Barr will get to bottom of Mueller farce

The two-year, multimillion-dollar Robert Mueller investigation to help impeach President Trump was a farce from the beginning, as much a threat to this country’s democratic principles as a Russian collusion would have been. Now we’re getting exactly what is needed: a criminal investigation. Woe is The New York Times.

In an editorial posing as a news story, the newspaper told us this is just President Trump trying to get revenge. Next in line were emotionally wrought talking heads on cable TV repeating the point for want of anything intelligent to say. To make that argument logically, they would have to know what the evidence was in any particular case and who was being accused of what.

They would also need to explain the falderol leading up to the massively disruptive probe and tell us what solid grounds there were for it in the first place.

The thing is, the special counsel’s report found no collusion. Let me say it again. After all the sniffing, digging and interviewing, the irrelevant arrests and destruction of lives, the selection of a partisan gotcha team, the media pile on and the certainty of pompous pundits, there was no demonstration of Trump or his cohorts collaborating with Russian agents.

If that’s all they had at the end, what in the world did they have at the beginning?

Hooey is one answer. For example, there was an unverified, grotesque dossier that relied on Russians and was used against Trump in a variety of ways. It had its origins with Hillary Clinton campaign money. We had illegal, misleading, official leaks. We had CIA involvement that some say was out of order. We had FBI Director James Comey disregarding the rules of the road in his release of memos. Under the Obama administration, there was spying and criminal research on Trump staffers. We had a game played on a Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, that appears downright treacherous.

A criminal investigation of this and more could add up to proof that the Robert Mueller investigation was an assault on our dearest principles as proud officials, their underlings and leftist politicians said it was their voices, not those of millions of voters, that mattered. The thesis seemed to be that trash had elected trash and it that it was up to the precious few to throw the trash out.

Boldly and correctly, Attorney General William Barr initiated a counter-investigation, naming the highly esteemed, honorable prosecution whiz John Durham to figure out why the Mueller adventure started in the first place. It was then Durham who decided to reconstitute the probe as a criminal investigation. He can now subpoena evidence and call witnesses before grand juries that could then make decisions leading to trials and perhaps to convictions and imprisonment. But if there’s terror in Washington, it hasn’t slowed down a second charade.

Democrats in the House have been proceeding with an impeachment inquiry as twisted and contrived in appearance as it probably is in reality. What’s the real story behind the hidden whistleblower? Why all the secrecy? Why no House vote to get things started and what’s with this recent vote that still keeps Republicans in a secondary, controlled role? The supposition now is that Trump had a quid pro quo in asking Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, namely that the country would not get U.S. aid if it refused. But Ukraine never knew of a delay or investigated Biden and soon received military aid of a kind President Barack Obama never allowed.

Trump was out of line, but not to the degree of impeachment. Joe Biden’s conflicts of interest are actually a much bigger deal. And once again we have unsettling procedures. Congress needs to work on the nation’s needs and let the voters have a say in the 2020 election.

Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. Readers may email him at speaktojay@aol.com.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2NgDBP3