Dakota Beacon

The Passing Scene has shied away from commenting on Robert Mueller’s “Russia” probe until submission of his report to the Attorney General. Mueller’s work is complete and Attorney General William Barr’s work has just begun.

For most of us it has been a challenge to sort out the players and their actions. Two items are concise and pithy in providing an understanding of the “Russia” probe. The first is the book. “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump” was written by Gregg Jarrett and published in 2018 by HarperCollins. It offers the clearest overview of a complicated subject. The second is the letter from the White House to the Attorney General with a legal assessment of the Mueller report. The most effective way to communicate on this subject is by quoting the sources with comment.

Jarrett first. “Yet [FBI] Director Comey and his agents pursued Trump and his campaign associates with exceptional zeal in what appeared to be a politically motivated agenda to harm the candidate to the benefit of his opponent.

“Yet, none of this deterred the FBI from secretly assigning a government informant to work undercover in an attempt to elicit any incriminating evidence he could find within the Trump campaign...When this tactic was uncovered in May of 2018, Trump accused the FBI of spying on his campaign, whereupon the Justice Department announced an investigation to determine ‘whether there was any impropriety or political motivation’ involved and to take ‘appropriate action’.” (Jarrett, p. 114)

This quote is significant. Three separate Department of Justice Inspector General reports, including the one identified above, are due in May or June. Some of the perpetrators of this scandal have reason to be concerned. These include high-ranking members of the Obama administration’s FBI, DOJ, and the intelligence community.

Continuing, “…the New York Times ran a front-page story, citing unnamed ‘American and foreign officials,’ stating that the Australian diplomat’s tip to the FBI is what triggered the bureau’s opening of the criminal investigation of Trump-Russia ‘collusion.’ [New York Times, 12/30/2017] …[T]he story was published at a time when the FBI was under intense pressure to justify why exactly it had commenced an investigation of Trump to begin with. If the probe was opened based on an unverified ‘dossier’ about Trump that was paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, then the investigation itself was highly suspect.” (Jarrett, p. 115)

The White House always maintained that the “Russia” collusion illusion was a scam and a hoax. It appears to be a political hit job orchestrated at the highest levels designed to topple a duly elected president. An American coup is scary stuff.

After 647 days and nearly $35 million, Mueller concluded his quest for “collusion” (which is not a crime) and came up empty handed. No “collusion” and no proof of obstruction of justice.

On April 19 White House Counsel to President Trump, Emmet Flood (a previous law clerk for the late Justice Antonin Scalia), sent a four page letter to Attorney General William Barr with a succinct appraisal of Mueller’s report. “I write on behalf of the Office of the President to memorialize concerns relating to the form of the Special Counsel’s Office (SCO) Report (SCO Report)…”

“The SCO Report suffers from an extraordinary legal defect: It quite deliberately fails to comply with the requirements of governing law…

“…The SCO concluded that the evidence ‘prevent[ed] [it] from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred’…But ‘conclusively determining that no criminal conduct’ was not the SCO’s assigned task, because making conclusive determination of innocence is never the task of the federal prosecutor.

Flood proceeds to tell Mueller (through AG Barr) how to suck eggs. “What prosecutors are supposed to do is complete an investigation and then either ask the grand jury to return an indictment or decline to charge the case. When prosecutors decline to charge, they make that decision not because they have ‘conclusively determin[ed] that no criminal conduct occurred,’ but rather because they do not believe that the investigated conduct constitutes a crime for which all the elements can be proven…beyond a reasonable doubt…In the American justice system, innocence is presumed;…Our country would be a very different (and dangerous) place if prosecutors applied the SCO standard…

“…Yet the one thing the SCO was obligated to do is the very thing the SCO -- intentionally and unapologetically – refused to do. The SCO made neither a prosecution decision nor a declination decision on the obstruction question. Instead, it transmitted a 182-page discussion of raw evidentiary material combined with its own inconclusive observations on the arguable legal significance of the gathered content. As a result, none of the Report’s Volume II complied with the obligation imposed by the governing regulation to ‘explain the prosecution of declination decision reached.’”

That said, AG Barr is free to proceed with his investigation of the Obama administration’s meddling in the 2016 election. And President Trump is free to pursue his political and civil tormentors.

It must be tough waking up every morning trying to figure out how to undo the 2016 election.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).