Friday, May 4, 2018

Mobsters Without Borders

I struggled to get the title right for this one. The intended subject is that realization that the Mueller team is operating with virtually no boundaries on its scope. I wanted to play on the Doctors Without Borders moniker.

The first version was Investigators Without Borders, but that would accede the narrative that the Mueller activities constitute a criminal investigation. No crime is being investigated. Only the possibility of a crime is being investigated. It's possible Trump murdered JonBenet Ramsey. Maybe Mueller should take a look at that. That's sarcasm, but even that gives Mueller too much credit, because the unsolved Ramsey murder was an actual crime that exists. Mueller is investigating hypothetical crimes. The hardest thing about blogging these days is I struggle to construct analogies that expose the absurdity in all this. We're reaching levels of absurd that should not be possible. Searching for crimes that may or may not exist is not a criminal investigation. It is a dragnet. In fact, that's really the way we should refer to the whole operation from here on out. It's the Mueller Dragnet, launched in response to Hillary's Dossier.

The next iteration was Prosecutors Without Borders, to convey that the Mueller Dragnet isn't oriented towards unveiling truth, but at attacking Trump. It is certainly more accurate to call this a prosecution than an investigation, but it doesn't carry the correct connotation. Prosecution implies bringing charges in court. But, as noted in Mueller Probe is the Vietnam of Political Witch Hunts, they aren't building a case for charges against Trump because so much of their evidence is inadmissible in court. We could argue that they are prosecuting him politically, or in the court of public opinion, but it contorts the term too much. We might argue that what Mueller is doing amounts to building a case for impeachment if the Democrats retake Congress (they won't) because that would technically be a legal proceeding, but in reality it would primarily be a political venture.

The next iteration was to convey that what these people are really attempting is to overturn and election result that they hate. Traitors Without Borders. Seditious Conspirators Without Borders. Nothing seemed to flow right.

The whole impetus to write was in response to a recent NBC article titled Fed's monitored Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's phones. The subtitle is It's not clear how long the monitoring of phone calls has been authorized. NBC issued a correction: that the calls themselves were not monitored - just the metadata. Believe that if you want to. It is just as likely that the correction was politically damaging than that it was incorrect. The article does not correct its assertion that Cohen's emails were monitored. He and others in Trump's circle are likely subjected to the full suite of federal surveillance capabilities. That means metadata, raw data, and even physical data...think about that. We know, for a fact, that Trump's team was monitored with a FISA-1 warrant. If Cohen's calls were being monitored, and no warrant has been issued, it almost certainly means the team is still being surveilled under a secret anti-terrorism warrant, which are meant for the tracking of hostile foreign agents. That doesn't mean just checking email logs. It means everything available, including physical monitoring. Troubling questions arise, such as: is the president's lawyer being physically trailed by FBI field teams? Or, is the president himself being monitored the same way? He walks around with Secret Service to keep him safe, with the whole entourage tracked by FBI agents to see if anyone talks with a Russian? It sounds absurd, but that's where we're at. The sitting president is subjected to a secret anti-terrorism surveillance warrant coupled to a dragnet operation the leak's routinely to the friendly press because his opponent funded some opposition research. So no, we certainly aren't adding to the already established level of absurdity by suggesting the president is being physically monitored by federal agents.

The justification for monitoring Cohen and raiding his home, office, and hotel room was the possibility that he made financial infractions in making a payout to a porn star, who claims she had an affair with Trump in 2006. It would take an incredible amount of mental energy not to notice that this has nothing to do with foreign interference in a federal election. It substantiates what we've been claiming: that this is just a dragnet operation and the data collection is the goal in and of itself. You might argue that campaign finance violations are serious matters that need to be investigated. Sure, but that should come from the proper channels, and unenforced laws should not suddenly be used against Trump. The leaked DNC emails indicated numerous election law violations, and there seems to have been no response at all to those, let alone raids on their lawyers' offices. [I wonder if Democrats would be willing to see Clinton and her allies burned for election violations if it also meant getting Trump. I'd say they'd be killing two birds with one stone.]

If all this wasn't incredible enough, NBC goes on to report even more ludicrous investigation activities.
Investigators are also seeking information about the 2005 "Access Hollywood" tape in which Donald Trump was heard making vulgar boasts about women.
The bureau's interest in the "Access Hollywood" tape, on which Trump bragged to host Billy Bush that he would grab women "by the p---y," was first reported by the New York Times. "Access Hollywood" is an NBC Universal television program.
Three officials pushed back on reports that transcripts were taken of Cohen's phone calls, but not this. So they acknowledge its truth, essentially. In a private conversation, Trump bragged that when you're a billionaire and reality television star you can grab women. He basically said that chicks let him feel them up, and now the FBI is investigating that! Jaw-dropping in itself, and even more that NBC's author would just nonchalantly throw that in there. What is certain is that the Mueller Dragnet lacks any scope whatsoever, and is entirely focused on finding any crime that Trump or any of his people may have committed, ever. They are engaged in full-spectrum surveillance in a legal environment where citizens commit Three Felonies a Day. The FBI has been investigating Trump going on two years now at least, but probably even longer. You could monitor Mother Teresa for that long and find something prosecutable. They didn't find Russian collusion, nor obstruction of justice. The fact that they're now investigating lewd comments gives evidence that they haven't found financial infractions either.

The developing legal precedent is that the elected president can be subjected to full-spectrum surveillance intended for combating terrorism based on ridiculous claims made by his defeated opponent, just so long as she has friendly people in the right place. That is not a democracy and not a justice system. It's a mafia. When political alliances are paramount and all laws, ethics, and rationale are but obstacles to be countered or circumvented, then our elites are just mobsters like in all the other shithole counties. When laws are selectively enforced, and anyone can found guilty of some felony if the government wants them to be, we must acknowledge our system is tyrannical, whether it is democratic or not. This blog has stated many times that the best aspect of Trump was exposing the mainstream media as mere political propaganda. Even when it seemed he would likely lose, his candidacy alone was enormous in its impact on Americans' perceptions of things. Now, he is exposing the entire legal system as just a confederacy of mobsters. And again, we find the same predicament. Even if Trump is swallowed whole by all this, but message will be clear. The democracy is over. It's government of the people, by the government. Elections the government dislikes will be overturned by the government, and they have no practical restraints in doing so. They are Mobsters Without Borders.

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