In the land of twisted reality
Sarah Sanders, White House press secretary, wants you to know she’s not a robot. Though she routinely gets in wars of words with journalists who question her scripted, alternative facts, otherwise known as lies.
Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey for refusing to drop an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. One pretext was that other agents did not support him. Sanders claimed numerous times that “countless” FBI agents had called the White House and expressed loyalty to the president.
Then Robert Mueller’s investigators questioned her under oath, and she had to admit under threat of perjury that maybe that story wasn’t true.
Instead of being contrite, she has since doubled down, calling it a slip of the tongue, justifying what she said because she’s a fallible human being, not a “robot” like Trump’s critics.
After the Muller report was released, practically the whole party chorused: No collusion, total exoneration, nothing to see here, let’s get back to making America great again. The man who instigated this was Attorney General William Barr.
Barr’s spin on the report was not surprising. He was attorney general in 1992 when Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger faced charges of lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. He downplayed Weinberger’s crimes and convinced President George H.W. Bush to pardon him.
What follows is a summary of only a tiny portion of the facts presented by Mueller.
In 2016, Facebook accounts, both left and right-leaning, with hundreds of thousands of followers, were created by specialists working for the internet Research Agency, run by a Russian oligarch. The accounts paid for ads demonizing Hillary Clinton and eulogizing Trump.
The Russian Federation’s Main Intelligence Directorate hacked the computers and email accounts of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee and released private documents through fictitious online personas such as Guccifer 2.0. WikiLeaks, a Russian client, spread the false rumour that former Democratic staffer Seth Rich was murdered after he stole DNC emails.
A Russian lawyer approached Trump campaign higher-ups Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, and offered materials as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” By this time, the candidate himself had already signed a letter of intent for a Trump Tower in Moscow. And many months before, Felix Sater, a New York real estate adviser, had exchanged emails with Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen regarding Russian prospects. “You and I will get Donald and Vladimir on a stage together very shortly,” he wrote. “All we need is Putin on board and we are golden.”
Trump was distressed about the appointment of Mueller, and ordered former White House counsel Don McGahn to fire him. McGahn refused and threatened to resign. Among 157 references to McGahn in the report is an intriguing snippet of conversation.
“Why do you take notes?” Trump asked him. “Lawyers don’t take notes.”
Because I’m a real lawyer, McGahn responded.
“I’ve had a lot of great lawyers,” said Trump. “Like Roy Cohn,” referring to the man, now disbarred for dishonest practices, who represented him when his company was accused of discriminating against African-Americans.
Mueller clarifies that collusion is not a legal term, and that criminal conspiracy, for which 15 Russians were charged, requires two or more parties to agree to violate federal law and defraud the United States. This gave Trump plenty of wiggle room to knowingly benefit from the work of hackers without incriminating himself.
The special counsellor said he was not authorized to indict a sitting president, and left it to Congress to deal with Trump’s obstruction of the investigation.
Growing numbers of Democrats are now calling for impeachment hearings. In a conference call with her caucus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi cautioned, “We don’t need to go to articles of impeachment to obtain the facts.”
There is an argument for prior hearings, letting the facts accumulate until Americans come to accept impeachment as necessary.
But don’t expect any help from Republicans. And don’t call them robots. Scoundrels is a more appropriate term.
John Kneeland is a U.S. and Canadian citizen. He is currently writing a novel based on his experiences in the two countries