Mueller… Mueller… Mueller…
Last night, Australian time, the former special counsel, and progenitor of the, erm, Mueller report, testified before the judiciary and intelligence committees of the US House of Representatives, as to the contents of his investigation of possible collusion with foreign powers — OK, Russia. Those hoping for a smoking pistol to be laid on the table were disappointed, but they were always going to be.
Mueller, the punctilious, even fussy, former ex-FBI head — he has an appearance of being finely drawn, as if he were an Oliphant cartoon of himself — wasn’t going to offer up any new material. The hearing was made possible by the Democrats’ takeover of the House in the 2018 midterm elections, and thus their control of the House’s myriad committees. The rehearing by the legislative wing of the author of a report commissioned in the executive branch — by the attorney-general, who also has a judiciary function — is either a triumph of power-separation, or a travesty of it, your politics dependent.
Mueller had already made it clear that he had no great desire to testify, but, as a good public servant, would not shirk it for a moment. The Democrats’ game was to try and get some new angle on the obtaining of a vast tranche of Hillary Clinton’s emails, via multiple channels, something Mueller resisted by keeping his answers, where possible, to single-word length. The Republican minority on the committee wasn’t much interested in Mueller speaking at all, using the opportunity to speechify against him, trying to portray his unwilling appearance as a continuation of an FBI/establishment conspiracy, and the report itself as a first stage of such.
Much of the testimony was “meta”, focused on what the special prosecutor could and couldn’t do, and the question of whether Trump had obstructed justice during the subsequent investigation. Mueller initially told the judiciary committee that he had determined that Trump could not be prosecuted for implied criminal activity — due to the current constitutional interpretation by the Justice Department that a sitting president can’t be indicted — before later saying that he hadn’t determined whether or not Trump had committed what would be, by anyone else, illegal activity. Mueller made it known that he ultimately hadn’t sought testimony from the president himself, because of the likelihood it would have been resisted and tied up report delivery for a substantial time which is, hmmm, well.
The Republicans, in trying to portray Mueller’s investigation as the conspiracy itself, had to spend a lot of time blustering. That was always going to be risky and so it proved, with a gotcha/own goal by Colorado Republican Ken Buck, who followed up Democrat inquiries about presidential privilege by allowing Mueller to clarify that the president could be prosecuted once he had left office. Hardly earth-shattering, but it blew a hole in the “nothing to see here” strategy that the GOP were trying to put forward as a unified front, and acknowledging that potential criminality was present, which let in the notion that there might be an actual real world out there somewhere, not two competing conspiracy theories.
In that respect, for those progressives and leftists who have somehow made FBI officers the vanguard of the resistance, Mueller’s seeming implication that merely reading WikiLeaks “should be illegal”, may chasten. Or y’know, may not. The progressives in the knowledge class are so far along the road to class power as to now affix themselves to the national security state, as the reactionary insurgent nature of the right makes itself clear.
Politically, for the left, Mueller’s testimony was underwhelming — in the words of some, a “disaster”. Giving neither a clear indictment nor absolution of Trump, it thus failed to solve the Democrats’ clear problem: a growing number of reps, and the party’s base, believe impeachment to be both a duty and a political imperative. They also see ducking it as a return to old bad Dem practice. The party centre believes that such a course, absent an actual dead body, would burnish Trump’s anti-elite credentials ahead of the 2020 election and distract from holding him to account for a lack of full-time job creation, wage stagnation etc in the rust belt, and racism and anti-immigrant/Latinx sentiment in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, etc.
Currently, around 95 Dem reps are pro-impeachment, thus splitting the party fairly evenly on the question. Mueller’s testimony has only deepened that division. Still they only have themselves to blame for relying on what turned out to be Special Mueller’s Off Day.
