Most of the LSM are breathlessly following Nancy Pelosi and companies Impeachment Circus. The Lawfare “small group” and their LSM accomplices continue to prepare the propaganda battle space. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey would like to clarify matters and draw our attention to a real Criminal Investigation underway.
John Durham’s Ukrainian Leads
What the prosecutor has found may be quite different from what the Democrats are looking for.
By Michael B. Mukasey, Opinion, the Wall Street Journal
Americans often boast that we are a nation of laws, but for the moment laws appear to play a decidedly secondary role in the drama we are living in and—hopefully—through.
We have some guidance from our foundational law, the Constitution, which tells us how to proceed: the House of Representatives has “the sole power of impeachment,” the Senate has “the sole power to try all impeachments,” and must do so “on oath or affirmation.” The Senate cannot convict “without the concurrence of two-thirds of the members present.” And “when the president of the United States is tried, the chief justice shall preside.”
It looks almost like a real trial. Yet despite the legal trappings, the underlying standard, if applied to a criminal statute, would be vulnerable to attack as void for vagueness: “The president . . . shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Treason and bribery have specific and recognized meanings, but what about “other high crimes and misdemeanors”?
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s point is that Congress is a political beast, and that as the Impeachment Trial of William Jefferson Clinton demonstrated, the Senate sitting as the trier of fact is not limited to the evidence presented in the trial (Indeed, not a single Senator who tried William Jefferson Clinton so much as visited the room in which the evidence was displayed).
Mr. Mukasey then proceeds to the actual criminal investigation which is proceeding behind the political smoke screen:
continued
…
“A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. While the Attorney General has yet to contact Ukraine in connection with this investigation, certain Ukrainians who are not members of the government have volunteered information to Mr. Durham, which he is evaluating.”
The definitive answer to the obvious question—what’s that about?—is known only to Mr. Durham and his colleagues. But publicly available reports, including by Andrew McCarthy in his new book, “Ball of Collusion,” suggest that during the 2016 campaign the Federal Bureau of Investigation tried to get evidence from Ukrainian government officials against Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, to pressure him into cooperating against Mr. Trump. When you grope through the miasma of Slavic names and follow the daisy chain of related people and entities, it appears that Ukrainian officials who backed the Clinton campaign provided information that generated the investigation of Mr. Manafort—acts that one Ukrainian court has said violated Ukrainian law and “led to interference in the electoral processes of the United States in 2016 and harmed the interests of Ukraine as a state.”
The big picture remains this: The malAdministration of the faithless feckless former President routinely used the tools of counter intelligence to spy on their political foes. This abuse of counter intelligence tools and powers culminated in the surveillance of the campaign of a Presidential Candidate, Nominee, President Elect, and sitting President.
Hat Tip: Roger L. Simon via Glenn Instapundit Reynolds.
