the Russian collusion case and turning supervision of it over to Rod Rosenstein, his deputy attorney general who was a career Justice Department professional. President Trump was livid because he knew there was no Russian collusion with the campaign, and therefore Sessions had no reason to recuse himself.
All of this was occurring in a swirling series of revelations about Comey, who was earning scrutiny for having broken so many rules to protect Secretary Clinton. In fact, early on, it was this mounting pressure that caused him to announce he was reopening the Clinton investigation nearly two weeks before the election. He was trying to cover himself.
On May 16, 2017, President Trump met with former FBI Director Robert Mueller to interview him as Comey’s possible replacement. Trump had concluded he wanted someone new. However, the following day, Mueller was instead named by Rosenstein to look into “any links and/or coordination between Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.” It is the last clause which opened the door for the rule of law to be replaced with the rule of Mueller.
Essentially Rosenstein gave Mueller carte blanche to look at anything. What is the limit in the phrase “any matters that arose or may arise”? Of course, week by week, we have watched the Mueller team broaden the scope of its investigation. The original question of whether there was Russian collusion with the Trump campaign seems to have disappeared. Mueller could not find any evidence of collusion. Instead, he is going after Russians for crimes committed while creating propaganda designed to influence our politics and elections. He is going after former Trump campaign workers for tax and banking problems, which preceded the 2016 campaign, and he is going after anyone who gives inconsistent statements to his investigators.
In effect Mueller is setting the stage to go after the Trump family and the president himself by diving into any aspect of his business, taxes, and past statements. This is rapidly becoming an open-ended hunt for guilt with no regard for the limits of the law, the normal limits on an independent counsel, or even the existence of an alleged crime.
Furthermore, Mueller is setting up the threat of an obstruction case against the president, so if he can’t get President Trump for any stated violation, he will try to claim Trump interfered with the investigation itself.
NO END IN SIGHT
There is no doubt: Of all the attacks that have been waged upon the Trump presidency, the Mueller investigation is the deadliest.
The investigation stays alive because it is the deep state’s last opportunity to stop President Trump from dismantling the bureaucracy and corruption in Washington.
Mueller has assembled a team of more than 15 attorneys. Most of them are Democrats (based on their political donation patterns). These lawyers are high-powered, expensive, and professional. They did not take deep cuts in pay to achieve nothing. They are like a legal wolf pack hunting for big game. When the Russian collusion trail completely dries up, they seek others. If no trail leads them to convictable offenses, they will maneuver until they invent a trail that will. I predict the Mueller team will find someone in the White House to indict for something. That is the pattern of special counsels.
This investigation is especially dangerous because its rules are totally different from anything Trump has experienced. He has been through civil lawsuits. That experience could prove misleading. Prosecutors don’t play by the same rules as civil litigators. Every step is a potential land mine. Every statement potentially can be construed as perjury.
More than a dozen really smart prosecutors have been working for a year to assemble facts. They will go into interviews knowing many things that their interviewees do not know. Neither the targets nor their attorneys will have any idea how much the prosecutors have assembled. The one-sided nature of prosecutorial power makes investigations like this so dangerous. Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who tried the terrorists from the first World Trade Center bombing, has written extensively on the dangers the Trump team is facing.
I am writing this in the early part of 2018. I cannot predict how Special Counsel Mueller’s boundless investigation will have proceeded by the time this book is published. However, based on my observations so far, I can safely bet it will not be any closer to serving justice or finding truth. These types of special investigations rarely do. Since the specter of a special investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election was raised, I have warned that it would be an open-ended, unchecked witch hunt that would not end until someone—specifically someone connected to President Trump—was convicted of something, regardless of guilt or innocence. I’m not the only one saying this. Victor Davis Hanson wrote an excellent article explaining the following about special investigators for the National Review on December 12, 2017.1
In his piece, Hanson wrote:
Special prosecutors, investigators, and counsels are usually a bad idea. They are admissions that constitutionally mandated institutions don’t work—and can be rescued only by supposed superhuman moralists, who are without the innate biases inherent in human nature.
The record from Lawrence Walsh to Ken Starr to Patrick Fitzgerald suggests otherwise. Originally narrow mandates inevitably expand—on the cynical theory that everyone has something embarrassing to hide. Promised “short” timelines and limited budgets are quickly forgotten. Prosecutors search for ever new crimes to justify the expense and public expectations of the special-counsel appointment.
Hanson is exactly right. Think about it: There is no way, after spending months of time and effort and millions of taxpayer dollars, that any special prosecutor would come before Congress and report that he or she found no evidence of wrongdoing.
