The liberal mainstream media establishment is finally coming to terms with the reality of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and several reporters have recently acknowledged that the left’s “insurance policy” against President Donald Trump has failed.
With assistance from their allies in the press, the Democrats navigated from one fabricated scandal to the next, hoping to uncover evidence of criminal behavior from the Trump campaign. Instead, the wheels have all but fallen off of the Trump-Russia collusion story, and the anti-Trump media is being forced to acknowledge that the highly anticipated Mueller report promises to be a complete bust.
Collusion or bust
The 18-month special counsel investigation reached a new low this month when online news aggregator BuzzFeed News published a bogus story alleging that Trump directed his attorney to lie to Congress about a Moscow real estate deal. Illustrating the media’s desperation to find charges that would stick and allow Democrats to move forward with impeachment hearings, the report compelled the special counsel to issue a rare public statement disputing the allegation.
It’s impossible to miss the somber tone of recent liberal news coverage concerning the impending Mueller report. Advised by knowledgable sources not to expect a “presidency-wrecking account” from Mueller, Politico’s Darren Samuelsohn called the warning “a buzzkill after two years of intense news coverage depicting a potential conspiracy between the Kremlin and Trump’s campaign …”
Acknowledging BuzzFeed’s fake news fiasco, Matt Lewis of the ultra-partisan Daily Beast left no illusions about the liberal media’s end game. “It’s hard to overstate the damage that is done when media outlets get stories wrong,” Lewis said. “Even when we get them right, it’s debatable whether the steady drumbeat of negative headlines will lead to a tipping point.”
ABC’s Jon Karl recently took the leftward-blowing wind out of the sails of a surreal New York Times report which revealed that the FBI once seriously considered President Trump to be an active Russian agent. “But what I am getting is — this is all building up to the Mueller report and raising expectations of a bombshell report,” Karl told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “And there were investigations that were building of course over a year on this. People closest to what Mueller is doing, interactive with the special counsel, cautioned me, that this report is certain to be anticlimactic.”
Karl continued, “If you look at what the FBI was investigating in that New York Times report … Mueller did not go anywhere with that investigation,” he said. “He’s been writing his report in real-time through these the indictments. We’ve seen nothing from Mueller on the central question of was there coordination, collusion with the Russians in the effort to meddle in the elections? Or was there even knowledge with the president or anybody in the campaign, with what the Russians were doing.”
Ghost report?
Even if Mueller unearths some new and unexpected bombshell, Justice Department regulations governing the special counsel only require a “confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions,” for the attorney general’s eyes only. The Justice Department can then determine which sections of the special counsel’s report will see the light of day, issuing redactions to eliminate sensitive national security secrets and alleged offenses which Mueller did not have enough evidence to prosecute.
“It’s such a unique situation,” said former deputy attorney general Paul McNulty, who worked closely with Mueller at the Justice Department. “[Mueller] knows there are a lot of questions he needs to address for the sake of trying to satisfy a wide variety of interests and expectations.”
However, rather than pandering to special interest groups, as McNulty suggested, shouldn’t Mueller be concerned with preserving the truth? The evidence suggests that neither Trump nor his campaign officials were involved with Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
In fact, the special counsel has been inadvertently successful at exposing the Obama administration’s attempts to use the FBI and Justice Department to discredit his political enemies. Based on false pretenses, the Obama FBI and DOJ abused the Freedom of Information Act to electronically eavesdrop on the Trump campaign, sent spies to collect information from Trump’s associates, and leaked unproven allegations of Russian collusion just days before the 2016 election.
Hell or high water
Despite Mueller’s monumental nothingburger of a report — at least insofar as the Trump administration is concerned — Democrats aren’t expected to accept the president’s innocence at face value. “Many Democrats are deeply, emotionally committed to resisting Trump,” noted Byron York in a column for The Washington Examiner, citing the 66 House Democrats who voted to impeach Trump last year without any evidence of wrongdoing.
Instead, York argues that Democrats will open a new House investigation exploring the exact same allegations as the Mueller probe. Such an inquiry wouldn’t be bound by the same investigative standards for truth and accuracy as the Mueller probe, and Democrats may ultimately find a path to impeachment — come hell or high water.
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