Nearly one year into his investigation of alleged “collusion” between the campaign of President Donald J. Trump and Russia, special counsel Robert Mueller has found no evidence to support the allegations.
Not that ‘collusion’ would have been a crime anyway, mind you. It isn’t, at least not in any sense that the term applies to Trump and his campaign and the government of Russia.
But more to the point, there won’t be any charges of “collusion” because there wasn’t any to begin with. To emphasize the point, let’s examine who Mueller has indicted in his year-long probe:
Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn for “lying”* to FBI investigators.
Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort (from June to August 2016) on 32 counts of (among other charges) falsifying income tax returns; failing to file reports of foreign accounts; bank fraud conspiracy; and bank fraud.
Former Manafort business partner Rick Gates on 32 counts involving charges similar to those of Manafort.
Former Trump foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos for lying to the FBI.
Associate of former Trump advisor Gates, Alex Van Der Zwaan, for lying to the FBI.
13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities who were allegedly working in cahoots with the Trump campaign during the 2016 election cycle.
Richard Pinedo, a Californian who allegedly sold bank accounts to Russian agents, for one count of identity fraud.
That’s it. No one close to the president and certainly not the president himself. And with the exception of the Russians, none of the charges have anything at all to do with ‘collusion’ or any criminal or treasonous acts involving interactions with Russian government agents working to “subvert our democracy.”
But that doesn’t mean there is no evidence at all of Russian collusion. There is; plenty of it, in fact.
And every bit of it is tied to the campaign of Hillary Clinton as well as the Democratic Party.
Using other actors — political opposition research firm Fusion GPS and the law firm of Perkins Coie — the DNC and Clinton campaign paid $1,024,408 between May 24, 2016, and Dec. 28, 2016, for the infamous “Trump dossier,” according to bank records unsealed via court order in November.
“While most of the records are redacted, there is evidence of transactions between a pair of law firms that Fusion GPS worked with last year involving Russia-related projects,” The National Sentinel reported.
Fast-forward to February. Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee released a “FISA memo” indicating that the FBI used the phony, unsubstantiated dossier to repeatedly obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to spy on Trump campaign figure Carter Page who, by the way, remains free and sans of charges by Mueller — which is itself suspicious.
Later in the month committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., came out and said directly that the panel had discovered clear evidence that the DNC and the Clinton campaign were working in conjunction with the Russians in order to keep Trump out of the Oval Office.
“We have a media that pretty much refuses to cover this issue at all. We have serious abuses that occurred in the FISA court against the Trump campaign,” Nunes said. “We continue to get facts. We will bring those facts forward as we see them.
He added: “The more we peel this back, we have clear evidence of collusion but it’s not between the Trump campaign, it’s between the Democratic party and the Hillary campaign and the Russians.”
And this week we learn that a former Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downing, who allegedly spurred the Trump-Russia collusion investigation, has ties to — wait for it — the Clintons.
Yet Robert Mueller seems about as interested in these clear connections and likely lawbreaking as the “mainstream media.”
Anyone who believes that the Mueller probe is anything other than what Trump says it is — an open-ended “witch hunt” — is not being serious. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from all of it.
Is there anyone in the Justice Department on the president's side?
J.D. Heyes is also editor-in-chief of The National Sentinel.
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