“This seems more like an effort to prosecute Donald Trump.”
“What the hell are we investigating?” “Why are we going through with this charade?” –  U.S. Representative Sean Duffy (R-Wis.)

FoxNews.com reports that

Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, the leader of the House’s top investigative committee, slammed special counsel Robert Mueller on Sunday for allowing the news media to learn that he and his legal team now have charges in their Russia investigation.

“In the only conversation I’ve had with Robert Mueller, I stressed to him the importance of cutting out the leaks,” Gowdy, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, told “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s kind of ironic that the people charged with investigating the law and the violations of the law would violate the law.”

Mueller and his team have for roughly the past five months been leading a Justice Department investigation into whether anybody associated with the President Trump’s 2016 White House campaign colluded with Russia to influence the election outcome. On Friday night, CNN reported that Mueller’s team has filed the first charges in the case with a federal grand jury.

“Make no mistake, disclosing grand jury material is a violation of the law. Somebody violated their oath of secrecy,” Gowdy, a South Carolina lawmaker and former federal prosecutor, also told Fox News on Sunday.

The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that anyone charged will be taken into custody Monday. However, the charges have been sealed by a federal judge. So whoever is charged and whether the charges are criminal remains unclear.

The possible charges come as Mueller’s tactics have been called into question.

During a raid by the FBI in July of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s Virginia home,  a source close to the investigation told Fox News at the time the scope of the search was “heavy-handed, designed to intimidate.”

Andrew Weissmann, the prosecutor tapped by Mueller to help lead the investigation, has also received criticism. Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor recently wrote about Weissman in a piece titled, “Judging by Mueller’s staffing choices, he may not be very interested in justice.”

Powell accused Weissmann, once the director of the Enron Task Force, of “prosecutorial overreach” in past cases and said it could signal what’s to come for President Trump and his associates in the Russia probe.

“What was supposed to have been a search for Russia’s cyberspace intrusions into our electoral politics has morphed into a malevolent mission targeting friends, family and colleagues of the president,” Powell wrote in The Hill. “The Mueller investigation has become an all-out assault to find crimes to pin on them — and it won’t matter if there are no crimes to be found. This team can make some.”

Powell cited several cases where Weissmann won convictions that were later overturned.

During a Saturday appearance on Fox News, former Department of Justice official Robert Driscoll told anchor Leland Vittert it’s possible the indictment might not even be directly tied to Russian collusion.

“Think back to the Clinton years,” Driscoll said. “The Whitewater investigation was about an Arkansas land deal. And it ended up being about something else completely.”

Driscoll added, “Robert Mueller is free to look at taxes, is free to look at lobbying filings, foreign agent filings. Things like that could all be involved that wouldn’t necessarily touch on the issue of Russia collusion that everyone seems focused on politically.”

Speculation has focused on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn as likely targets.

Manafort has been the subject of a longstanding investigation into his dealings in the Ukraine several years ago — for which he did not file as a foreign agent until June 2017. 

Federal agents, reportedly in search of evidence related to the Russia investigation, this summer raided his northern Virginia home. He also was reportedly wiretapped by investigators before and after the 2016 presidential election.

Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, was a Trump surrogate during the campaign and briefly served as national security adviser before being fired for failing to fully disclose his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, then-Russian ambassador to the United States.

The FBI also secured approval from a federal court to monitor the communications of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

On Saturday, Page released a statement to Fox News in response to questions about whether he or his lawyers have been notified about any charges.

Page said in the statement that he has worked with the executive branch and Congress since being contacted in March. But he also suggested that revelations about the Democratic Party having helped finance a dossier to smear Trump has tainted any Russia probe.  

“In terms of ‘charges’, I can’t even imagine what might even be considered now that the false evidence from the politically-motivated, big-money-financed Dodgy Dossier that started this extrajudicial disaster has instead been so thoroughly exposed as a complete sham,” Carter wrote in the statement. 

Richard Hibey, an attorney for Manafort, told Fox News on Friday that neither he nor any of his colleagues representing Manafort had been informed of any indictment of their client.

Manafort has been the subject of a longstanding investigation into his dealings in the Ukraine several years ago – for which he did not file as a foreign agent until June 2017. In addition to his home being raided, Manafort was reportedly wiretapped by investigators before and after the 2016 presidential election.

Flynn served as a Trump surrogate during the campaign and briefly served as national security adviser before being fired over his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, who was Russia’s ambassador to the United States.

Mueller has reportedly probed whether Flynn was involved in a private effort to get former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s emails from Russian hackers.

The Justice Department’s special counsel’s office declined to comment on the reports of filed charges.

Trump has denied allegations that his campaign colluded with Russians and condemned investigations into the matter as “a witch hunt”.

As I have told you before, boys and girls, make no mistake. Mueller is a part of the Washington Establishment.

While it is true that he served under both a Democratic and Republican President, he is still quite partisan. His loyalties are to the Washingtonian Status Quo.

That is why he expanded his investigation into the business dealings of a then-private citizen.

