Process Crimes, Ghost Indictments, and Bastard Investigations
… we allow our Political opposition research to function as a basis for a warrant to spy on American citizens…none of the 37 people (Russians indicted by Mueller) will face justice, and God forbid if they show up and try to use our criminal process to try to uncover sources and methods that our intelligence community uses, so those were Ghost Indictments they’re never going to result in any consequence and they confirm what we already know… Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz on CNN – 4/20/19
Despite the fact that the Mueller Report should not have been authorized in the first place & was written as nastily as possible by 13 (18) Angry Democrats who were true Trump Haters, including highly conflicted Bob Mueller himself, the end result is No Collusion, No Obstruction! – Donald J. Trump tweet – 4/20/19
The Mueller Report has been revealed (albeit a redacted version.) The Congressional Committees; House Judiciary, Intelligence and Oversight, are calling for the entire report to be released to them in a classified version so they can do their jobs. Judiciary needs to determine whether the President committed crimes, Intelligence study how to protect the United States from further Russian incursions into our elections, and Oversight to find a way to avoid failure in our electoral processes.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Republican Lindsey Graham, sees nothing in the Report they want to talk about. No surprise there, Graham wants the Report to go away, and wants to try to refocus the American electorate on what he sees as the flaws and failures of the FBI intelligence investigation that led to the appointment of Robert Mueller.
Matt Gaetz, the annoying young Republican Congressman from the Pensacola area, is “doing his duty” for the Trump Administration by raising questions about the Mueller Report. He echoes the Graham/Trump theme of the illegitimacy of the entire FBI look into the Campaign. His argument depends on the false premise that the original intelligence investigation was based on the Steele Dossier. The Dossier was commissioned originally by Republican primary opponents to Trump and then sold to Democrats for the general election. Michael Steele, a former British Intelligence operative with close sources in Russia, wrote the disturbing report of Trump/Russian contacts and potential “kompromat” of the candidate – blackmail information.
It is a fascinating study. But it was not the “predicate,” the FBI term of art for the legal basis of the intelligence investigation. The actual predicate was recurring contacts between four different Trump campaign operatives and Russian intelligence, along with confirmed information that the Trump campaign knew about DNC computer hacking by Russia far before it was known publicly. Trump foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos had a drunken conversation with the Australian ambassador to the United Kingdom, revealing the hacking knowledge. The Ambassador reported this to US intelligence, making it the final impetus to begin investigating.
Trump, Graham and Gaetz are trying to sell the false narrative that the investigation was illegally based on Steele alone, therefore making it a “bastard” investigation. Since ultimately the Mueller team evolved from that original mission, if Republicans can delegitimize it from birth, they can argue that the whole Mueller Report is unusable, the “fruit of the poisonous tree.”
The second devaluation of the Report is to discount its results. Perhaps the most important aspect of the Report is the way, in great detail, it outlines how Russian Intelligence infiltrated and corrupted the US election process: manipulating social media, hacking into Democratic computers, and attempting to corrupt the election hardware. To headline each of these, and to put Russia on notice that even their own domestic intelligence operatives aren’t anonymous, Mueller issued US indictments of many individual Russians.
But to the Trump Team, those charges are “Ghost” indictments, somehow of less value because they cannot currently be prosecuted in court. In fact, Congressman Gaetz attempts to make a potential trial threatening, supposedly risking the revelation of US intelligence assets and methods. His argument, since you wouldn’t want to try those Russians anyway, they are “sham” or “ghost” indictments.
I’m sure the Congressman would have described the formerly sealed indictment of Julian Assange as a “ghost” as well; with Assange ensconced in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London for seven years there seemed little chance he could be served. But, a cat, a lack of personal hygiene, and a change in the Ecuadoran government drove him from his shelter, and today he awaits extradition hearings in London to come to the US: some Ghost.
And finally there’s the supreme “waste of money” that the Trump forces claim Mueller spent, “…a thirty million dollar investigation that only found ‘process’ crimes.” As almost every former Federal Prosecutor has made clear, process crimes such as perjury and obstruction of justice are just as important as the underlying criminal acts. Process crimes are crimes, if not, then the best liars and cheats would evade all prosecution. Often it is through “process crimes” that prosecutors gain the leverage to reveal the full criminality below.
And besides, with the Paul Manafort case alone, the Federal government seized assets worth more than forty million dollars. In that sense, the Mueller investigation was a net financial plus.
But it’s all just smoke. The Mueller Report has revealed the President as a cheat, a liar, and a man willing to ignore Constitutional strictures and norms. The Trump team can say what they want, and their base will believe what they are told; but ultimately the Report reveals to the American people what “their President” looks like. It’s not a pretty sight, and regardless of what the Courts or the Congress are able to do, the electorate will make their evaluation clear in 2020.
