Tag Archives: Russia probe

national news

Or … what if Mueller comes up empty?

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My previous blog post wondered what Donald J. Trump’s reaction would be if Robert Mueller delivers the goods on collusion, obstruction of justice and anything else he might find wrong with the president and his 2016 campaign.

My conclusion: Trump will go bonkers, nuts, ’round the bend.

In fairness, what might the president do and/or say if the special counsel comes up empty?

My thoughts? I believe Trump is fully capable of climbing onto the White House roof, bullhorn in hand and bellowing “I told you so!” until his voice no longer functions.

OK, I’m kidding.

Sort of …

Trump is incapable, in my humble view, of accepting victory like a gentleman. He doesn’t have the gene that allows him to congratulate Mueller for a job well done, and thank him sincerely for the service he has performed for the country.

No sir. He won’t do that.

If Mueller ends up with nothing, Trump will find a way to make something out of it. Why, he might never shut his mouth for as long as serves in the highest office in the land.

As we’ve learned already, 18 or so months into his presidency, Donald Trump cannot stop boasting about the Electoral College victory he scored over Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Imagine, now, how the president well might react if Mueller and his team come up empty on The Russia Thing.

national news

What if Mueller delivers the goods on POTUS?

I cannot stop pondering what might happen if the special counsel looking to The Russia Thing comes up with the goods on the president of the United States of America.

If you’re honest with yourself, you cannot stop thinking about it, either.

I believe I’ll share my thoughts here, in the public, for you to see. Maybe you’ll agree. Maybe you won’t.

Robert Mueller has been hard at work for a little more than a year trying to fulfill the task given to him by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. That would be: whether the Donald Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russians who attacked our democratic process in 2016; they interfered in our election. There also might be an obstruction of justice matter to decide. Oh, and how about that Emoluments Clause in the U.S. Constitution, that says presidents cannot use their office to obtain income from foreign governments?

There’s a lot to uncover. To peel away. To examine closely.

What if Mueller delivers the goods on the president? Trump already has expended a tremendous amount of emotional capital calling the Mueller probe a “rigged witch hunt,” a “hoax” and a phony circumstances concocted by Democrats who are angry at losing the 2016 presidential election to a first-time candidate for any public office.

I fear that the president might come completely, totally, categorically unhinged from reality. I cannot prove it, of course. Given his hysterical responses to matters relating to an investigation of matters that the president says he didn’t do, I wonder how he’ll react if the final Mueller report says Trump’s campaign colluded after all, that he obstructed justice by bullying law enforcement officials into backing off and fattened his wallet with income derived by, oh let’s see, Russian oligarchs.

There’s no way to know what Mueller has collected so far. He’s been quiet. He has been conducting himself like the mature professional he is known to be. Meanwhile, the president is acting quite differently.

To think: We don’t know anything … yet.

International news

Trump-Putin II postponed, to what end?

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are going to meet a second time — but not until after the first of the year.

The announcement came from national security adviser John Bolton, who — borrowing the president’s favorite epithet describing the examination of the “Russia thing” — said the meeting would occur after the “witch hunt” has concluded.

C’mon, Mr. National Security Adviser. There ain’t a “witch hunt” taking place.

Robert Mueller is proceeding with his probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded in 2016 with the Russians operatives who attacked our electoral system. The special counsel is not the partisan hack he has been accused of being by, um, actual partisan hacks.

The next summit between the U.S. and Russian presidents should proceed. I support the idea of the two leaders talking to each other. They should face each other and they should talk openly and candidly about the issues they have in common and those that separate them. They also should do so publicly to the extent they can.

The problem, though, still rests with that first summit in Helsinki. They went into a closed-door meeting and the world doesn’t yet know what they discussed, where they agreed and what they decided. Then the two leaders had that press conference in which Trump rolled over in front of Putin in that ghastly show of weakness by the so-called “leader of the free world.”

As for the juxtaposition with special counsel Mueller’s investigation, let’s just wait to see what conclusions are drawn once the probe is finished.

We have an extremely fluid situation in front of us. The Mueller probe can end in any number of ways, some of which might bode poorly for the president.

And, oh yes, we have that midterm election coming up.

