Mueller Fake Investigation Still Finds Nothing On Trump

Introduction by Quemado Institute

November 5, 2017

US President Donald Trump in Hawaii on his way to Asia, November 4, 2017 – How can anyone who opposes the Deep State fault this courageous man? (Photo —ABC Radio Australia)

I guess we really have to look into all this Mueller Manafort investigative nonsense, since it may well have a bearing on the future of the United States government.

It goes without saying that the whole manufactured “investigation” is a Deep State ploy to disrupt American democracy, under which Donald Trump was rightfully elected, and to divide and conquer the US population—or rather to splinter it into myriad mutually hating factions—while destroying Russia, a free, democratic, anti-Western-Deep-State sovereign superpower which has shunned the Zionist banking system and is therefore enemy number one of the Deep State and its libtard mouthpieces.

That said, Eric Zuesse and Philip M. Giraldi, both publishing at Strategic Culture Foundation, provide us with a definitive summary of this annoying and embarrassing episode of American corruption:

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Was Trump Really This Honest?
Opinion By Eric Zuesse

Strategic Culture Foundation
[See above source for many links in this article.]
November 5, 2017

After all of the trumpeting against Donald Trump by the ‘news’media and by all Democratic politicians and many Republican politicians, about his utter untrustworthiness; and after the loads of exposés that have been published, over decades, documenting Trump’s psychopathic behaviors and business scams; what do we now have, adding to this unsavory if not criminal record by Mr. Trump, in the first criminal indictment, published on October 27th, by the Special Prosecutor, Robert Mueller, who is tasked to nail Trump to some prison cell for crimes committed during his Presidential campaign, after Trump’s having previously racked up already such a lifetime record of alleged (and even some documented) outrages perpetrated by him?

The indictments, of Paul Manafort II and of Richard W. Gates III, make serious charges against these two men, for their allegedly laundering $75 million of income to mainly Manafort during the period from 2006 to 2015. The charges are basically tax-evasion and “a series of false and misleading statements” by them to the US Department of Justice during and after the men’s subsequent work for Trump’s Presidential campaign.

This income had been derived during 2006 to 2015 from what was then the leading political Party in Ukraine, and Paragraph 10 of the Indictment states that this Party, “The Party of Regions was a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine.” Is that legally relevant? Is it criminal in America for a politician in a nation that borders Russia to be “pro-Russia”? (Should it be criminal in Russia for a politician in a nation that borders America to be pro-American?) It wasn’t criminal in that neighboring country, Ukraine, to be pro-Russian, but is it criminal in America? Did a legal basis exist, during 2005 through 2014, and up till the US coup that overthrew this Party in 2014, for the US to outlaw this Ukrainian Party, retrospectively, after the US Government had replaced their rule by the rule of one far-right Party, led by Yulia Tymoshenko, and two racist-fascist or ideologically nazi Parties — the Right Sector, and the former Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine — all three of which Parties rabidly hate Russians?

The Party of Regions had been elected to power in Ukraine’s final democratic election (2010) in which the residents in all parts of Ukraine were permitted to vote for or against candidates for Ukrainian national office. That’s what its having been called “The Party of Regions” meant: acceptance, as being part of Ukraine, of the residents in all regions of Ukraine, not discriminating against any, and not blocking any from being able to vote for President and for other national elective offices. What was illegal, anywhere (even in the United States), about that? If nothing, then why does Mueller even mention it, except in order to prejudice jurors?

The Indictment states that this Party “retained MANAFORT, through DMP and then DMI, to advance its interests in Ukraine, including the election of its slate of candidates. In 2010, its candidate for President, Yanukovych, was elected President of Ukraine.” Is that criminal, or is it instead merely prejudicial against the defendants (Manafort and Gates)? Is this Indictment designed to appeal to Americans’ prejudices, or to America’s laws?

Paragraph 11 states: “The European Centre for a Modem Ukraine (the Centre) was created in or about 2012 in Belgium as a mouthpiece for Yanukovych and the Party of Regions. The Centre was used by MANAFORT, GATES, and others in order to lobby and conduct a public relations campaign in the United States and Europe on behalf of the existing Ukraine regime. The Centre effectively ceased to operate upon the downfall of Yanukovych in 2014.” The last Ukrainian election in which the people in the parts of the country where the main language that was spoken was Russian were allowed to live in peace and to vote in Ukrainian national elections, had produced, according to Mueller, what was, until the coup “the existing regime” — not “the existing Government.” Is the presumption here that the coup-government is “the Ukrainian Government,” but that the democratically elected Government which had preceded the coup-government was instead “the existing Ukraine regime”? It contradicts the history — it contradicts the solidly documented record of what had happened there.

Then follow, until Paragraph 25, specific alleged documents that will be produced at trial in order to prove the money-laundering and the lying aimed to hide it. Paragraph 25 states that, “In November 2016 and February 2017, MANAFORT, GATES, and DMI caused false and misleading letters to be submitted to the Department of Justice, which mirrored the false cover story set out above.”

