Bob Mueller’s staff, as well as “current and former government officials,” are leaking to NBC News and presumably others that Mueller is considering indicting Russians who allegedly were involved in spearfishing the DNC’s email account:
Mueller’s consideration of charges accusing Russians in the hacking case has not been reported previously. Sources say he has long had sufficient evidence to make a case, but strategic issues could dictate the timing.
Call me cynical, but I suspect that “strategic issues” are dictating the timing of the leak. Most people have given up on Mueller’s investigation. He has come up with nothing that bears on the 2016 election, and has been able to secure only a few chickenfeed convictions unrelated to the purported subject of his investigation. So I suspect this leak is intended to keep Mueller relevant. I also wonder: why are “former government officials,” presumably Obama staffers, leaking news about Mueller’s investigation? Is Mueller coordinating with Barack Obama’s would-be shadow government in D.C.? Isn’t his investigation supposed to be confidential?
The sources say the possible new indictment — or more than one, if that’s how Mueller’s office decides to proceed — would delve into the details of, and the people behind, the Russian intelligence operation that used hackers to penetrate computer networks and steal emails of both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
That might be vaguely interesting, but of course these Russians won’t show up to defend themselves any more than the Russians Mueller has already indicted, so we will be left with nothing but allegations in a pleading that may or may not be true.
Still, NBC is glad to have the opportunity to smear Trump:
The release of embarrassing Democratic emails through WikiLeaks became a prominent feature in the 2016 presidential election, cited at least 145 times by Republican candidate Donald Trump in the final month of the campaign.
The Russians cost Hillary the election! Right?
At one point he publicly urged “Russia” to find and release emails Trump believed were missing from Democrat Hillary Clinton’s private server.
The Democratic Party press has been toting this chestnut around for a long time now. To the Democrats at NBC, the scandal is Trump’s joke, not the fact that Hillary illegally deleted tens of thousands of emails that had been illegally stored on her off-the-books server and may have included a great deal of classified information.
My sense that this leak is intended to keep Mueller and his bogus investigation in the public eye is reinforced by the observation that the new Russian indictments “are expected in the next few weeks or months. It’s also possible Mueller could opt not to move forward because of concerns about exposing intelligence or other reasons — or that he files the indictment under seal, so the public doesn’t see it initially.” In other words, don’t hold your breath. So why the urgency to leak now?
I think it is a sound principle that when a guy tries hard to convince you that he is still relevant, he isn’t relevant.
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