February 16, 2018 FBI special counsel Mueller announces charges against 13 Russian nationals working for three Russian agencies to include a so-called “Internet Research Agency”. Charges are basically unregistered foreign agents came onto US soil and peddled influence using social media and email. Since foreign agents must be registered, any activity conducted by said foreign agents whether normally legal or not is considered illegal. By this mechanism, the use of internet, fake profiles, and any spending of money becomes wire fraud. No charges against any US citizens or members of any political parties were levied. Since these are foreign nationals living in Russia, there will likely never be a case tried in court as those named nationals will likely never step foot on US soil. As it is, there will never be a day of reckoning where prosecutors and defense attorneys will present the facts for a jury or judge to decide.
Each side is using these indictments to bolster their arguments. On the Democratic party side, they say this indictment is clear evidence that Russians were trying to influence the election and succeeded to great effect. The fact that President Trump refuses to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation shows that he was using this to his own benefit. CNN, MSNBC and other media outlets writes that this proves the Russians changed the US election results and questions Trump’s legitimacy.
On the other side, the Trump administration says this proves that the administration had nothing to do with the Russian efforts and that this was an expensive and pointless witch hunt that turned up nothing and since Mueller knows these indictments will never result in an actual case, its a pretty convenient way to throw suspicion and charges knowing nothing can ever be proven or disproven.
So let’s break this down just to the actual confirmed facts:
- The Hillary campaign paid for their own “fake news” when they secretly created a dossier using a foreign consulting firm that alleged the Kremlin had a secret file on then candidate Trump.
- The Democratic party launched the Mueller investigation in 2017 upon losing the election using the fake dossier as the justification. Had it not been for the dossier, there would have been no investigation because there was no other evidence as internal FBI memos reveal.
- In February 8, 2018, information arose publicly that showed that the London, UK consulting firm behind the dossier, ORBIS was paid by Fusion GPS which was in turn paid by the Hillary election campaign for “background research”.
- Emails were leaked in 2018 that showed Peter Strzok, one of the lead investigators on the Mueller team had been a Clinton operative and had previously stated in an email to his lover that he had a “backup plan to get rid of Trump” should he win the election. Peter Strzok coincidentally (or perhaps not) was instrumental in the decision not to file charges against Hillary Clinton for the breach of national secrets in her personal email server which Trump had jokingly said the Russians should release all the contents of Hillary’s emails. Strzok was fired from the Mueller investigation shortly after these came to light.
- Mueller indictment alleges that the Russians spent “millions of rubles” or around a couple million dollars ($1 USD = 56 RUB). The money was spent on agents who traveled to the US, developing fake Facebook and social media profiles and paying for posters. By comparison Trump spent $94 million on his successful campaign and Hillary Clinton spent $623 million on her losing campaign. Hillary lost despite significantly outspending Trump and using every trick in the book to include paying for her own fake news campaign such as the ORBIS dossier.
CNN reported on February 18, 2018 that “It seems probable that the Russians were successful in their multimillion-dollar effort to influence the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.”. By the term “multimillion”, CNN means around two to three million. This claim by CNN seems entirely laughable. If Vladimir Putin indeed figured out how to win US elections by having a few of in Russia stooges travel to the US and post “Hillary Clinton is a doo-doo head” on social media then he is indeed the most powerful person on this planet.
Let’s assume Mueller is 100% correct in his charges (and there is some question if this is purely a political ploy), then a couple of Russian jokers came over and punked the election with a few stunts. Even Mueller has no evidence that there was any impact on the election whatsoever which makes CNN’s article proclaiming that there was even more funny.
What is most likely is that the indictments handed out by Mueller was a way to get throw some dirt that can’t be disproved and to appease his masters in the swamp or perhaps pad his own career with books and tell-alls. It may also be a face-saving move to extricate himself out of this quandry of trying to prove something that can’t be proven.
