After Mueller, Accountability Is a Must
America can survive honest mistakes, but it cannot survive double standards of justice.
With two rounds of testimony last week, Robert Mueller played out the last act of his investigation. His team concluded that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election, but that there was no evidence Donald Trump colluded. However, the report from his investigation did insinuate that there might have been obstruction of justice — even without an underlying crime or, well, any proof of obstruction.
The fact is, Russia did try to interfere in our elections, but it seems to have been primarily to stir the pot and to gin up and/or exacerbate the mutual hostility between Americans of differing political views that has become a hallmark of politics today. In that, Moscow’s operation succeeded — at least as far as 2016 and 2018 go.
Not that Russia isn’t paying a price. Georgia and the Ukraine have received the FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile, for starters, making Russian aggression against them a more costly proposition. But the military aid is missing the big move — Trump’s support of natural-gas production and exports.
However, the Mueller probe raised myriad more questions as it tried to find answers. Those questions deserve to be answered. The fact is that the FBI’s counterintelligence powers were turned on a presidential campaign of a political party not in power in the United States. With no evidence of wrongdoing on Trump’s part vis-à-vis Russia emerging from that FBI investigation, in effect, Americans of a different political persuasion than the president in office at the time were spied on by their own government.
To say Americans deserve answers as to how we got to that point is putting it mildly. Had even half of this been done to the “Gitmo Bar” lawyers defending Guantanamo terrorists, we would never be hearing the end of it from The Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, etc. Keep in mind that the Gitmo Bar was giving al-Qaida access to our legal system to the detriment of efforts to keep this country safe. Hanoi Jane’s ack-ack gun photo-op is chicken feed compared to that.
Furthermore, this was done by an administration on whose watch the IRS harassed other political opponents of the president in power. Furthermore, as the FBI was unleashed on political opponents of the Democrat Party before, during, and after the 2016 election, we have also seen other stirrings — the John Doe investigations, Andrew Cuomo’s abuses against the NRA, and musings of turning RICO on opponents of the leftist environmental agenda. While one such thing could be an honest mistake and two such things becomes a suspicious coincidence, five such instances of the exercise of government power against opponents of the Left is more than adequate circumstantial evidence that something rotten is going on.
But there isn’t just circumstantial evidence. We also have the texts between the FBI’s Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, which made the infamous reference to an “insurance policy” in case Trump won. The contexts of the texts are comparable to the Mark Fuhrman tapes of O.J. Simpson fame in terms of raising reasonable doubt about the fairness of the investigation.
Worse, those who are supposed to be watchdogs are instead going along. Does anyone think that illicit lovebirds in the CIA exchanging texts about an “insurance policy” to protect enhanced interrogations should Barack Obama win the presidency in 2008 would get the same treatment from the press that Strzok and Page are getting now? Would an FBI counterintelligence investigation of the Gitmo Bar have been celebrated by the same outlets celebrating the likes of Strzok and Page?
If America still stands for equal justice under the law, then there must be a reckoning for the Mueller probe. If there isn’t, then many on the Right will assume the same posture articulated by Donny Deutsch on MSNBC, and with no small degree of justification. America can survive honest mistakes, but it cannot survive double standards of justice. We need answers and accountability on Mueller and Spygate, and soon.