No one likes a sore loser, but when the reason for losing might involve Russian collusion, the losers have every right to raise suspicion. In October 2016, the US Government publicly announced that it was fairly confident Russia was responsible for the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, resulting in the release of thousands of stolen emails, many of which belonged to former Secretary of State and Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. If you only ever hear about politics from the opening monologues of Saturday Night Live, you’ve at least heard something about Hillary’s emails in the last two years. Following the Russian breach of the DNC, President Trump’s campaign and transition teams were accused of colluding with Russia to influence the US election.
If you remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which saw millions of Facebook (FB) user data exposed and sold to political action committees (PACs) to create targeted ads in favor of their candidates, specifically, then Republican nominee, Donald Trump. We all know that Trump secured the presidency, but a year into his new position, the U.S. Justice Department announced its plans to conduct a federal investigation into Russia’s potential meddling in the 2016 election.
Democrats begged for someone outside the Justice Department to handle the investigation and, at the time, Attorney General Jeff Sessions had already suspiciously recused himself:
“By the virtue of the authority vested in me as Acting Attorney General, in order to discharge my responsibility to provide supervision and management of the Department of Justice, and to ensure a full and through investigation of the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, I hereby order…Robert S. Mueller III is appointed to serve as Special Counsel for the United States Department of Justice.”
–Rod. J Rosenstein, Acting US Attorney General, May 2017
Assuming my premonitions about your political know-how stemming from exposure to political satire on television, I can only guess that you’ve heard one thing or another about the Mueller investigation. Let me preface all of this by saying that the entire investigation seems fishy. For example, Mueller has viciously pursued Paul Manafort, a former Trump staffer during the 2016 campaign, and has since accused him of money laundering, failure to disclose financial assets, and false statements regarding work for the government of Ukraine, all prior to Manafort’s joining the Trump campaign team, according to Vox.
Over the course of the last year, Mueller has grilled and interrogated countless potential suspects to discover if, in fact, the Trump administration colluded with Russia to help secure the presidency for Donald Trump. Manafort, President Trump’s campaign chairman, is now being accused of lying to federal investigators in breach of a plea agreement he signed two months ago, according to a court filing released by The New York Times on Monday.
“…After signing the plea agreement, Manafort committed federal crimes by lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Special Counsel’s Office on a variety of subject matters, which constitute breaches of the agreement…As the defendant has breached the plea agreement, there is no reason to delay is sentencing herein…”
–Joint Status Report filed by Robert Mueller
President Trump has, on multiple occasions, referred to the Mueller investigation as a “phony witch hunt, and that Mueller is “viciously ruining lives” for the people he’s investigated, but, given that we already know our president to be more reactionary than he’d like to admit, it’s only natural that he feels this way about someone attempting to uncover information that would prove he asked the Kremlin to give him some campaign assistance.
Several media outlets believe Mueller’s investigation will come to a head soon.