Instead, Mueller is dutifully collecting deposition after deposition from as many people in the president’s orbit as possible, so he can then recall those people months later and quiz them on what they initially told investigators. Any inconsistencies—no matter how minor—will be aggressively prosecuted as giving false statements, perjury, or obstruction of justice. As Hanson also noted in his piece, “special investigations often quickly turn Soviet, in the sense of ‘Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.’”
We have already seen this happen to former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Flynn was charged with making false statements2 to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents in January 2017 about a conversation he had with the Russian Ambassador in December 2016.
This is what happened: On December 29, 2016, the Obama administration expelled 35 people it suspected of being Russian spies and sanctioned the country’s top intelligence services after U.S. agencies determined Russia was responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee. The same day, Flynn reportedly spoke to the Russian ambassador and asked him to keep Russian leaders from overreacting to the actions of America’s outgoing president. A month later, Flynn didn’t accurately relay this conversation to FBI agents. According to court filings, Flynn told the FBI he had not urged Russia to moderate its response to Obama’s sanctions and that he didn’t recall the ambassador agreeing to do so. Almost 10 months later, Flynn was charged with two counts of giving false statements. Ultimately
, Flynn pleaded guilty.
To the layman (thanks in large part to the media’s devotion to casting the Trump administration in a bad light), this all seemed very shady and played into the Trump–Russia narrative. However, what gets lost in this story is the fact that Flynn was perfectly within the law to contact the Russian ambassador and urge him to tone down Russia’s response. Flynn was a member of the presidential transition team and had been selected as National Security Advisor. The election was over. Meanwhile, the outgoing Democratic president was trying to cause trouble for the incoming administration. This wasn’t an act of collusion. It was diplomacy.
Flynn’s mistake was he apparently underestimated just how aggressively the FBI was going to be to draw first blood. He should have kept a much more detailed record of his interactions, so he didn’t have to rely on his memory. This would have kept him from losing his job in the White House as well. He wasn’t fired because he had conversations with the Russian ambassador. He was fired because he failed to accurately report them to the vice president.
Furthermore, Flynn was faced with the threats of being bankrupted while defending himself and of having his son being drawn into the investigation. His plea was about personal and family survival.
As an example of how dangerous the prosecutors can be, compare Flynn’s harsh treatment (after 35 years defending America in uniform) with the Justice Department ignoring all the crimes reportedly committed by Clinton staff.
Justice has ceased to be blind. It keeps its left eye wide open. That is how the rule of law has evolved into the rule of Mueller.
Another example of Mueller’s gotcha approach is the indictment and subsequent guilty plea of George Papadopoulos. Now, to be sure, if the FBI’s indictment of Papadopoulos3 is completely accurate, Papadopoulos made some very big mistakes. His first mistake was apparently agreeing to an FBI interview without an attorney present. His second mistake was apparently trying to outfox investigators by downplaying his contact with some Russian nationals while he was working for the campaign overseas—and omitting some contacts entirely.
According to the court filings, Papadopoulos was working as a foreign policy advisor for the campaign in London. One of his principle goals was to improve U.S.–Russia relations under the Trump administration. During the course of this work, he met with a professor who claimed to have high-level contacts with the Russian government. In late March 2016, this professor introduced Papadopoulos to a woman who was supposedly Russian President Vladimir Putin’s niece (she wasn’t related to Putin). The two Russians led Papadopoulos to believe they would introduce him to the Russian ambassador in London (they did not). The Russians did eventually put Papadopoulos in contact with someone “who had connections to” the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). This person started to work with Papadopoulos to potentially set up a meeting between Russian officials and the campaign. More than a month went by, and the Russian MFA contact apparently extended an invitation for Trump to personally come meet Putin.
This meeting never took place. In a footnote on the indictment, the FBI acknowledged that top Trump campaign officials had privately exchanged emails agreeing that “DT is not doing these trips.” Finally, in late April, the professor met with Papadopoulos and told him Russian officials had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” Now, the FBI states that Papadopoulos continued to work with the campaign and continued to try to arrange a meeting between Russia and Trump campaign members—which he had been doing long before he was told about the “dirt.” At no point does the indictment indicate that Papadopoulos told other campaign officials about the alleged “dirt” or attempted to use it to advance Trump’s campaign.
By all accounts, it appears Papadopoulos was a low-level advisor in Europe who was trying to make a career for himself by arranging meetings that never happened. It appears nothing he did for the campaign was illegal or even out of the ordinary.
Similar to Flynn, his major mistake was not taking his initial FBI interview seriously. The FBI charged Papadopoulos with giving false statements because he apparently misrepresented when his professor contact mentioned the “dirt.” He also reportedly failed to disclose his contact with the phony Putin relative and was not honest about the content and frequency of his interactions with Russian nationals overall.
Once again, a Trump staffer was arrested for something he said to the FBI, not for any illegal activity related to Russia or influencing the 2016 election. This is the exact model used to indict and ultimately convict Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff Scooter Libby in 2007 over the Valerie Plame CIA scandal. I wrote a newsletter and op-ed for FoxNews.com4 in April 2017 urging Trump team members to take note of the Libby case and refuse to testify in hearings about the Russia investigation without being assured immunity from prosecution. Here is an excerpt that explains the Libby case—what I consider “the most extraordinary case in my lifetime of process being used to destroy an innocent person.” It is useful for understanding the Mueller investigation.
An independent counsel was appointed to find out who told the press that a woman named Valerie Plame was a covert Central Intelligence Operative in 2003. Her husband was a diplomat who had been critical of the Bush administration. So, the Left (and naturally the media) thought this was a big deal.
The prosecutor targeted Libby, who was Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, because it would be damaging to the Bush administration before the 2004 election. The prosecutor claimed Scooter had shared government secrets with a Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporter named Judith Miller. Initially, Miller refused to testify, so—in perhaps the greatest attack on American press freedom in our lifetime—the prosecutor had Miller jailed for 85 days. Finally, she testified that Scooter was the source after he gave her permission to break reporter confidentiality just to get her out of jail.
Libby was ultimately convicted on four counts—but not for leaking information. He was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice because of the way in which he answered questions.
The most relevant part of this story—which shows the investigation was far from an unbiased pursuit of the truth—is Miller never even wrote that Plame was a CIA operative.
Washington Post writer Robert Novak first outed Plame as a member of the CIA in a piece on July 14, 2003. Novak was told by Richard Armitage, the No. 2 person at the State Department. The prosecutor in the Libby case knew this, but he was focused on destroying Libby to hurt Bush—not uncovering the truth. The prosecutor told Armitage to keep quiet in order to continue the investigation. And Armitage—who undeniably leaked the classified information to the public—was never charged.
Mueller and his prosecutors are also scrutinizing every aspect of the lives of Trump’s team members, looking for any reasons to accuse them of breaking any laws. It doesn’t matter if the alleged crimes have anything to do with the campaign or even Russia.
This is the tactic Mueller used to charge former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates.
The charges against Manafort and Gates5 are related to allegations that they didn’t register as lobbyists for the Ukrainian government and one of its political parties. Importantly, this failure to register is alleged to have happened between 2006 and 2015—prior to the Trump campaign or Manafort’s involvement in it. They are also charged with attempting to hide money they allegedly received from the Ukrainians. Gates pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and lying to the FBI in late February. Shortly after Gates’s plea, a grand jury in Virginia unsealed an indictment of Manafort with new charges related to taxes and alleged bank fraud.
I don’t know if any of these allegations against Manafort are true. He pleaded not guilty. However, I’m pretty sure they didn’t warrant creating the public spectacle of dragging Manafort out of his home in an armed raid the day after he had voluntarily testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is separately investigating alleged Russian influe
nce in the election.
Clearly, the timing of the Manafort raid was intentional. Mueller raided Manafort’s house immediately after Manafort’s visit to the Senate to create the impression that the case against Manafort has some vague connection to President Trump—whether any existed or not. Again, compare the careful, courteous approach the FBI and the Justice Department took to the Clinton team during the illegal email server investigation with the secret police-style tactics Mueller used against Manafort.
Put yourself in Manafort’s shoes. You are voluntarily cooperating with various congressional investigations. Your attorneys have a positive, practical relationship with the congressional committees. Suddenly, at 3 a.m., your door is kicked in and armed men rush into your bedroom while you and your wife are still in bed in your pajamas. Mueller to this day has not explained why this Gestapo-KGB-police-state raid was necessary. I think it was an effort to scare Manafort into cooperating and to warn others how dangerous this could become.
However, Mueller’s secret police tactic failed. In fact, Manafort has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DOJ) challenging the indictment specifically because the allegations within have nothing to do with the scope of Mueller’s supposed mission—to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
Make no mistake, this is about embarrassing and undermining the president, nothing more.
THE SPECIAL INVESTIGATION SETUP
It is true, when Mueller was first announced as the special counsel to investigate the supposed election influence by Russia, I was heartened. Mueller had an excellent reputation, and I was optimistic that he would allay my fear that the special investigation would be an endless, scattershot, fishing expedition. I genuinely thought that Mueller, who was director of the FBI under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, would play it straight. My hopes were shaken a month later, however, as soon as I heard testimony by fired FBI Director Comey.6 On June 8, 2017, Comey admitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee that days after he was fired, he intentionally leaked his confidential notes about private conversations he had with President Trump to a professor at Columbia Law School. Comey asked his professor friend to share the memos with the press specifically because he “thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.” He also specified that he didn’t do it himself “for a variety of reasons.”
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