Now that the world, the Democrats, and anti-Trump forces have been
betrayed by their own supposed hero, Robert Mueller, with the release of the
long-awaited Mueller Report, what next?
The
Investigation…
Nearly $25 million
2,800 subpoenas
500 witnesses
40 FBI agents
21 lawyers
The
media coverage of the investigation
“Russiagate” has been a news media obsession since Trump’s
victory in November 2016. The nonpartisan Tyndall Report pegged the total
amount of time devoted to the story on the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS and
NBC last year at 332 minutes.
According to a count by the Republican National Committee
released Sunday, The Post, The New York Times, CNN.com and MSNBC.com have
written a combined 8,507 articles mentioning the special counsel’s
investigation. The cable news networks,
particularly CNN and MSNBC, have added hundreds of hours of discussion about
the topic as well.
The
Mysterious Steele Dossier on Trump
Deep in the background of the two and one-half-year evolvement
and completion of the Mueller investigation, dating back to the 2016 campaign for
the presidency, there was the highly secret concocting of a mysterious dossier trashing
Donald Trump that would become the most notorious counter-intelligent and
opposition research project ever undertaken in an American presidential
election.
In August
2015, NBCUniversal made a $200 million equity investment in Buzzfeed.
Along with plans to hire more journalists to build a more prominent
"investigative" unit.
In
October 2016, Buzzfeed raised $200 million from Comcast TV and movie arm
NBCUniversal, at a valuation of roughly $1.7 billion. Altogether, Comcast
and subsidiary NBCUniversal own about a third of Buzzfeed.
Why?
The
Steele dossier on Trump
Mother Jones news reported on the existence of the elusive
dossier behind the federal investigation of the Trump campaign and Democratic
obsession to get Trump and invalidate the 2016 presidential election of Donald
Trump on October 31, 2016.
The opposition research conducted by Fusion GPS on
Donald Trump was in two distinct operations, each with a different client. The
first research operation, from October 2015 to May 2016, was domestic research
funded by The Washington Free Beacon, a Republican organization doing background on the GOP primary candidates.
The second operation, from April 2016 to December 2016, was
funded by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton
campaign. Only the second operation involved the foreign research that produced
the Trump dossier.
At least for portions of the months of April and May 2016,
the Washington Free Beacon and the Hillary Clinton Campaign/DNC were
independently both clients of Fusion GPS.
Note NBCUniversal made substantial purchases of Buzzfeed in
August of 2015 and October of 2016.
At some point news media began hearing rumors about the
dossier in the middle of 2016 as reported in Mother Jones October 31,
2016. However, funding information and
how the complete dossier was given to the FBI and news media were unknown.
It was not until the end of 2018 that factual information came
forth. The new revelations were
contained in an opinion authored by U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro December
19, 2018 in a District Court case involving Buzzfeed.
As stated
by the Judge, an associate of the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain
shared with Buzzfeed News a copy of the unverified, salacious opposition
research dossier alleging that Russians had compromising material on
President Trump, according to a bombshell federal court filing December
19, 2018.
McCain
had strenuously denied being the source for Buzzfeed after it published
the entire dossier, which was funded by the Democratic National Committee (DNC)
and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
McCain
has acknowledged giving the dossier to the FBI. But, until the opinion of the
Judge was released, it remained a mystery what role, if any, his associates
might have played in the dossier leaking to the media shortly afterwards.
In
November 2016, according to the filing, McCain sent Kramer, a director at
the McCain Institute for International Leadership, to London to meet with
Steele.
McCain
had learned from Sir Andrew Wood, the former British Ambassador to Russia, that
Steele had collected damaging information about Trump, according to the
filing. Wood was an informal adviser to Orbis, which was retained by
Fusion GPS, the firm behind the dossier.
On Nov.
28, 2016, Kramer met with Steele and later obtained copies of the dossier
from Glenn Simpson, the head of Fusion GPS, the filing states. Kramer
then met with Buzzfeed reporter Ken Bensinger on Dec. 29, 2016 at the
McCain Institute.
There,
"Kramer reviewed with Bensinger what he knew about the dossier and
explained that he took the allegations seriously." Then,
Kramer showed Bensinger the dossier and purportedly informed him that
“some of the information was unverified."
Bensinger
left his meeting "with copies of all seventeen memos" authored by
Steele, and promptly took the compiled dossier to Mark Schoofs, Buzzfeed’s
senior editor in charge of investigative reporting.
Buzzfeed
published the entire 35-page dossier under the title “These Reports Allege
Trump has Deep Ties to Russia” on January 10, 2017, just before Trump was sworn
into office on January 20, 2017.
It was this revelation that led to the Comey firing and the appointment of a special prosecutor. The history and mystery of the dossier that was never proven accurate is the key question to what happened during Trump's presidency to date.
Justice
Department and Congressional Investigations needed
Justice Department and Congressional investigations are needed
to finish cleaning up the mess that has plagued the president and denied the
people the full attention of their duly elected president.
Many questions remain concerning the development, funding
sources, distribution and public release of the dossier as well as the internal
actions within the Obama Justice Department and Administration, including those
of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, CIA
Director John O. Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and
FBI Director James Comey, along with various Justice Department senior executives,
a number of whom have been fired or retired.
There
are always consequences to actions that were intended to mislead the public,
slant the news, and punish the innocent and those consequences are on the
horizon. The same is true when
politicians violated their oath to the Constitution and ethics which may snare
many Democratic senators and congressmen, along with Democratic presidential
candidates for president in 2020.
Finally,
there is the absolutely horrendous efforts by the news media including Internet
news producers and aggregators to blatantly drive the president out of office. It was never the intent of our Founding Fathers
that the first amendment, free speech and protection of the press, should be
used to shield news media from unlawful, unethical, immoral and co-conspiratorial
practices intended to discriminate against the object of their stories.
If
there is any involvement by the media in the unlawful manipulation of the agencies
of the government or the public news media resulting in the Mueller
investigation the courts should strip the media of protection against liability
under the first amendment. Beyond that,
any news organization that violated the Professional Ethical Standards for
Journalism should be stripped of White House and Federal government clearance and
credentials to all government activities.
Let
the President do what he was elected by the people to do so hope can be
restored in our nation, the real needs of the people can be met, the abuses and
over-reach of the government can be eliminated, and we the people can get what we expect out of our national
government. The time for division must
be put behind us and the leadership in solving national and world problems must
be our future. America deserves the
chance to prove what makes us better than any other nation in the world,
creativity, pride, compassion, care and equality for all.
