Special Counsel Robert Mueller rolled back into the news cycle last week. He made charges that Paul Manafort lied to Congress in violation of his plea agreement. One has to ask why would Mueller go to the news with this now?
Recently, the president’s legal team had PDJT answer questions in writing. They delivered replies to some of the special counsel’s queries on Nov. 20 after months of negotiation. Is this ploy of claiming Manafort lied another desperate attempt by Mueller to remain relevant? Is he somehow trying to get Manafort to change his story so that Mueller can go after PDJT in some outlandish perjury trap? Remember you can be convicted of perjury even if you always told the truth.
As noted by Conrad Black over at National Review:
And the Mueller special-counsel rumbles toward its third year. So desperate have Mueller’s efforts and those of his rabidly Democratic staff members become that in trying to extort and suborn inculpatory perjury about the president, they are facing a revolt from the victims, led by Paul Manafort from his solitary confinement cell, but emulated now by Jerome Corsi. Rather than cooperate (i.e., lie) after being catechized by Mueller, to avoid facing the extremes of the American kangaroo courts, they are refusing Mueller, and effectively betting on the failure of Mueller to make good on his mission to take down or seriously discommode the president. Mueller is escalating the terror campaign against Manafort by inciting state prosecutions, insusceptible to the president’s power of pardon. The Democrats have been shouting from the housetops about protecting Mueller, but Trump has no interest in shutting him down. Mueller has nothing, and his terrors don’t impress its victims.
Is Mueller trying to set the stage for proving collusion between Trump and Manafort with respect to the written answers the president submitted in response to Mueller’s questions? If any of Trump’s answers to Mueller’s questions include even one of the same “lies” as Manafort, Mueller would claim a perjury case exists. Of course, the incoming Democratic House majority would love this as it would allow them to claim that it is time to initiate Articles of Impeachment.
For the most part perjury cases are all that Mueller has to show for spending tens of millions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money. Paul Manafort was an exception when Team Mueller decided to resurrect a financial crimes case that happened a decade before PDJT decided to run for President. The DOJ at the time had passed on attempting a prosecution.
Perjury is how Team Mueller got George Papadopoulos. He told investigators that a conversation about Russia with suspected CIA spy Joseph Mifsud, an academic and Russia expert, happened before he was associated with the Trump campaign. It occurred before his formal appointment but after he knew he would be appointed.
That’s also how Team Mueller got General Michael Flynn. Flynn’s story of a conversation he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak differed from the recordings Mueller had of the meeting. The interviewing FBI agents didn’t think he was lying and merely misspoke or misremembered. However, the inconsistency was used to indict him. Mueller knew what was said because he had recordings of the conversation. Flynn resisted efforts of Team Mueller for an extended period. However, Mueller was ruining Flynn financially and it was widely reported that Flynn was threatened with Team Mueller going after his son when Flynn finally agreed to a plea deal.
This tactic was also used against Jerome Corsi. Corsi didn’t remember forwarding an email. Mueller had his computers and already knew he had forwarded the email. Apparently, poor memory can result in jail time for Corsi even though there was nothing illegal about the email itself.
Whatever happened to “mens rea?” Doesn’t a person have to have an intent to deceive? Look at why Hillary Clinton was let off from her egregious use of a personal server for handling classified material. Comey stated that she did not intend to expose such material. This was stated in connection with a statute that clearly specifies that mens rea is not needed for a crime to have occurred.
The whole Team Mueller activity is a witch hunt, plain and simple. Mueller railroads people into prison for minor offenses. Apparently destroying people’s lives by charging them with process crimes when he can’t charge them with real crimes keeps the whole illegitimate process going. When will all this end?