Starting with Paragraph 37 are the “Statutory Allegations” and the numbered criminal “Counts.” All pertain to the alleged money-laundering and the alleged lies in order to cover it up. Then Paragraph 52 states that upon conviction, the men “shall forfeit to the United States any property, real or personal, involved in such offense, and any property traceable to such property,” etc.

Among the cited US criminal laws, and their punishments, which were referenced, were:

18 USC. § 1956(h) (“shall be sentenced to a fine of not more than $500,000 or twice the value of the property involved in the transaction, whichever is greater, or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both”)

31 USC. § 5322(b) (“shall be fined not more than $500,000, imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both”)

22 USC. § 618(a)(2) (“a fine of not more than $10,000 or by imprisonment for not more than five years, or both”)

So, the expectation is that, if neither Manafort nor Gates will testify that Trump colluded with Russia in order to win the US Presidency, then both Manafort and Gates will face perhaps 35 years in prison, or else be pardoned by Trump — which latter pardoning might assist his becoming replaced by either a different Republican in primaries, or else by the Democratic nominee, in 2020 — if Trump’s Presidency even lasts that long.

An editorial at the Strategic Culture Foundation on November 1st was headlined “First Indictment in Russiagate: Special Counsel Not Up to the Task”, and noted that, “Surprising or not, the indictment does not mention neither Trump nor Russia!

The story is about Ukraine. Paul Manafort had ties with Ukraine’s Party of Regions, which was considered as a ‘pro-Moscow’ political force. That’s the only ‘Russia connection.’ Everything related to Manafort pertains to the period before he started to work for Donald Trump. And Rick Gates has never had any relation to the incumbent president or his team.” It goes on to note that: “Manafort’s indictment (Item 22, page 15) states very seriously that Yulia Tymoshenko had served as Ukraine’s President prior to Yanukovych! It takes a few seconds to have a look at the list of Ukraine’s presidents to find out that Yulia Timoshenko has never been the holder of the highest office.” That was actually referencing Paragraph 22 on page 16, but the point being made is accurate: The former FBI chief and now the prestigious Special Counsel chosen in order to replace Trump by Pence, is so incompetent that he permits a historical falsehood that’s documentable even merely by reference to a Wikipedia article, to appear in Mueller’s piece of propaganda for the appointment of the rabid Russia-hater and current Vice President, Mike Pence, to complete Trump’s term-of-office.

Is this the ‘Justice’ system in a democracy, or is it now just a two-bit dictatorship that’s the fading ghost of anything that the United States of America formerly was?

It’s certainly a scandal, at the very top, and, obviously, only fools would believe that a government such as this is a democracy, at all.

So: Was Trump really this honest? Was he so honest, so that the only way he can even be framed enough for him to be forced out of office, is to unleash against him an ‘expert lawyer’ such as Mueller, who obviously isn’t even a competent piranha? In the US, as Alan Dershowitz has said, “A grand jury will indict a ham sandwich if the prosecutor wants them to”. But almost all Americans believe that an indictment is itself evidence of a person’s ‘guilt’. That’s the remarkable trust the people in a dictatorship have when the dictatorship is so total that the public trust even an indictment to be the result of some kind of authentic democratic process proving something, instead of the result of an extremely effective system of public mind-control, which it is.

Mueller wasn’t hired because he’s some kind of legal whiz, but because he looks and sounds like a person who isn’t a lawyer but “who plays one on TV” — he’s the caricature of the part. And, in a dictatorship, that’s the type of person who fills the bill, especially for an assignment like this one.

The minority-leader in the US Senate, Democrat Charles Schumer, said when Mueller was appointed, “Former Director Mueller is exactly the right kind of individual for this job. I now have significantly greater confidence that the investigation will follow the facts wherever they lead.” If they ‘lead’ to Trump, and to Russia, it will apparently be by way of Manafort, Gates, and the last democratically elected government that Ukraine had, which the US Government overthrew by means of a bloody coup, which produced an ongoing ethnic-cleansing campaign (‘civil war’) to get rid of the voters who had enabled the ousted democratically elected President of Ukraine to have been elected.

In addition to the October 27th indictments of Manafort and Gates, there was on October 5th a signed guilty plea by an unpaid but self-inflated volunteer for the Trump campaign, who had solicited from, allegedly, the Russian Government, via a third party, “dirt” that the third party alleged to have somehow acquired against candidate Hillary Clinton, and the “Statement of the Offense” to which he signed included no “dirt” against Donald Trump, and no cooperation with the defendant on the part of Trump’s campaign, other than that the campaign, on one occasion in candidate Trump’s presence, heard this “advisor to the campaign” state in general terms what the third-party informer was seeking to deliver to the campaign. The defendant, George Papadopoulos, confessed there to having lied to the FBI. What, if anything, the ‘Justice’ Department had agreed to (the other side of this plea-deal) in order to extract these admissions from Papadopoulos, is not known. The confession didn’t allege that the Trump campaign authorized, nor ever accepted, the alleged offer, which Papadopoulos had allegedly midwifed, but which, apparently, aborted, never delivered.

