RUTHFULLY YOURS

Weaponizing the Government for Leftist Political War

James Comey is the deep state’s pathological equivalent of Sally Field. But focusing on his bitchy, vengeful, and sanctimonious personal psychodramas is a distraction from what really matters—the profound internal threats to liberty and equal justice under the law, enabled by Comey and other rogue actors. 

The former FBI director deserved to be fired, is irrelevant moving forward, and will only marginalize himself further the more he talks and the more information comes out about how he tried to undermine a duly elected president.

While Comey’s interviews and book continue to get distracting press coverage, they are not the biggest news of recent days.

No, the big news is the cumulative significance of seemingly disparate but related events, including: the raid on attorney Michael Cohen’s office, home, and hotel and other Robert Mueller probe actions; the GOP establishment’s ongoing alignment with other statists; the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report on former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe; the apparent growing alignment between Inspector General Michael Horowitz (appointed by Obama) and Attorney General Jeff Sessions; the pardoning of Scooter Libby, an innocent man railroaded by a Comey-appointed special counsel; the release of the Comey memos that showed President Trump wanted all collusion charges investigated and did not obstruct justice; and the electronic communication used to open a FBI counterintelligence probe that showed no official intelligence information existed to justify starting the Trump-Russia collusion review.

These events were significant because of their connection to the Left’s escalating contempt for their fellow Americans and the increasing tendency to turn political disagreement into political war, or what Kim Strassel calls “the intimidation game,” in which the Left seeks to “[m]ake political opponents pay a high price for expressing their opinions” through harassment from government agencies, followed by investigations and prosecution, and then blackmail.

Mueller, Weissmann, and Comey: Legacies of Corruption and Ethical Misconduct
To better understand how the intimidation game works to weaponize government and criminalize political differences, consider Robert Mueller’s record both as special counsel and previously as director of the FBI.

Mueller’s reputation as a “stand-up guy” is overrated. His partisan team has a history of corrupt legal practices and ethical misconduct, including withholding evidence, entrapment, thrown-out cases, overturned verdicts, and sizable monetary settlements. Mollie Hemingway and Julie Kelly have highlighted examples of Mueller’s history of abusing prosecutorial discretion from his tenure as FBI director and U.S. attorney. There are a startling number of legacy prosecutorial and law enforcement abuse cases touched by Mueller, Comey, and Andrew Weissmann, including: anthrax, Ted Stevens, Boston, Frank Quattrone, Arthur Andersen, Merrill Lynch, Cliven Bundy, Sandy Berger, Scooter Libby, AIPAC, Richard Jewell, Ruby Ridge, and Harvey Silverglate.

These black hats have never been held accountable for their misdeeds. Regardless of your opinion of Donald Trump, having prosecutors who are political partisans with a demonstrated contempt for the rule of law is not a formula for equal justice.

Mueller and His Special Counsel Team: Making Beria Proud
We are seeing the same illiberal behaviors play out now with the special counsel, leading Lee Smith to observe: “by using the justice system as a political weapon to attack the enemies of the country’s elite, Robert Mueller and his supporters in both parties are confirming what many Americans already believe…we are not all equal under one law.” Restoring this core principle of civil liberty is a cause around which all Americans of good faith can and must unite.

Yet Mueller is ignoring the people who actually appear to have colluded with Russia. Leading Republicans and Democrats agree no evidence of any Trump-Russia collusion has been found. If any existed it already would have leaked and Mueller would be acting on it. The Trump-Russia collusion story is a lie. This makes it all the more ironic that those pushing the collusion narrative are the only ones directly connected to any questionable Russian dealings.

Consider some of these examples of Leftist projection:

• The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee covered up their payments to Fusion GPS for the so-called Steele dossier, with its Russian sources, by paying a law firm to fund the opposition research firm. That represents an in-kind campaign contribution far larger than any alleged payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels;
• The 2010 Uranium One deal transferred control of 20 percent of U.S. uranium reserves to a Russian entity, followed by related parties contributing $145 million to the Clinton Foundation;
• FBI agents ultimately reporting to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, in a prior role, and Andrew McCabe (when Mueller was FBI director) had gathered evidence showing Russian nuclear industry officials engaged in “bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering” in the United States. But Rosenstein and McCabe did not disclose it during the subsequent Uranium One approval process and the FBI, under Comey, let the investigation die;
• Roughly two-thirds of the U.S., European, and Russian companies that participated in Skolkovo, a new Moscow high-technology center that included the transfer of dual-use technologies from the United States, donated to the Clinton Foundation or sponsored speeches by Bill Clinton;
• Both Podesta brothers—John and Tony—had their own shady Russian business deals; and,
• Hillary Clinton appears to have compromised national security by, among other things, sending emails from Russia and emailing classified information, all via an unsecure email server.

Yet, Mueller has not interviewed Clinton, her campaign officials or other people connected to them, nor have any of their offices, homes or lawyers been raided.

What’s more, none of the special counsel’s charges against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, or others have anything to do with Russian collusion. Yet Mueller’s team continues to use scorched earth tactics. Questions abound:

• Was charging Flynn a retaliatory action?
• If people previously didn’t believe Flynn lied, why the ambush interview and charges?
• Why did Comey change his story?
• Why was Flynn’s judge recused without explanation, the sentencing postponed, and prosecutors ordered by the new judge to turn over exculpatory information? Is there an evidence problem that could lead to a dismissal?
• Why was it necessary to conduct a 10-hour raid by 12 FBI agents of Manafort’s home, picking the door lock and entering with guns drawn when he and his wife were in bed?
• Were those actions an abuse of law-enforcement power, done for the purpose of intimidation in spite of Manafort being a cooperative witness? Why was it necessary to pat down Mrs. Manafort while she was still in bed?
• Why did they seize Manafort documents they knew were protected by attorney-client privilege?
• Did a storage unit search violate Manafort’s Fourth Amendment rights?
• Was the aggressiveness of the Michael Cohen raid about isolating President Trump by making it risky for attorneys and other advisors to associate with Trump?
• Why was there “deafening silence” from the ACLU when Cohen’s home, hotel, and office were raided and confidential Trump attorney-client documents were taken, making it a “dangerous day . . . for lawyer-client relations”?
• How is violating Cohen’s Fourth and Sixth amendment rights justified? Over only seeking information about Stormy Daniels and the notorious “Access Hollywood” tape? Is Mueller “laundering information to another prosecutorial authority”?
• Shouldn’t Judge Kimba Wood have recused herself?
• Was seizing Trump transition team emails, including potentially privileged information, from the General Services Administration justifiable?

More broadly, is the Russia investigation even legal if it was initiated based on false and misleading premises?

It is also striking that the same partisans who are happy to scream “Trump-Russia collusion” in spite of the perpetual absence of evidence, have a cavalier attitude toward attorney-client privilege, have no problem with agents feeling up Mrs. Manafort in her bed, and are more than willing to ignore the deeply troubling House Democrat IT scandal involving Pakistani intelligence.

Hillary Clinton voter and old-school civil liberties stalwart Alan Dershowitz asks the first big question about the Russian collusion investigation: “What is the crime?” He declares the Mueller probe is “‘being done backwards’ in a manner comparable to Stalin’s secret police . . . it raises great concerns about civil liberties.”

Another big question: Is Mueller looking for real crimes or is he just using the power of government to cover up crimes by deep state actors and punish their political opponents—including gathering private information that can be used as opposition research material during the 2018 and 2020 elections?

By its actions, the Left is proving it does not believe either in liberty or in equal justice under the law and they are willing to use the power of government against their fellow Americans to get their way.