RUTHFULLY YOURS

A Dutch lawyer unconnected to the unproven claim the Trump campaign somehow colluded with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 election has pled guilty to lying to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators.

This failure – yet again – to indict a Trump campaign official in connection with the campaign’s allegedly collusive behavior appears to constitute another tacit admission by Mueller that the Left’s electoral collusion conspiracy theory that he was commissioned to investigate is utter nonsense. Charging all these people with lying, instead of with anything related to collusion, is likely a prosecutorial tactic to pressure somebody somewhere into doing something. Mueller’s real target seems to be former Trump campaign manager Paul J. Manafort Jr.

This small-potatoes indictment comes a year after the outlines of a Watergate-like conspiracy emerged in which a term-limited Democrat president used the privacy-invading apparatus of the state to spy on a Republican presidential candidate. Watergate differed in that President Nixon didn’t get involved in the plot against the Democratic National Committee until later as an accomplice after the fact.

Mueller’s latest piñata is Alex van der Zwaan, a Russian-speaking, London-based attorney and the son-in-law of Russian oligarch German Borisovich Khan. Khan, who is worth more than $10 billion, was born in Kiev, Ukraine and is reportedly a citizen of Russia, Ukraine, and Israel. Van der Zwaan, 33, married Khan’s daughter, art critic Eva Khan, last year.

Van der Zwaan is the 19th person to be charged by Mueller. On Friday, 13 Russians on a so-called troll farm located in Russia were charged with interfering in the 2016 U.S. election by posing as Americans and organizing political rallies inside the U.S.

The attorney had worked for the international corporate law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom, but the firm indicated it fired him last year and was cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.

I recall the time when President George W. Bush claimed to have looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and seen a soul. My response: “Whose?”In 2006, while I warned Putin was a Stalin-wannabe and enemy of the United States, the Swamp’s “sophisticated” foreign policy swells contemptuously chuckled at my antiquated “Cold War” paranoia. Six years later, when Mitt Romney argued Russia was the most dangerous threat to the United States, he found himself similarly dismissed. Two years after that, when House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) sounded the alarm over Russian information warfare against the United States, the Obama Administration ignored his warnings and approved Putin controlling 20 percent of our uranium deposits.

So much for Bush seeing souls and Obama’s reset. Sadly, we were but a few of the many voices over the past two decades derided and dismissed respecting Russia’s aims to undermine the United States at home and abroad.

But what of today? With the Swamp’s political class and the lemming media in full clamor over Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s announcement that 13 Russian nationals have been indicted for their attempts to to interfere in America’s 2016 election, one would be tempted to think the true nature of Putin’s revanchist kleptocracy is finally exposed and that those who formerly mocked concern over Russia might finally be ready to do what they can to impede it now.

But one would be wrong.

Given the immense scope of America’s intelligence, counterintelligence, law enforcement, and defense entities entrusted with monitoring the espionage and interference of other nations, why did it take a special counsel to catch this ham-fisted, half-assed gaggle of Russian spooks?

Republicans enacted a tax cut in December and any day now, most of the country will find out about it. News has been travelling slowly because media folk have been diligently cataloging the relatively few examples of Americans who will not receive a direct benefit. But details on the individual and corporate tax reforms have begun to seep out of Washington.

The New York Times reports:

The tax overhaul that President Trump signed into law now has more supporters than opponents, buoying Republican hopes for this year’s congressional elections.

The growing public support for the law coincides with an eroding Democratic lead when voters are asked which party they would like to see control Congress.

The tax cut is already popular among Republicans, adds the Times, and “in contrast with many other issues — including Mr. Trump’s job approval rating — it also appears to be winning over some Democrats. Support for the law remains low among Democrats, but it has doubled over the past two months and is twice as strong as their approval of Mr. Trump today.”

It seems that the more time people have to learn about the new law, the more they like it:

Over all, 51 percent of Americans approve of the tax law, while 46 percent disapprove, according to a poll for The New York Times conducted between Feb. 5 and Feb. 11 by SurveyMonkey. Approval has risen from 46 percent in January and 37 percent in December, when the law was passed.

But the poll results also suggest that the GOP has hardly even begun to reap the political benefits. While an overwhelming majority of Americans has received a tax cut, the survey finds that most people still don’t know it. According to the Times: