By Andy May
We have recently seen that Trump and his administration have not been accused of committing any crimes, other than those related to the improper spying on and interfering with his campaign by Obama holdovers, like Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Brennan, Clapper and others (link). These latter people have all been fired or forced out of their positions for their involvement in the allegedly illegal spying against the Trump campaign or lying about the operation (link). The House of Representatives accused him of “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress,” but these are not crimes and not impeachable offenses according to a majority of the Senate and constitutional scholars Alan Dershowitz and Jonathon Turley, at least not as presented by the House. Turley believes both could be impeachable in theory, even though they are not crimes, but he says the House has not made a strong enough case for that.
There seems to be an impression among some of the public that Trump and his administration are guilty of or accused of criminal acts. This is not the case. Despite three and a half years of trying and spending millions of dollars, his opponents have failed to find any violation of the law. The latest attempt, to “get” him based on a phone call and the earlier Mueller report make this very clear. To gain some perspective, let’s contrast the Trump investigations with the crimes that President Obama’s administration was accused of by the House and Senate.
-
Fired Jeffrey Missal, a regional environmental officer in Alaska for the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. Missal had complained to the special counsel in 2016, saying he was retaliated against for questioning environmental reviews of offshore drilling in the Arctic. In 2017, under President Trump, the special counsel ruled he was fired as retaliation and he got his job back. Link for more details.
-
Fast and Furious was a Justice Department plan to sell powerful guns to Mexican drug cartels as a way to track them. Internal government documents suggest that the gun sales were also intended to gin up a crisis that could be used to restrict gun ownership in the USA. One of the guns was used to kill US Border agent Brian Terry. Justice Department officials lied in a February 4, 2011 letter to Congress and denied the program existed. They later admitted the lie and retracted the letter (link). Formal subpoenas were sent to Attorney General Eric Holder for documents related to the case. Holder ignored the subpoenas and the House voted 255-67 to hold him in contempt of Congress. Congress was also ordered to sue Holder and the Justice Department to get the documents (link). The lawsuit is still not over, but in May 2019, the two sides reached a settlement, the Court of Appeals has not agreed to the settlement and nothing has been resolved (link). A 25-year ATF agent, Vince Cefalu, blew the whistle on the operation and was fired by the Obama administration in 2015 for it (link). A separate whistleblower, Peter Forcelli, was retaliated against but won compensation in mediation (link).
-
September 11, 2012 a planned terrorist attack on a U.S. state department compound in Benghazi, Libya killed four American diplomats. They were the American ambassador Chris Stevens, foreign service officer Sean Smith and CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods. Secretary Hillary Clinton and others in the Obama administration lied about the clearly well-planned attack and tried to claim it was a spontaneous mob attack due to a film about Muhammad recently released in the United States. This lie was promulgated for two weeks, even though Clinton admitted that the attackers were Al Qaida, in an email to her daughter Chelsea, that very night. She also told the Egyptian Prime Minister the next day that it was a planned attack and not due to the film. Obama also lied about the attack in a September 25 speech to the U.N. A special committee, on the Benghazi attack, was created in the House and found that the State Department and the CIA declined to send help in repelling the attack for many critical hours. The CIA misread how dangerous Benghazi was and the defense department failed to rescue the Americans. The Obama administration obstructed the House investigation. Oddly, the Americans were rescued by Gaddafi loyalists, the very people that Obama had tried to oust from power. In other words, it was a colossal failure by Obama and Clinton (link).
-
In 2012 it was revealed that administration officials falsified documents to hide how long veterans were waiting to see doctors at VA hospitals. Numerous whistleblowers tell of patients dying while waiting for care and they are retaliated against by the Obama Administration. A Senate investigation is begun, and Senator McCain eventually recommends that veterans be allowed to go outside the VA for care. McCain’s suggestion is turned into law and Trump implements it in 2019 (link and link2).
- In 2013 the U.S. IRS announced that it had targeted conservative political groups applying for tax-exempt status for intensive scrutiny. This led to condemnation of the agency and an FBI investigation. FBI director James Comey announced in January 2014 that he had found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing. However, the Treasury Department’s Inspector General found that the IRS did discriminate in 2017 and in October 2017 the Treasury Department settled a lawsuit on behalf of more than 400 conservative nonprofit groups who claimed they were discriminated against. Separately they settled another lawsuit with 41 additional groups in 2017. Besides the Inspector General investigation, there were also investigations by the House Ways and Means committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Steven Miller, Joseph Grant and Lois Lerner all resigned over this scandal. Lois Lerner famously pled the fifth amendment and refused to testify before the Oversight committee. She was later found to be in contempt of Congress (Link).
Figure 1. Draining the Deep State Swamp by Ben Garrison of GRRRGraphics.com.
Discussion
There has been a long campaign to try and drive President Trump from office. This campaign began before he took office and it was underscored by Hillary Clinton’s unprecedented refusal to admit defeat and fueled by Obama holdovers in the intelligence community. As Senator Schumer warned, “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” (link and link2).
Schumer was warning Trump not to attack the intelligence community. But Trump promised to drain the swamp and he knew the heart of the swamp was the FBI, NSA, CIA and NSC. To regain control of the government from the bureaucrats he had to get control of these agencies. These agencies arguably caused the Iraq war and the deaths in Benghazi. They certainly did the spying on the Trump campaign and lied to the FISA court, which may cause the FISA court to be eliminated. The intelligence community does not run our government and cannot be permitted to do so, the elected President is in charge and must remain in charge.
