U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL CONTINUES TO ACT LIKE TRUMP’S PERSONAL LAWYER

…US Attorney General, William Barr

Trump’s lawyer, Giuliani, keeps trying to sell Trump’s conspiracy theories.

The direct involvement of the nation’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General William Barr, shows the priority that the president and Barr places on this latest investigation.  That being, the one conducted by John Durham, the US attorney in Connecticut.  Durham has been assigned by Barr, the task of reviewing US intelligence work around the 2016 election and the president’s on-going obsession with what he calls the “Russian Hoax”.

The attorney general’s active role underscores the degree to which the nearly three-year-old election, and the president’s obsession with it, as it continues to consume significant federal resources and many tax-payer dollars, plus all this attention of the federal government.

Current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials showed alarm this week that the head of the Justice Department was taking such a direct role in re-examining what most view as baseless conspiracy theories and false allegations of misconduct.

Barr has already contacted British intelligence officials, and last week he flew to Italy, where he and Durham met senior Italian government officials as Barr asked the Italians to help Durham.  This is according to some one familiar with the matter, who of course, spoke only on the condition of anonymity.

Oh, and this was not Barr’s first trip to Italy to meet with their intelligence officials.

The Trump administration has made similar requests of Australia.  In a recent phone call, Trump urged Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, to provide assistance to the ongoing Justice Department inquiry. Trump made the request at Barr’s urging. This Trump phone call was first reported by the New York Times.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said: “I’m old enough to remember when Democrats actually wanted to find out what happened in the 2016 election. The Democrats clearly don’t want the truth to come out anymore as it might hurt them politically, but this call relates to a DOJ inquiry publicly announced months ago to uncover exactly what happened. The DOJ simply requested the President provide introductions to facilitate that ongoing inquiry, and he did so, that’s all.”  The Democrats responded saying that as usual, Mr. Gidley and the White House, doesn’t know what they are talking about.

The truth is, that investigation ended this year when the special counsel, Robert Mueller determined there was insufficient evidence to charge any Americans with conspiring with Russia.  Unfortunately, he then left it to the US Congress to reach a decision about whether the president had sought to obstruct justice, even though the evidence shows that he did.

Trump still complains that those involved in the investigation of his campaign should be charged with crimes, asserting that the FBI search for possible election collusion between Russia and Trump campaign officials was a “witch hunt” spurred by agents and bureaucrats opposed to Trump becoming president.

Democrats are scoffing at the notion that the attorney general is devoting his personal time and energy to traveling overseas.  Barr now shows up asking foreign countries to assist in an investigation of US agencies and personnel.  Democrats have accused Barr in the past of acting only on Trump’s personal interests at the expense of the Justice Department’s independence.

Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) accused the attorney general of “going rogue”.  She did this after the Justice Department determined that the explosive whistleblower’s complaint alleged that Trump pressured the Prime Minister of Ukrain, Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.  This was all over Hunter Biden’s past position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.  This had already been investigated and it was determined that it did not merit a criminal investigation.

“It’s well known within the intelligence community that you cannot ask another government to do something that you’re prohibited from doing. That is a standard operating procedure,” said a former national security official.

One area that has been of interest to Barr and Durham, according to people familiar with the matter, is a murky figure named Joseph Mifsud.

Mifsud, is a European academic, that was publicly linked to Russian interference efforts in late 2017.  Mueller had revealed a guilty plea by former Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos, who admitted he had lied to the FBI about the details of his interactions with Mifsud.

Mifsud allegedly alerted Papadopoulos that the Russians had “dirt” on Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, in the form of thousands of emails.

A version of that conversation was relayed to US authorities later that Summer by an Australian diplomat who had talked to Papadopoulos over drinks in London.

Shortly after his name surfaced publicly, Mifsud told Italian media he did not work for Russia. “I never got any money from the Russians: my conscience is clear,” Mifsud told La Repubblica. “I am not a secret agent.”

Since then, professor Mifsud has disappeared from public life, leading to a host of theories about him and his whereabouts.  While court papers filed in Mueller’s investigation suggested that he operated in Russia’s interests, conservatives and conspiracy theorists have suggested he was instead aligned with Western intelligence agencies.  This is just another of Trump’s conspiracy theories.

In an interview on Fox News in April, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, had called Mifsud “a counterintelligence operative, either Maltese or Italian,” who took part in what sounded to him like a “counterintelligence trap” against Papadopoulos.  But as usual with Giuliani, there is no proof to support this statement.

Trump and Giuliani have been trying to sell all these conspiracy theories, but all the evidence, including Trump’s own words tell us another story.

Trump just keeps digging his hole deeper.

Copyright G. Ater 2019