We must hope for indictments by somebody else!

SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 2019

The propaganda war moves on: The Mueller report has been dropped! The Mueller report has been dropped!

Last evening, a wave of Paul Reveres rode through the streets of cable news making this announcement. In our view, the gang at New York magazine got one part of this episode right:

HART (3/22/19): Multiple sources are now reporting that Mueller is recommending no further indictments. What does that tell us?

CHAIT: It certainly seems to point toward an anticlimactic outcome.

KILGORE: Since presumably there are people who (unlike Trump) can be indicted for helping him with collusion and/or obstruction, the fact that they likely won’t be is a pretty good thing for Trump.

CHAIT: It’s strange, though, given how many crimes have been clearly hinted at to date.

HART: This fits with the rising tide of chatter in the last few days, from White House sources and Democrats alike, predicting that the report will end up being quite favorable to Trump—relatively speaking.

In the end, will the actual Mueller report "end up being quite favorable to Trump, relatively speaking?" We have no way of knowing.

That said, a vast array of crimes "have been hinted at" in the past year, but the bulk of these crimes, for which we liberals have fervently prayed, didn't end up getting charged. This awkward fact will lie at the heart of the next propaganda war, which has already started.

Good lord! No one got charged for the Trump Tower meeting. Possible targets like Jared Kushner didn't get charged with perjury.

Carter Page is gone and forgotten, after being convicted, again and again, by the likes of "our own hangin' judge," cable star Rachel Maddow. A wide range of crimes which were "hinted at" (and proselytized about) seem to, perhaps and possibly, maybe be dead and gone.

For another example of a crime which didn't end up getting charged, consider the passage shown below.

The passage appears near the end of a lengthy front-page report in this morning's Washington Post. It begins with yet another awkward fact, then moves on to Jerome Corsi:

BARRETT, ZAPOTOSKY AND DAWSEY (3/23/19): None of the Americans charged by Mueller are accused of conspiring with Russia to interfere in the election—the central question of Mueller’s work. Instead, they pleaded guilty to various crimes, including lying to the FBI.

The investigation ended without charges for a number of key figures who had long been under Mueller’s scrutiny, including conservative writer Jerome Corsi, who said Friday that he felt “vindicated” by the development.

Corsi met with prosecutors repeatedly about communications he had before the November 2016 election with Stone about the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. In November, Corsi took the unorthodox step of publishing draft court documents Mueller’s team had provided to him as they urged him to plead guilty to lying in an October 2018 debriefing. He said that his memory had been faulty but that he had not intentionally lied, and he refused to take the deal.

“They lost. They tried to give me a plea deal that was a lie and I exposed it,” he said. “They wisely left me alone. Seven months through absolute hell when all I did was try to cooperate.”

Oof! Mueller ended up charging no one with criminal forms of collusion. Over Here in our liberal world, such charges have long been devoutly wished for.

Meanwhile, consider the Corsi matter:

From our point of view, Corsi has been a total nutcase for a good number of years, long predating Trump. That said, was he actually guilty of "lying [to prosecutors] in an October 2018 debriefing?"

We have no way of knowing. That said, the Mueller team tried to get him to plead guilty to such a crime, then ended up not charging him with any such offense.

As citizens, should we be concerned about such prosecutorial conduct? For ourselves, we don't know; we'd like to hear the pros and cons. Surely, though, everyone knows how this episode is going to look Over There.

For many months, we liberals have been mightily pleasured on MSNBC by the prospect of coming indictments. We've been fed this tribal comfort food night after night after night after night, just before going to bed.

Our own hustlers and con men have sent us to bed pleasured by the prospect of such coming indictments. The propaganda war will now move on, with Fox News claiming vindication for Trump, and our own cable stars assuring us that future indictments, from other prosecutors, are right around the corner.

WE liberals have been dumbed way down, for months and years, by our own cable stars. It's propaganda, all the way down. Our cable stars are paid millions of dollars to dumb us down this way, though we aren't allowed to know how many millions of dollars.

(Our big stars love transparency. They just don't love it that much.)

What does the Mueller report really say? We have no way of knowing. But the propaganda war has already moved on, and over here, in our liberal tents, we liberals are still getting clowned.

On the brighter side: Last night, we liberals also got to learn, at several points, about Rachel's "fishing trip interruptus."

As usual, Rachel was selling the car. "I I I I I I I," our angry young analysts said.