The only true winner in the 2016 US election continues to be Russia, or more specifically Putin and his oligarchs. Their desire to weaken American resolve against them has worked. Their continued efforts towards splintering NATO and the EU continues to be a ‘work-in-progress’ through support of right-wing European nationalist parties, alleged funding of Aaron Banks’ BREXIT contributions and, I suspect, the sideline act of getting Boris into No. 10 and Farange back onto the British and European stage. Unfortunately, the understudy of all that action has been China. An attempt appears to have been made to influence in the most recent Australian federal election, however, I suspect a winding-up of efforts in future state and territory elections will confirm that democracy, as Australia knows it, is now under siege like never before.
By the Coalition-who have sold off vital and strategic assets to their commie mates in China.
The EU, pointless NATO, and the US are doing an outstanding job of trashing themselves. By toadying along with them is our greatest threat.
If China is an issue for us, cut the mass corporate infestment in our immigration programs.
Russia is busy enough rebuilding herself after what I call “The Great Reset” of August 1991, and has openly declared her view that all the Russiagate/election-meddling nonsense is the product of internal US politics only, and watches it with bemused interest. After all, if a self-declared adversary is busy destroying himself, don’t stand in his way. Looking at the US political class, someone, possibly Lavrov, commented that when a fish rots it starts from its head.
I read Mueller’s performance differently. He was unwilling to appear before the house committee to be questioned about his report, but being required to, played his inquisitors like a fish, pretending to be a befuddled old man with memory problems while they got hot under the collar and looked increasingly ridiculous.
Nothing new came out of it of course, because Mueller stuck to the limits of what he had written in the report, which was the right thing to do. Overall the Dems merely demonstrated that they are unable to get over their electoral loss, and are still trying to undo it by a slow-burning coup d’etat. They would do better to stop their nonsense and show themselves a party with progressive ideas, worth voting for.
The most instructive parts of Mueller’s testimony, Iskander, were seen in a) Mueller stating he hadn’t heard of Fusion GPS, and b) he knew nought about Joseph Mifsud.
The entire basis for the FISA warrants came from the Steele dossier, and that was ‘commissioned’ by Fusion GPS – the whole thing was a crock.
As for Mifsud, it’s extraordinary how little the ‘journalist’ community has cottoned to Mifsud’s role, and in whose interests (other than his own) he was acting.
Rundle’s another who has missed what are the key elements to the whole show.
I recommend seeking out Aaron Mate’s work, including his twitter output while Mueller was testifying, and later.
Mueller is only a cog in the Russiagate nonsense/hysteria machine, and knows much more than he lets on, but seems to have drawn red lines about himself beyond which he will not cross. At least that’s how I interpret his performance. Perhaps at age 75 he wants some peace in his final years.
Mifsud is one name in a long list of unsavoury characters thrown up by “Russiagate”, but what they seem to have in common is links with western intelligence and law enforcement agencies (CIA, FBI, DOJ, MI6) as well as the Clinton campaign, with the common purpose of preventing Trump’s election, and then sabotaging his presidency after he won. The real “collusion”.
Joseph Mifud is a fascinating character who sits like a spider at the centre of a web of intelligence/political interconnections, too much of a member of the establishment to ever be investigated. Here’s a good article:
https://www.conservapedia.com/Joseph_Mifsud
I meanwhile, have found the original source of the “Dossier”, and reproduce it in full:
“Above them, and unknown to both of them, behind the gold-framed false mirror on the wall over the bed, the two photographers from SMERSH sat close together in the cramped cabinet de voyeur, as, before them, so many friends of the proprietor had sat on a honeymoon night in the stateroom of the Kristal Palas.
And the view-finders gazed coldly down on the passionate arabesques the two bodies formed and broke and formed again, and the clockwork mechanism of the cine-cameras whirred softly on and on as the breath rasped out of the open mouths of the two men and the sweat of excitement trickled down their bulging faces into their cheap collars.”
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE by Ian Fleming (1957)
OK, Christopher Steele added the Golden Shower bits, betraying perhaps his personal tastes, but the template is there.
