By John F. Di Leo -
It seems like a lifetime ago, but it was only a couple years ago that we learned that the U.S. Department of Justice had opened up an investigation to determine whether or not Donald Trump was actually a Russian agent… an investigation that has dominated our news cycle 24/7 ever since.
It was so ludicrous, it was difficult for some of us to take it seriously, but it was a real investigation, so it had to have some foundation. It just HAD to.
Two years later, the Mueller Commission presented its report to the Attorney General, acknowledging that there was nothing there. Not just that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to bring a case against the President, but more importantly, Americans have connected the dots and understood that it was a hoax all along, that it was never justified in the least, that the charges were based on a fabricated dossier created by crooked foreign players for a Democratic Party political campaign, that it represented a gross abuse of the Patriot Act's FISA court structure and a warping of the very mission of the DoJ.
This leaves our society with a difficult decision to make: Where do we go from here?
Should we close down the investigation, breathe a sigh of relief that our president was exonerated, and move on? Or should we do something about this travesty?
This was not a typical criminal investigation.
In a normal investigation, there is a clear crime, and the purpose of the commission is to figure out who committed it. Who committed and assisted in the murder, or the embezzlement, or the bank robbery, or the Medicare fraud? How many were involved in it, and who were the ringleaders? How many of them can we send to prison… with how many of them will we have to cut deals, to get them to turn state’s evidence and help convict the higher-ups?
But critical to such investigations is the fact that there really WAS a murder, an embezzlement, a robbery, or a fraud. There had to be a crime in the first place. Even if they fail to get any convictions, there’s no question that there’s a dead body, or that some people were robbed, or that the government purse was scammed.
In the case of the Mueller investigation, there never was Russian collusion. It’s not a matter of failing to figure out who did it; nothing was done in the first place to warrant such an investigation at all. For over two years, the American media and political class have been acting as if there was indeed an effort by the Trump campaign to illegally collaborate with representatives of the Russian government, essentially, to commit treason in exchange for assistance in winning a campaign.
And it never happened. It’s not that the Mueller commission couldn’t prove who did it; they finally just had to admit that it hadn’t been done at all. After tens of millions of tax dollars were spent, they couldn’t find a crime.
Our government must therefore now decide what to do about this. The political Right is sick and tired of the story, and in a way, would love to just see it go away, and move on with policy accomplishments at last, without the anchor of this destructive investigation continuing to drag us down.
But would that be in the interest of the American people? Would that be in the best interest of posterity, or should we take a different course?
Let’s consider what the Mueller Commission did… what its clear effects were upon our nation.
- Government waste. The commission cost tens of millions of dollars in direct taxpayer funding – that’s office space, salary and benefits for dozens of high powered attorneys and a huge investigative staff, office equipment for all of the above. All now proven to have been a waste of resources.
- Misdirection of resources. The commission didn’t live in their own bubble for two years; they spent it investigating… both at home and abroad, both in the public sector and the private sector. These investigators spent thousands of hours interviewing others, taking them away from their own work, reducing the productivity of law enforcement and others who were pulled into this investigation’s orbit.
- Damage to reputations. Both Donald Trump and the many other individuals involved – particularly the Trump family but also their many close associates in both the campaign and the White House – have been maligned. This wasn’t just a hostile opposition party slandering the Trump team; it was an official investigation, giving the accusation a level of legitimacy that mere pundits and back benchers don’t have. And it wasn’t buried in a single speech; this was top-of-the-fold, headline news for two years straight. A full court press was launched against the Trump team, which still hasn’t ended, because the claim took on a life of its own; even after the Mueller commission gave up and admitted there was nothing there, the Democrats and their supporters in the press have refused to accept reality.
- Damage to America. This is potentially the most severe. The rest of the world doesn’t have our talk radio programs or such balanced networks as Fox News and the One America News Network, or conservative websites like Breitbart, Townhall and Illinois Review. They get all their US political news from CNN, the AP, and the rest of the leftwing fifth column that we know as the MainStream Media (MSM). While we in the States have heard CNN believing the lies and Fox News refuting them, the AP passing on rumors and talk show hosts pointing out their flaws, the rest of the world has lacked those corrective influences. All over the world, people believe that the president of the United States is a Russian agent. And they’ll never hear the refutation.
If our problem were only Number 1 above (the waste of government resources), we might be justified in closing this chapter of our history and moving on.
But it’s not.
This commission resulted from severe malfeasance at the top of our Justice Department, collaboration with foreign criminals to forge evidence, and the very politicization of our federal bureaucracy, which has been illegal since the Hatch Act and beyond.
Those of us old enough to remember the Reagan administration will recall one of President Reagan’s many terrific appointments, Ray Donovan, Secretary of Labor during his first term. A New York witch hunt ensnared Secretary Donovan in a long and unfounded investigation, after which he famously asked, "Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?”
The same applies today, on the grand scale.
The Trump Administration, and America itself, deserve to get their reputation back.
The American media has long been known for a double standard in the making of mistakes and the correction thereof; when they’re caught making errors on page one above the fold, they print the corrections on the bottom of page 40.
Half the American people today – and likely, half of the rest of the world – believe that the charges against Donald Trump were legitimate and undeniable. They will chalk up the president’s continued freedom to the challenges of prosecutions, the protections of the Oval Office, or the president’s luck and power. After having his guilt drummed into their heads for two years, people can’t be expected to dismiss it all in an instant.
We must therefore assume that the ramifications of this corrupt investigation will be long-lasting and potent. Even though he has been cleared, the lack of clarity in that fact will cause some segment of American voters – A quarter? A third? More? – to weigh the charge in their future voting patterns… not only for the president himself; they’ll hold it against his party.
And think of what it means abroad. In meetings with foreign leaders who believe him to be a Russian agent, entirely because of this fraud, our President, and therefore our country, will suffer at the negotiation table, as arms treaties, free trade agreements, immigration discussions, etc. are discussed.
This single investigation – a fraud from beginning to end – will meddle with elections at every level and will damage our nation on the world scene for decades to come.
So in the end, when we ask, “What should we do now? Do we let it go, or investigate the investigators?”… There can be only one answer:
Investigate them right back. Dig until we identify every traitor who abused his government post to attempt a coup against the duly elected President of the United States. And make sure there’s real jail time for the ringleaders.
We MUST make sure the federal bureaucracy understands where the line is drawn. Weaponizing the federal government against political opponents simply cannot be tolerated.
Copyright 2019 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based Customs broker and trade compliance consultant, actor and writer. His columns are regularly found in Illinois Review.
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