On October 30th, Vanity Fair magazine headlined “MUELLER’S RUSSIAN COLLUSION CASE COMES INTO FOCUS”, and Abigail Tracy reported and linked to the “Statement of the Offense.” Then, on November 1st, that magazine’s Gabriel Sherman bannered “‘YOU CAN’T GO ANY LOWER’: INSIDE THE WEST WING, TRUMP IS APOPLECTIC AS ALLIES FEAR IMPEACHMENT”, and reported that Sherman’s sources inside the White House were panicking (which hardly makes sense) and that “Trump blamed Jared Kushner for his role in decisions, specifically the firings of Mike Flynn and James Comey, that led to Mueller’s appointment, according to a source briefed on the call.” Sherman reported that, “For the first time since the investigation began, the prospect of impeachment is being considered as a realistic outcome and not just a liberal fever dream.” No explanation was provided for that allegedly “realistic outcome” to result from either the Manafort-Gates indictments or the Papadopoulos plea-deal.

Mueller has indicted his two ham-sandwiches, regarding their allegedly hiding and lying about their income from the pre-coup leading political Party in Ukraine, and has gotten an unpaid Trump-campaign volunteer to admit only to his own lying to the FBI about what he himself had done. There is still no testimony against Trump, nor against anyone in his Administration. Is Trump really so honest, that this piranha, Mueller, can’t yet bite even close to this President? Not a big bite — not any bite at all? Really? And the Trump White House now considers impeachment “a realistic outcome” — from this? Maybe some reasonable explanation exists, other than: Trump’s team want to keep their ‘lows’ as low as possible until, late in his term, the shoddiness of the campaign against him becomes undeniable, and so sets him up for a stunning re-election, as the least-disgusting of the Presidential options, from amongst which, the American electorate will be allowed to choose, in 2020.

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Manafort’s Indictment Is Example of Extreme Hypocrisy, Here’s Why
Opinion by Phillip M. Giraldi

Strategic Culture Foundation
November 4, 2017

This week’s indictment of former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is certainly serious in that more than $18 million dollars were money laundered, tax laws were circumvented on as much as $75 million in total income and lobbying for the Ukrainian government was deliberately concealed. Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates also lied to investigators to “defraud” the Treasury of taxes due, which resulted in a charge that he had “conspired against the United States.” But it is important to note that the principal charges against Manafort appear to date from before his connection to the Trump campaign and Donald Trump is not mentioned at all in the 31-page indictment.

Also, there is no evidence of collusion with any foreign government to interfere in the 2016 American election, which was what Special Counsel Robert Mueller was originally empowered to focus on. Nor is there any suggestion that Manafort attempted to influence Donald Trump’s views about an appropriate policy in dealing with Russia as well as the unrest in Eastern Europe.

So those who were looking for a “smoking gun” against the Trump Administration in the indictment of Manafort will surely be disappointed.

In fact, tax evasion is not that uncommon involving Americans if one is moving in circles that have significant income coming from foreign sources or even domestic income that is “off the books” and somehow not reported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). That is why tax havens exist in such large numbers on Pacific and Caribbean islands as well as in places like Panama, the Seychelles and Cyprus. The numerous wealthy individuals who rely on havens to keep assets offshore and away from the tax authorities are rarely investigated or caught and it is unusual to hear of a wealthy American being prosecuted by the IRS.

Manafort, for example, would not have been investigated and indicted but for the fact that he was caught up in the so-called Russiagate scandal, which meant that all of his business dealings were examined much more closely than normal.

The issue of acting as an agent of a foreign government is more complicated, but it also comes down to who is involved with what country and when. Technically, anyone who takes money to act on behalf of a foreign government is required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938. But there have been numerous instances of congressmen taking money from foreign interests to promote favorable legislation without any consequences. Most recently, former speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert was accused of taking money from Turkish sources. When he retired from Congress, he became a registered lobbyist for Turkey, but he had clearly crossed the line into Turkey-advocacy while he was still in office.

Countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia have also been active in lobbying without their local agents necessarily being registered. Israel in particular has the most powerful foreign policy lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). It promotes Israeli government policies on Capitol Hill and with the White House, but, apart from an attempt made by the John F. Kennedy Justice Department in 1962, it has never been compelled to register precisely because it is so powerful. It has an annual budget of more than $70 million and three hundred employees, so its lobbying on behalf of Israel is constant, done openly and carried out at the highest levels of government.

Manafort, lobbying for what is regarded in Washington as a Russian-surrogate regime in Kiev in an atmosphere that is very hostile to Moscow, would not have the institutional protection that countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia would enjoy. It is certain that the Russian angle will be exploited in the Grand Jury proceedings and it is likely that Manafort will be punished to the full extent of the law for his failure to register as a foreign agent. I imagine that Manafort’s lawyers will point out the hypocrisy and lack of consistency in the enforcement of FARA due to powerful interest groups, but no one will be listening.