Reflections on the Upcoming Indictments

But the tax cut!

I am not one who ascribes any method to the madness of Trump’s tweets.  He isn’t tweeting to distract us from anything; he is just giving free reign to an undisciplined rant.  On the other hand, the whole hoopla over Hillary and the dossier, Hillary and the uranium just has to be a deliberate distraction maneuver. 

Without claiming to know anything about the uranium deal (see here for a good rundown), I immediately distrusted it for reasons that I really don’t think were pure partisanship.   First of all, we’ve been over this umpteen times before.  The Whitewater scandal.  And Travelgate.  And the Vincent Foster suicide.  And the various other Clinton scandals, none of which turned out to amount to anything.  When the Republicans finally impeached it was over an affair with an intern and lying about it in a civil deposition.  And under the Obama Administration there was Operation Fast and Furious..  And the IRS flap.  And Benghazi.  And any number of other scandals, not one of which amounted to anything.  But the Benghazi investigation finally did uncover that Hillary had sent State Department e-mails on a private server, so this because the most heinous crime ever committed in the entire history of our Republic.  I kept an open mind to at least some of these scandals.  But you know the story of the boy who cried wolf?  Besides, if there was actually anything to this story, it would have come out during the campaign.  It didn’t.  Case closed.

And the claim that the Steele dossier indicated collision is just silly.  Suppose a political candidate were suspected of Mafia ties.  It would be something his opponent might legitimately want to look into.  And there would really be no way to find out without asking around  to informants.  These informants would have no way of knowing unless they had actual Mafia ties.  And people with actual Mafia ties by definition are not sterling citizens.  But to suggest that asking people with Mafia ties whether a candidate is in cahoots is not at all the same thing as being in cahoots oneself.  As for complaints that the dossier was used as the basis for search warrants against the Trump campaign, while using the resources of the government to investigate political opponents is certainly problematic, giving them an automatic free pass is troubling as well.  (Not to mention that the services that did the investigation claim to have relied on other sources anyhow).

Not to mention that the dossier and its contents were never so much as mentioned during the election, except in one Mother Jones article a week before the vote.  The article made no secret about where the information came from:

In June, the former Western intelligence officer—who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients—was assigned the task of researching Trump’s dealings in Russia and elsewhere, according to the former spy and his associates in this American firm. This was for an opposition research project originally financed by a Republican client critical of the celebrity mogul. (Before the former spy was retained, the project’s financing switched to a client allied with Democrats.)

Furthermore the article did no more than darkly hint at the contents of the report.  It said that “[T]here was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit.”  And furthermore:

The first memo, based on the former intelligence officer’s conversations with Russian sources, noted, “Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance.” It maintained that Trump “and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.” It claimed that Russian intelligence had “compromised” Trump during his visits to Moscow and could “blackmail him.” It also reported that Russian intelligence had compiled a dossier on Hillary Clinton based on “bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls.”

The author gave no further information about the contents for the same reason that the contents were never even darkly hinted at during the election.  There was insufficient evidence to substantiate them.  

The right wing press is having a field day with these two stories.  There is a lot more going on here than merely a deranged tweet or even Twitter storm.  This looks like a coordinated effort at distraction.  

At the same time, I find this article convincing in that Trump insiders could not possibly have known that an indictment was coming down on Friday.  And they still don’t know who has been indicted.  But (as it points out) they do know who was called to testify in front of the grand jury, and what was being subpoenaed.  The witnesses presumably reported to the suitable authorities what they were asked about.  (The grand jury and prosecutor are sworn to secrecy, but witnesses are under no such obligation).   So people in the Trump Administration presumably had some idea what was coming down the pike and some idea that it would not be much longer, even if they did not know any exact dates.

So, as a mere Enlightened Layperson, I have as much right to speculate as anyone else.  What would I guess.  Most likely, the first indictment will be of small fry.  This is (as I understand it), fairly standard practice in investigation a large conspiracy – go after the small fry first in hopes of flipping them against the larger game.  My guess is that the first person indicted will probably be someone we have never heard of, playing a completely tangential role, but one whose guilt is beyond dispute.  But if it is someone we have heard of, my money would be on Carter Page, whose role in the campaign was minor, and who has at least once passed information to Russian spies.  I suppose Paul Manafort (sleaze personified) and Michael Flynn (Sleaze Personified in a uniform) cannot be entirely ruled out.  But there were a lot of working pieces here.  But my bet remains on one who we have never heard of.