If at least one congressional chamber flips from Republican to Democratic control, well … let’s just wait to see how that plays out.

national news

Looking ahead — already! — to Trump departure

Forgive me for getting ahead of myself, but I cannot help but think about how Donald J. Trump is going to leave the world stage when his time comes.

My gut tells me it won’t be pretty, no matter the terms of the president’s departure.

He’ll either leave after one term in January 2021; or he could get a second term and he’ll leave in January 2025.

Or … he’ll leave before the end of either term. If you get my drift.

The custom is that presidents hand over the keys to the White House to their successor. They get on the helicopter and fly away toward retirement. They then serve their retirement years in relative quiet, pursuing this and/or that cause.

Do you really think Trump will go out with that usual customary class and grace? I don’t. I fear he’ll keep yapping well beyond his years in the White House.

And that’s if he is able to walk away on his own terms, either after one term or — God forbid! — two terms.

If he is forced out by issues that have preoccupied many of us for most of his term to date in office, well, we will need to settle in for an indeterminate siege from the 45th president of the United States.

I’ll need to put these thoughts aside for the time being and concern myself with the issues of the day.

They concern whether the president colluded with Russians who attacked our electoral system. Hey, they’re real. They aren’t a “hoax.”

national news, political news

It wasn’t mere ‘meddling,’ it was an attack

I have just made a command decision as the publisher of High Plains Blogger.

No longer will I refer to the Russian attack on our electoral system, on our democratic process merely as an act of “meddling.”

It was a full-frontal assault on our electoral process. It was an attack on our way of life.

I got the idea from a letter to the editor I saw this morning on Twitter. I think the letter was from the New York Times. The writer compared “meddling” to the butting in by nosy relatives on the business of family members.

I thought, “Wow! I get that.” Not the nosy relatives thing, but the notion that “meddling” is far too mild a term to describe what the Russians did during our 2016 presidential election.

Thus, I made the decision to henceforth refer to that act using terminology that more aptly describes its impact.

Am I going to assert that the Russian attack actually produced a Donald Trump victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton? I won’t go there. At least not just yet. I will await the results from Robert Mueller’s exhaustive probe into potential “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russian goons ordered by Vladimir Putin to launch their attack on our system.

In the future, though, do not look for the word “meddling” from this blog to describe what I consider to be damn near an act of war on our democratic process by a hostile nation.

national news

Spicer: Mueller probe is no ‘witch hunt’

Well, there you have it.

One of Donald John Trump’s staunchest defenders has gone on the record: Robert Mueller’s probe into possible “collusion” with Russians is “no witch hunt.”

So says former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who became famous — or infamous, depending on your point of view — during his initial press briefing in January 2017 by arguing with the media over their reporting of the size of Trump’s inaugural crowd.

That was then. Spicer said on “Today” that the special counsel investigation is serious. However, Spicer did hedge a bit.

“As of now, I see no evidence that it is,” he said on “Today.” Do you get it? As of now? He sees no evidence? He also said he sees “no evidence” of collusion with the Russians. “I think it’s very important to be clear that Russia meddled in our election and there’s no evidence of collusion,” Spicer said.

Whoa! We don’t know what Mueller has hidden from view. There well might be something to reveal eventually.

Yet, Spicer’s rather tepid defense of Mueller does strike me as a bit refreshing coming as it does from someone who made a name for himself during his time as press secretary as someone who’d run through a brick wall for the president of the United States.

I’ll take Spicer at his word that he doesn’t believe we are witnessing a witch hunt. If only he would stop pulling his punches.

Check out the interview here.

national news, political news

Trump a traitor: not yet … maybe

I am getting mildly uncomfortable with all the chatter about the alleged acts of treason that Donald J. Trump may have committed.

I hear it from my social media network of “friends” and friends; I use the term in those two forms, because some of my social media “friends” aren’t the real thing, just acquaintances.

I’m not yet ready to climb aboard the treason bandwagon.

Yes, I am horrified at what I am seeing from this president. His groveling at Vladimir Putin’s feet. His disparaging of our intelligence networks’ view that Russia attacked our electoral system. His constant and incessant lying about almost any topic you can imagine.

Having said all that, I am going to wait for special counsel Robert Mueller to complete the task that’s been handed to him. The Justice Department picked the former FBI director to look closely at allegations of “collusion” between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russians who interfered in our 2016 election.

