The Mueller Investigation: One Part Abuse, One Part Absurdity. There is No Third Part.

The Mueller “investigation” of “collusion with Russia” is one part abuse, one part absurdity. There is no third part.

One aspect of the abuse is well summarized by my friend Tom Kirkendall and others quoted in this article:

“Here is a United States citizen where the FBI is coming in, picking his lock, and raiding his home in the early morning, over what? It doesn’t matter which side you’re on. It’s just crazy. We’re not the Soviet Union. It’s appalling,” said Kirkendall, who has worked on cases involving one of the special counsel’s key investigators, Andrew Weissmann.

As Tom noted to me, apparently the irony of using KGB tactics to investigate rumored Russian intelligence involvement in the US election is lost on Mueller and his thugs. The presence of serial prosecutorial abuser Andrew Weissmann is also quite revealing about Mueller’s attitude.

Another aspect of the abuse is the continued and repeated leaking from the investigation, and about Manafort in particular. The leaked information was obtained either by search warrant in a criminal investigation, or a FISA warrant in an intelligence investigation: it is criminal to release either.

All of this is clearly intended to intimidate Manafort into cooperation against Trump. In this effort, they are apparently ranging far afield from anything remotely related to the 2016 election. One (leaked) story is that they are looking into Manafort’s activities dating back 11 years. That might have more relevance to the 2008 election involving current Swamp darling John McCain–Manafort’s partner Rick Davis was McCain’s 2008 National Campaign Manager–than it does 2016’s.

No leaks yet as to whether Mueller is investigating contacts between Manafort and Agamemnon during the Trojan War. Which would be about as relevant to the things he is pursuing now.

Another leak is that–gasp!–Manafort offered to brief Oleg Deripaska about the campaign. I checked my thesaurus. “Brief” and “collude” or “conspire” are NOT synonyms. Furthermore, this is an example of how dishonest and misleading leaks can be. In court they make you swear to tell the whole truth, because partial revelations can be as misleading and deceptive as an outright lie. How many other people from what other nations did Manafort offer to brief? What did these briefings involve? Just revealing a single communication about a possible Russia contact (without even confirming that any briefing actually occurred) is highly manipulative, and presents a distorted picture of what actually occurred.

It is telling that Manafort has demanded that ALL of the material collected about him be released. He no doubt knows that the Deripaska connection would appear trivial when put into the context of the entirety of his activities.

I wonder if they have the measure of their man, however. After all, the whole reason Manafort has come under suspicion is his history of dealings in Ukraine, and on the side of Russia-friendly politicians there. These people are not boy scouts. They are capable of far worse things than no-knock raids. Someone like Manafort who is used to dealing with the likes of Yanukovych and Ukrainian oligarchs cannot be easily intimidated. I’m not saying he’ll go all G. Gordon Liddy, but he’s not likely to collapse into a puddle of tears begging for Mueller’s mercy either.

One last thing about this: the massive leaks give Manafort a colorable claim that he cannot receive a fair trial anywhere in the US due to the highly prejudicial pre-trial (and even pre-indictment) publicity. Mueller et al have to know this, but are willing to leak prejudicially anyways, meaning they don’t give a damn about Manafort qua Manafort. But Manafort (and his attorneys) know this too–which might lead him to resist the pressure.

As for absurdity, it is widely reported that a major focus of Mueller’s investigation is the alleged purchase by Russians (which of the 145 million odd citizens of the Russian Federation has not been revealed) of a piddling sum of ads on Facebook. What connection this has to the collusion allegations that started this whole effort in motion has not been disclosed. But even if there is some remote connection, this is farcical.

The purchase price of the ads was between $50,000 and $100,000. (I have seen both numbers quoted.) To put things in perspective, Hillary spent $400 freaking million on ads. (And every dollar was wasted–hahahaha!) So even assuming the high number, the FB ads represented .025 percent of Hillary’s ad buy: Hillary was spending more per business hour than the entire FB ad buy. This does not count the massive free publicity via the mainstream media, which was highly partisan: that would have cost many billions to buy. Nor does it count pro-Hillary Facebook and Twitter (and for all I know, Instagram) material that was churned out during 2016.

Given that Mueller has hired 14 high-powered lawyers, who always come with a train of support staff, I would not be surprised if he spends more in a day investigating the Great Facebook Conspiracy than the conspirators spent on the ads in the first place.

All of which shows beyond cavil that any putative Russian ad buy on Facebook was about as relevant to the outcome of the election as what Putin had for breakfast on election day. Or put differently, if it did have any impact on the election, every campaign manager and consultant is an idiot and a wastrel for spending vast sums on conventional media buys when spending the campaign budget for a hotly contested school board race on Facebook ads would be sufficient to propel their candidates to the highest offices in the land.

Both the abuse and the absurdity demonstrate the depravity of the independent counsel statute, and the grave disservice that Rod Rosenstein and Jeff Sessions did not just to Trump but to the nation, by appointing Mueller, and in particular, appointing him with a license to look into anything remotely related to Russia. Prosecutorial power must be restrained, or it will be abused: not may be–will be. (This is especially true with US prosecutors.) The most important constraint is that they be limited to prosecuting a specific allegation of criminality. Indeed, given the stakes and the huge ramifications for the operation of the US government, special prosecutors should be particularly constrained. Instead, we are in a situation where this special prosecutor is apparently free of any limitation, and is free to roam at will as a hybrid of Inspector Javert and Frankenstein’s Monster.

The only silver lining in this dark cloud is that the fact that Mueller is chasing chimeras likely means that there is nothing to the collusion allegations that were the reason for his appointment.

The reason I started to write about Russia years ago was that it represented to me a real world dystopia that showed what could happen in the absence of a rule of law, and protections of individual rights: writing about a place where these things did not exist was (to me) an effective way of demonstrating their importance where they do exist. But in the 11 odd years since I started blogging about Russia, the United States has been converging to it from above, and the pace of convergence has quickened in recent years. It is sickly ironic that one of the most disturbing illustrations of this convergence is a special counsel investigation ostensibly motivated by grave concerns about Russian interference in American politics. Pace Pogo, we have met the enemy, and he is us: we are doing a damn good job at becoming Russia all by ourselves, thank you very much.