Frustration was expressed by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in his questioning of the legal right of the Special Counsel team to pursue charges unrelated to Russian collusion against Paul Manafort. Mueller’s move is seen by some as an attempt to frighten and bankrupt Manfort as a way to get him to desperately agree to testify against the President, even if that testimony is inaccurate, in an effort to preserve his freedom and his bank account from the crushing burden of a trial.
It’s important to understand how an individual may be subjected to a ruinous process by a determined prosecutor even in the absence of an underlying crime.
Assume that a prosecutor is determined to disrupt the life and career of a target, in this case, the President of the United States. However, after a year of intensive investigation by a team that has close association to the President’s political opposition, there is no evidence of the alleged “crime.” Indeed, it now seems that the whole basis of the case was based on nothing more than a document procured by the opposition campaign.
The target understandably voices frustration—which is promptly labelled as “obstruction,” a wholly separate charge but a life line to keep the failed investigation alive. Additionally, The Special Counsel now seeks to find individuals who can provide any embarrassing facts about the target, even those that are wholly unrelated to the charge that initiated the existence of the investigation.
Any individual, no matter how upstanding, can be made the subject of suspicion by a determined prosecutor. Let’s take, dear reader, you as an example. Suppose an acquaintance of yours is the target of a so-far unsuccessful probe. The prosecutor wants you to divulge something embarrassing about him. You refuse; indeed, you may not know that any wrongdoing was ever committed. So that prosecutor begins to dig into your life. He decides that you may be involved in a Chinese spy ring, which is totally untrue, but…
You frequently order takeout from a Chinese restaurant that is part of a chain of stores that, unknown to you, is owned by a Beijing-based corporation that has fiscal ties to that nation’s government. This is known to investigators because you pay by credit card and your records have been subpoenaed by a diligent prosecutor. The prosecutor accuses you of being an unregistered foreign agent providing assistance to China. When confronted with this absurdity, you tell, in anger, the investigator to go to hell, and you instruct your accountant, tax preparer, and credit card company not to comply with the investigation. As a result, you are charged with Obstruction. You now face serious legal expenses and potential criminal charges. However, you are quietly informed, if you simply provide damning statements about your acquaintance, all this can go away, and what’s left of your life and money can be preserved.
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A vigorous investigative process by a special counsel into the possible commission of a crime is wholly appropriate. But there are appropriate parameters that must be observed. First, there must be dependable evidence that an actual crime has been committed. In the Russian Collusion case, this has not occurred. All that has been unearthed is that an unsubstantiated document procured by the Clinton campaign was presented to a FISA court, which almost always approves anything placed before it by the FBI, and the origin of that documented was not disclosed. On top of that, this current FBI leadership has very real and very significant indications of bias, including the fact that approximately $700,000 in funds to the campaign of the wife of former FBI Deputy Director, Andrew McCabe, was provided by Clinton allies, and clear evidence, including emails, exist indicating that key figures within that agency definitively sought to prevent the election of candidate Donald Trump. The special counsel, Robert Mueller, served as head of the FBI, and was succeeded by James Comey, who has also made no secret of his animosity to Trump.
If this investigation, under similar biased circumstances, was taking place in another nation, many if not most of those cheering on Robert Mueller’s actions would have no hesitation in condemning it as a political show trial by one political faction against another.
Many will never be convinced that Donald Trump is innocent. That is their right. And it would be appropriate, upon their presentation of reliable, substantive evidence of actual collusion, to initiate a vigorous investigation, to be conducted by nonpartisan personnel. That is not the current case, which is based on biased and unreliable evidence that underlies an investigation by partisan personnel.
This analysis is neither pro nor anti-Trump. It is, however, staunchly in favor of the concept of the fair and objective administration of justice.
Photo: U.S. Courts