RUTHFULLY YOURS

The rationale for Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel is that Russia conducted a cyberespionage attack — hacking — to interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign, and that the Trump campaign may somehow have “colluded” in this offense. Mueller has been at this for six months, and the FBI for a year before that. So isn’t it about time we asked: Could Mueller prove that Russia did it?

Forget Trump. What about Russia?

We have paid too much attention to the so-called collusion component of the probe — speculation about Trump-campaign coordination in Russia’s perfidy. There appears to be no proof of that sort of collusion. Because it has been our focus, though, Mueller has gotten a free pass on a defect that would be fatal to any related prosecution theory: He cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Russia is guilty of hacking the Democratic National Committee and prominent Democrats.

This doesn’t mean it didn’t happen — like the U.S. intelligence agencies, I’m assuming it did, and that Russia should continue to be the subject of intense government counterintelligence efforts. The point is that Mueller can’t prove it in court, which is the only thing for which a prosecutor is needed. If he can’t establish to the required standard of proof that Russia conducted an espionage attack on the election, it is impossible to prove that anyone conspired with Russia to do so. There is no criminal case.

Plainly, that is why Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, to appease Democrats angered over former FBI director James Comey’s firing in May, appointed a special counsel without specifying any crimes that the Justice Department is purportedly too conflicted to investigate (as the pertinent regulations require). This infirmity was papered over by calling the probe a “counterintelligence” investigation — which is not a criminal investigation but an information-gathering exercise to defend the nation against foreign threats to American interests.

Rosenstein did not identify a crime because he did not have one. There are two reasons for this, but we have focused myopically on the wrong one: the fact that contacts between Trump associates and the Russian regime do not prove they conspired together in an espionage scheme. That simply shows that Mueller does not have a case. The more basic problem is that he cannot have a case. Russia’s espionage operation cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, so it will never be possible to prove the Trump campaign colluded in it.

Let’s concede that there is some evidence — not much, but some — of contacts between Trump associates and operatives of the Russian regime. On its face, this is not incriminating — no more than the fact of contacts between the Clinton camp and the Russian regime. What would make the Trump-Russia contacts criminal would be indications that they facilitated Russia’s cyberespionage operation against the 2016 election.

This raises the question: What is the proof that Russia conducted a cyberespionage operation against the 2016 election? Here we get to the critical distinction between counterintelligence and criminal investigations — a distinction I have been harping on since before Mueller’s appointment.

The reaction around the world in recent days has been a reminder of the one central truth of the whole conflict. Those who cannot accept that Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel tend to be exactly the same as those who cannot accept the State of Israel.

Trump comes out of the whole situation well — taking on a promise that his three predecessors made, but on which only he had the courage to act. Those who have most forcibly criticised him, on the other hand, have shown something weak, as well as ugly, about themselves.

President Trump’s announcement on the status of Jerusalem last week was both historic and commendable. Historic because it is the first time that an American president has not just acknowledged that the Israeli capital is Jerusalem but decided to act on that acknowledgement. Commendable for breaking a deceitful trend and accepting what will remain the reality on the ground in every imaginable future scenario. As many people have pointed out in recent days, there is not one prospective peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians in which Tel Aviv becomes the capital of the Jewish state.

Yet, the Palestinian leadership, much of the mainstream media, academia and the global diplomatic community take another view. They believe that the American president should have continued with the fairy tale and should never have said “That the United States recognises Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and that the United States Embassy to Israel will be relocated to Jerusalem as soon as practicable.” They claim that this is not a simple recognition of reality and not simply the American President granting the State of Israel the same right every other nation on the planet has — which is to have their capital where they like. Such forces claim that this is a “provocative” move. Amply demonstrating the illogic of this position, the first thing the Turkish Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan did after the American president made his announcement was to threaten a suspension of Turkish relations with Israel.

Sometimes talking to leftists could better be accomplished with interpretive dance routines, or perhaps by miming our meaning.

For weeks now, I’ve been stewing over a yard sign in one of the more virtue-signally parts of Denver Colorado. The sign was bi-colored and two-part, and the top said “We Believe in Science” while the bottom said, “No human being is illegal.”

Understand, I didn’t oppose the meaning of those words on that sign, because those words were nonsensical. Or, to quote from one of my favorite books, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein, “null program.”

I mean, let’s take “we believe in science.” Uh. Does that mean that they believe in the scientific method? Or that they believe that in general science arrives at the right conclusion? And do they mean all science or a particular science? Is this an expression of support for the more abstruse and “artistic” of sciences, mathematics? My husband thanks you. Does it reveal their enthusiasm for quantum mechanics? Do the member of this family gather every Sunday morning for a ritual recitation of chemical formulas and physics equations?