Reminds me of the time the Caterwauling Catamite got all hot & bothered by the secret dossier a correspondent sent him about Russian Bear doing naughty things, straight from a Freddie Forsyth novel.
Didn’t stop the government of the day promising to do “something about the threat”.
Caterwauling Catamite? I don’t know the allusion. You’d better fill me in.
Blimey, Richard, haven’t you drunk the ‘Russia meddling’ bathwater?
I’ll keep this simple – find yourself the Time magazine front cover from July 15th, 1996.
It says;
“Exclusive”
“Yanks to the Rescue”
“The Secret Story of How American Advisers Helped Yeltsin Win”
Clinton had a group of advisers installed just over the road from the Kremlin. They pumped massive amounts of money (and influence!) into the Russia ‘election system’, from media to polling lackeys.
By 1996, after a half dozen years odd of Yank neoliberal medicine, Russians’ savings had been looted, their commercial enterprises similarly, and average male life expectancy had plummeted to mid 50’s, from low to mid 60’s – a drop unprecedented in a time not involving war.
There are no measures more instructive of a nation’s well being than life expectancy.
Putin arrived a few years later, and by the mid naughties had overseen the restoration of male life expectancy back to the mid 60’s.
As for Russia ‘destabilising’ NATO, that’s a joke right?
If, and I stress IF, the Russians are happy to see Johnson in No 10, it is only because they know Johnson is the final death knell of the rancid British ’empire’ (latter day delusion that it is).
If you’d like an idea of who is besting who, find yourself the NYT’s editorial of a few days back, the one where the anti-Trumpistas at the Grey Lady are lauding Trump for attempting to create better relations with Russia. And, they’re advocating he pursue further improvements in the relationship.
Why?
To quote the end to one particular sentence;
“…………..to try to establish a sounder relationship with Russia and peel it away from China”.
Not a chance in Hades – this is the Eurasian century. Putin knows it, Xi knows it.
And, so deep down do the increasingly desperate 15% of the world’s population that constitute ‘the West’
Spot on David. Richard is entitled to his opinions but they do have too much of the officially approved “It’s dem Rooshians wot dunnit” ideological stench about them. Meanwhile, it’s easy enough to find the 15 July 1996 article in Time magazine. Here is a link to a pdf of it in full:
https://ccisf.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/201612201405.pdf
This is real, demonstrable big-time “meddling”.
It looked as if Mueller was completely unprepared once he read out his position which was simply all the evidence they had uncovered was in the report and what evidence that wasn’t used in the report some other government agencies were in the process of using it.
For the rest of the session he came over as a retiree with an hearing impediment or a bit of an early confusional state and not really being interested in being there.
The reason Mueller looked unprepared, Desmond, was, ‘London to a brick on’, Mueller had little to do with writing the report.
People need to look at Mueller’s CV. In particular, the role he played immediately after 9/11 and, just as instructively, what response he earned from locals, when he turned up to ‘save’ the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing.
The bloke’s a fraud, and in those ‘law enforcement’ circles he is far from alone.
It’s almost as if the Dems are afraid of being… wot’s the word.. wedged by the Drumpfster.
No matter how accommodating , concilliatory & plain wish-washy one is, the demands, and complicity, grow.
Well blow me down if the usual couple of apologists for all things Russia aren’t on here.
Welcome back Hamster! Another one of your usual harrumph/fart/snarl brain farts. As vacuous as it is irrelevant. Perhaps us “apologists” actually bother to find out and so know what we’re talking about. You, well, you seem stuck in the Menzies era, still looking for Reds under dusty beds”. Achoo!
I see you managed to get Lavrov into your pointless Ruskie obfuscation. I trust you are on some sort of bonus scheme from head office? See you on the next thread with even the most tenuous link to the anything Russian.
This is exactly what you said on 3 December 2018. This seems to be your fall-back position when you have nothing credible to say. My answer is the same as before.