No Collusion

With the main conclusion from the Mueller report now known and the investigation concluded, the big question is: What’s next? We know what we’d like to see happen which we will detail at the end of this article. One thing is certain. With their well-known political bias and personal animus of Donald Trump, Mueller’s investigative team of high-powered lawyers was intensely motivated to discover guilt of Russian collusion on the part of the President and/or his campaign. That this team found no collusion means no stone was left unturned.

Since December of 2016, including the two years of the Mueller investigation, the narrative of Russian collusion has been woven into so many news stories, political speeches, court filings, House and Senate committee proceedings, and social media postings, as to become part of our consciousness. It’s hard to find anyone today that has not heard something about Russian involvement with Trump in the 2016 election. So much has already been written in the news on this topic, it’s hard for us to add anything new. We’ve written previously on “Russian collusion” multiple times (Conspiracy Theory, Russian Meddling, Hacking the Election). Early on, Russian collusion was only one of many specious tales competing for the prize of taking down the newly-elected President. And throughout that time period, most of the news media totally ignored the possibility of an equally sensational narrative – that the whole Trump/Russia collusion story could be fabricated. We’ve always had that thought in the back of our minds, but the implications of an intentional fabrication were so severe (essentially a soft coup d’état) it seemed too much of a stretch.

Immediately after the 2016 election when the Russian collusion story began filling news pages, it was primarily countered with the simple explanation that a wide swath of American voters actually wanted a bull-in-the-china-shop as their President to:

1. Reduce the ability of career government personnel to implement policy that undermines or runs counter to the President’s goals.

2. Undo the incestuous ties between the federal government and lobbyists, special interest groups, labor unions, and the news media.

Voters were fed up with the amount control over their lives being wielded by un-elected and deeply embedded government personnel (a.k.a. the deep state) and wanted a return to the principles of limited government upon which the country was founded. In this reality, even if the Russians had been poking around, their activities had no influence on the outcome of the election. This interpretation never gained any traction in the popular media mostly because it was decidedly boring and didn’t fit their anti-Trump narrative. But it remained as the only other explanation for Donald Trump’s victory that did not require the presence of a unicorn somewhere in the story.

Receiving much less attention was the emergence of a far more subversive explanation for the Russian collusion story. In this counter-narrative, elements of our own Government at the FBI, Justice Department and Intelligence Agencies were conspiring from within to implicate President Trump in an activity that could be characterized as a high crime or misdemeanor for the purpose of removing him from office. While evidence of this conspiracy was rumored to exist, it was said to be highly classified and not available to the media or general public. In addition, many of the people participating in the conspiracy were still in their government jobs and had a vested interest in protecting information that might expose their role. Thus, this story remained in the background for some time. That began to change slowly as bits and pieces of information became public via leaks, public testimony in House and Senate investigative committees, and a report issued by the Inspector General of the Justice Department. While a complete accounting of this conspiracy with all the people involved has not yet come together, enough evidence of wrongdoing was found to warrant the firing and/or resignation of 14 senior officials at the FBI including, for the first time in its history, the dismissal of both the Director and Deputy Director. This conspiracy story, initially appearing every bit as unlikely as the Russian collusion story, is now being buttressed by increasing amounts of real evidence. As historically unprecedented as the conspiracy story might be, it was continually overshadowed with one-sided coverage of the Mueller investigation by a national media that had gone “all-in” on the Russian collusion narrative. After all, if the Russian collusion story was proved true by Mueller, it would instantly discredit the alternative explanation of a conspiracy to fabricate collusion with the Russians.

The Mueller investigation is now over and its final report states: “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” This is a direct quote from the Mueller report. The Attorney General included this quote in his summary statement of the report. That result now opens the door wide for a legitimate and appropriate airing of the alternative insider conspiracy hypothesis. It’s one thing for a theory of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign to have been birthed by a ravenous anti-Trump media looking for any possible way to delegitimize the President. It’s quite another for officials within our government to have intentionally created the illusion of collusion, complete with false evidence, with the end goal of removing the President from office. That this potential removal would not occur physically “by force” but instead by laying a false foundation for either impeachment or incompetency does not invalidate its treasonous intent.

Specifically, the question is if employees of the FBI and Justice Department, with possible assistance from the intelligence agencies, were in violation of section 115 of US Criminal law titled “TREASON, SEDITION, AND SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES”. Within that section of the law, code 2384 is titled “Seditious Conspiracy“. This would be the applicable statute in this case and carries a prison term of up to 20 years. It is our sincere hope that the Attorney General pursues an investigation into this activity every bit as aggressively as the Mueller team did with Russian collusion. It is high time for an example to be set that misusing federal law enforcement tools and techniques to undermine a President and enable/encourage his removal will be met with harsh consequences.

We fully expect that in the coming days and weeks the media and anti-Trump politicians will focus their attention on the “obstruction of justice” part of the Mueller report. In light of the report’s conclusion there was no collusion with Russia, the logic behind an obstruction charge is now highly dubious. We know now that the investigation that was supposedly being obstructed was based on a crime that never existed in the first place. There was therefore no reasonable motivation to obstruct. Any coverage given to the obstruction charge must from this point on must be viewed purely as an attempt to deflect attention from the far more serious possibility of an internal conspiracy to fabricate a collusion crime.

Most of the media, nearly all the House and Senate Democrats, and a small number of Republicans had attached much of their own credibility to the veracity of the Russian collusion narrative. That it was actually found to be false either implies that all these people were “fooled” or that some were themselves complicit in the conspiracy. In either case, their credibility takes a big hit and they will likely take drastic measures to minimize the damage. If some of them are in fact complicit, much more than just their credibility is at stake should the Attorney General pursue a full-scale investigation.

At least for us, the release of the Mueller report and the conclusions reached were somewhat of a catharsis. So much of the current news cycle in the US is filled with false facades and gives the impression of a country turned upside down. We remain convinced the true reality is very different. America remains stable and is not endangered or teetering on the edge of chaos. Fringe beliefs and actors are disproportionately capturing headlines and media attention making them appear far closer to reality (and more threatening) than they really are. The conclusion of the Mueller report reassures that the outcome of the 2016 election was exactly what the voters wanted and not an aberration caused by the Russians or anyone else. And given that the President’s policy actions since being in office have all been in line with his original campaign promises, people are getting precisely what they hoped for and are not victims of illegitimate leadership.

Despite all the egg presently on the faces of the anti-Trump critics who were convinced of and even promoted Russian collusion, we expect no slowdown in further attempts to sabotage the President.