Expressing (or engaging in) any of those would be at best silly, even if incredibly funny.

But of course, we know, given the times we hear people proclaim they believe in science, that what they are actually trying to say is that they believe the Earth is warming and that the cause of the warming is human. The first is questionable (we seem to be at best in a pause) and the second is… non-scientific, since the effect of humans on the climate is at best unproven, and the only “proof” of the very silly anthropogenic warming theory is computer modeling. That is it to say, the only proof is no proof at all, and has always caused computer professionals to laugh and mumble GIGO (Garbage in, Garbage out.)

Frankly, even if anthropogenic global warming were true and proven (two different things, by the way) there would be a whole range of solutions which those who loudly proclaim their belief in “science” a priori exclude. Gregory Benford did a series of articles in Reason, sometime in the late nineties or early two thousands, in which he advocated a series of “remediation for global warming” that included stuff like dumping iron filings in the North Sea. The fact that these believers in “science” see as the only solution the establishment of socialism and strict government control over the lifestyle of the masses means they don’t believe in science, they believe in socialism. Which, granted, at one time was also called “scientific” with even less justification than computer models.

Christopher Wray was supposed to bring a new candor and credibility to the FBI after the James Comey debacle, but the country is still waiting. The director’s testimony Thursday to the House Judiciary Committee suggests he has joined the Justice Department effort to stop the public from learning about the bureau’s role in the 2016 election.

Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte invited Mr. Wray to answer the multiplying questions about the bureau’s 2016 political interference. This includes the role that the Steele dossier—opposition research financed by the Clinton campaign—played in the FBI’s decision to investigate the Trump presidential campaign. The committee also wants answers about reports that special counsel Robert Mueller demoted Peter Strzok, a lead FBI investigator in both the Trump and Hillary Clinton email investigations, after Mr. Strzok exchanged anti-Trump texts with his mistress, who also works at the FBI.

Mr. Wray spent five hours stonewalling. The director ducked every question about the FBI’s behavior by noting that the Justice Department Inspector General is investigating last year’s events.

Is Mr. Wray concerned that Mr. Strzok edited the FBI’s judgment of Mrs. Clinton’s handling of her emails to “extremely careless” from “grossly negligent” in a previous draft? The grossly negligent phrase might have put Mrs. Clinton in legal jeopardy, but Mr. Wray said he couldn’t answer because that is subject to the “outside, independent investigation.”

Is Mr. Wray taking steps to ensure his top ranks are free of political “taint”? He couldn’t say because of the “outside, independent” investigation.

Ohio Republican Jim Jordan noted that the only way for Congress to know if the FBI used the Steele dossier to obtain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign is for the FBI to provide its application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. “Is there anything prohibiting you from showing this committee [that application]?” Mr. Jordan asked.

It’s become de rigeur for public figures and media personalities to repeat the tired mantra: Always believe the women. This refers, of course, to any accusation of sexual harassment, no matter how far in the past it took place and even if it was interpreted at the time as innocent flirting.

Leftists seized on the harassment lawsuits that took place at the Fox News Network last year, when Andrea Tantaros, Gretchen Carlson, and other broadcasters walked away with multimillion-dollar settlements after accusing the late chairman, Roger Ailes, and the host with through-the-roof ratings, Bill O’Reilly, of sexual harassment.

Seeing that their Russian-collusion fairy tale was going in the wrong direction––indeed pointing every day to massive collusion between Democrats and Russia––the by-now hysterical anti-Trumpers figured that the sexual-harassment gig was a sure-fire way to bring down their nemesis and rake in some big bucks at the same time.

In true Keystone Kop form, however, it was overwhelmingly Democrats who started falling like flies––movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, actor Kevin Spacey, editor Leon Wieseltier, Today Show host Matt Lauer, comedian Louis C.K., Congressman John Conyers, Senator Al Franken, on and on.

But Republicans did not go unscathed. Judge Roy Moore, candidate for a senate seat in Alabama, whose accusers waited 40 years to come out of their victim closets, managed to spend those 40 years in public life, including running for office, without a single accusation being hurled in his direction.

What’s wrong with this picture?

For one thing––and it’s a big thing––all the people who say “always believe the women” are operating on the presumption of guilt! What happened to the constitutional right to the presumption of innocence, to innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?

Uh uh…not for the leftists who have spent the past fifty or more years crying “separation of church and state” to defend their loathing of Christianity, and “a woman’s right to choose” to defend their fetish for pre-birth infanticide. To them, ironically, the sanctity of the law stops, both figuratively and literally, when lawyer Gloria Allred enters the scene.