What boggles the mind is the fact that they have spent so much of OUR money investigating the 45th President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump, and his son, Donald Trump, Jr., who have committed no crime.

Even a well-respected Liberal Professor Emeritus from Harvard, a renown Legal Scholar,  has written in op eds that no crime has been committed.

On July 11th, Alan M. Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus and author of “Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law and Electile Dysfunction”, wrote the following op ed for foxnews.com…

Special Counsel Robert Mueller will surely be looking into the meeting between Donald Trump, Jr., and a Russian lawyer named Natalia Veselnitskaya.  Part of the meeting was also attended by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Paul Manafort, who at the time was running Trump’s campaign.  It now seems clear from the emails that the Trump people went to the meeting expecting to be given dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government.  The question remains, if this is all true, is it criminal?

The first issue that must be addressed by Mueller is whether any existing criminal statutes would be violated by collusion between a campaign and a foreign government, if such collusion were to be proved? Unless there is a clear violation of an existing criminal statute, there would be no crime.

Obviously if anyone conspired in advance with another to commit a crime – such as hacking the DNC – that would be criminal. But merely seeking to obtain the work product of a prior hack would be no more criminal than a newspaper publishing the work product of thefts such as the Pentagon Papers and the material stolen by Snowden and Manning.   Moreover, the emails sent to Trump Jr. say that the dirt peddled by Veselnitskaya came from “official documents.”  No mention is made of hacking or other illegal activities. So it is unlikely that attendance at the meeting violated any criminal statute.

Perhaps mere collusion by a campaign with a foreign government should be made a crime, so as to prevent future contamination of our elections. But it is not currently a crime.

Whether or not such collusion, if it occurred, is a crime, it is clear that the American people have the right to know whether any sort of collusion –legal or illegal – took place.  And, if so, what was its nature.

The Mueller investigation is limited to possible criminal activity.  Probing the moral, political or other non-criminal implications of collusion with, or interference by, Russia is beyond the jurisdiction of the special counsel.  It is the role of Congress, not the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, to make changes in existing laws.  Perhaps mere collusion by a campaign with a foreign government should be made a crime, so as to prevent future contamination of our elections.  But it is not currently a crime. 

Nor will it be easy to draft a criminal statute prohibiting a campaign from using material provided by a foreign power, without trenching on the constitutional rights of candidates.  But this is all up to Congress and the courts, not the special counsel, with his limited jurisdiction.

That is why the entire issue of alleged collusion with, and interference by, the Russians should be investigated openly by an independent nonpartisan commission, rather than by a prosecutor behind the closed doors of a grand jury. 

The end result of a secret grand jury investigation will be an up or down determination whether to indict or not to indict.  If there are no indictments, that will end the matter. The special counsel may issue a report summarizing the results of his investigation, but many experts believe that such reports are improper, since the subjects of the investigation do not have the right to present exculpatory evidence to the grand jury, which typically hears only one side of the case. Beyond any report, there will also be selective leaks, such as the many that have already occurred.  Leaks, too, tend to be one-sided and agenda driven.

A public non-partisan commission investigation, or even one conducted by partisans in Congress, would be open for the most part.  They would hear all sides of the story, and the public would be able to judge for itself whether there was improper collusion.  A commission or Congressional committee could also recommend changes in the law for the future.

The American people need to know precisely what the Russians tried to do and did – and what, if anything, the Trump campaign knew and did.  These issues go beyond a cops-and-robber whodunit. They involve the very essence of our democracy.

It is quite refreshing to read the writings of a level-headed Liberal for a change.

On, the night of the 2016 Presidential Election, Hillary and her henchman, Podesta came up with this cockamamie Russian Collusion Fairy Tale, which the Libs have been harping on, repeating lies as being facts, as if they graduated from the Dan Rather School of Broadcast Journalism.

As I have written before, the frenzy which they have built themselves into as a group resembles the mentality of an old West Lynch Mob.

They want a hanging, and by gum, there WILL be a “hanging”, even though, as Professor Dershowitz has written, there is no proof whatsoever that the President did anything wrong.

Being the minority Political Ideology in America has never stopped Modern American Liberals from trying to enforce their will upon the American people.

On November 8th, the Electoral College, put in place by our Founding Fathers, stopped them.

And, the Russia-Trump Collusion Fairy Tale and the staffing of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team with Democratic Donors is their attempt to circumvent our Constitution.

It is apparent that Mueller is a part of “The Resistance”.

It appears to this average American that Mueller, being well-connected in the Washington Establishment, is cut from the same cloth as Former FBI Director James Comey.

Mueller has turned out to be a political weasel, a professional bureaucrat who views himself to be more important than he actually is, just like Comey.

Remember, boys and girls…you can indict a ham sandwich.

Whether you have a case for conviction is another thing entirely.

President Trump needs to go ahead and fire Mueller.

…before he and the rest of “The Resistance” totally usurp the will of the American People.

Until He Comes,

KJ