I have high faith in Mueller’s integrity and in his ability to conduct a meticulous investigation. I reject categorically any notion that his probe is “the most corrupt in history,” as some on Trump’s legal team have asserted.

However, until he finishes his work and issues a final report, I want to remain a bit circumspect over what the president might have done, or whether he, indeed, has betrayed the nation that elected him to the highest office in our land.

Others are free to express themselves. I’ll continue to offer my own view on what I think of Trump as president. I make no apology for my own disdain for him as a person and my sincere belief in his unfitness for the job he occupies.

I just am not yet going to hang the worst possible label on him until we hear from the man charged with getting all the information out to the public that needs to know the truth about how this guy got elected to office.

national news

Comey joins the partisan political fray

Oh, my. There’s something vaguely weird about a former FBI director becoming a partisan warrior on the eve of this year’s midterm congressional election.

James Comey, whom Donald J. Trump fired as FBI boss in May 2017, now says the following: “All who believe in this country’s values must vote for Democrats this fall,” he wrote. “Policy differences don’t matter right now. History has its eyes on us.”

A part of me wants to embrace Comey’s view. However, I wish the embattled former FBI director would have stayed clear of direct partisan battling.

It’s widely known that Comey is a longtime Republican. He said he didn’t vote in the 2016 election, preferring to maintain some semblance of objectivity as he did his job as leader of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency.

Now, though, all bets are off.

Comey already is an inviting target among conservative mainstream media and die-hard Donald Trump loyalists. They have hurled a barrage of insults and accusations at Comey in the wake of his memoir in which he declares that Trump is “morally unfit” to serve as president of the United States.

So, get ready for the bombardment to resume. It won’t be pretty.

national news

Mueller is not ‘harming the country’

Donald J. Trump does not get it.

He keeps yapping about the “rigged witch hunt,” which is how he describes the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian meddling in our 2016 election.

He said over the weekend that the Mueller probe is harmful to the country.

Oh … my.

No, Mr. President. The harm to the country has come from the Russians who hacked into the Democrats’ election system. The harm was done by goons who sought to influence the election outcome. The harm occurred — and is occurring at this moment — by the discord that continues to tear at the fabric of our electoral process.

The president is going to meet very soon with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. He promises to bring up the meddling matter with him. Putin’s response likely won’t be reported fully; Putin and Trump will meet privately, just the two of ’em in the room. Nor will we likely know to what extent Trump calls Putin out on the meddling.

With all this as prologue, we keep hearing from the president about the evils of a “rigged witch hunt” that so far has produced multiple indictments, several guilty pleas, witnesses cooperating with the special counsel.

That is not a “rigged witch hunt,” let alone a probe that harms the United States of America. It will strengthen the nation once it’s completed — irrespective of what Robert Mueller concludes.

The harm is being done by those who have corrupted our election system. If only the president could acknowledge the obvious.

International news, national news, political news

Dear Mr. POTUS: Show Vlad the indictment

Dear Mr. President:

I know for a fact that you won’t listen to a blogger from way out here in Flyover Country, although I have moved closer to Dallas in recent weeks.

But that meeting you’ve got planned Monday with Vladimir Putin shouldn’t take place. The Justice Department — run by your appointees — has delivered a 29-page indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers; I like calling them “goons,” because that’s what they are … allegedly.

But if you’re going to go proceed with that Putin meeting, you need to take a copy of the indictment, slip it into a manila folder and then hand it to him. Then you need to tell him to answer for the contents of the folder.

Take my word for this, Mr. President: Putin will know what the indictment says. He’ll have read it many times. He’ll know it inside and out.

But you need to hold this killer accountable for the actions of his military brass. It appears clear that if they are guilty of what’s been alleged in the criminal complaint that they acted on Putin’s orders. He’s the top military man in Russia, just as you are the commander in chief in this country.

Are you going to do what you swore to do when you became president, which is protect the United States of America against its adversaries? Or are you going to continue to roll over and accept Putin’s denials that he attacked our electoral system?

You once accused the system of being “rigged” when the media were reporting that your Democratic foe was likely to win the 2016 election. Well, the election (allegedly) might have been “rigged” after all.

But not in the way you thought it would.