The Mueller Report has created more questions than it has answered. For one, why didn’t Mueller interview President Trump or any member of the first family? How is it possible that WikiLeaks is not considered to be within the reach of the Russian government? How did flaws in the investigation influence the final report? Below is an excerpt from the forthcoming book Treason & Betrayal: The Rise & Fall of Individual-1 by former DOJ prosecutor and nationally-recognized constitutional law expert Kenneth McCallion.
The puzzling “no collusion” finding by Mueller is particularly troubling since this conclusion was apparently reached without any actual interview or sworn testimony by Trump as to, for example, what was going through his mind when he invited the Russians to hack into the Clinton Campaign’s database to find her “missing” emails or when he appeared to have advance knowledge of one or more of the WikiLeaks data dumps.
Donald Trump Jr. apparently also got a free pass from Mueller without requiring him to answer questions under oath as to what he was thinking when he set up the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians in the hope and expectation that they would turn over hacked emails and other Clinton “dirt.”
Since “intent” is always a necessary element in a criminal conspiracy, and the silent operation of the mind can only be divined by either the words or actions of an individual, or by asking him or her what they were thinking at the time, it is difficult to reconcile the decision not to interview these seemingly important witnesses and Mueller’s sterling reputation as a thorough prosecutor.
Could Trump have been given a “pass” on an interview merely because he was a sitting President, and could Don Jr. have been given a pass because they were “First Family?”
Or is there a more reasonable explanation, which is that Don Jr. is the “target” of an ongoing criminal investigation, and Mueller did not want to jeopardize that ongoing investigation by interrogating him now while he is still technically a “target?”
Since the U.S. does not officially believe in “royalty,” and our system of laws is premised on the concept that “No man is above the law,” how then can a conclusion be reached that neither Trump nor any of his inner circle conspired with the Russians when neither Trump nor at least one other key player (Don Jr.) were even asked to explain what they were doing when they met with Russian, talked about getting access to Clinton “dirt,” and discussed the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Russia.
Mueller’s conclusion of “no collusion” must also be carefully scrutinized, since it appears to be based on a very narrow reading of what constituted Russian interference in the 2016 election.
As summarized in Barr’s March 24th letter to Congress, the Special Counsel’s investigation focused on two major aspects of Russian interference. The first involved attempts by a Russian organization, the Internet Research Agency (IRA) to conduct disinformation and social media operations in the U.S., with the aim of interfering in the election, and the second involved Russian government efforts “to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the elections.”
About the Author:
Kenneth F. McCallion heads an accomplished team of civil litigation and human rights attorneys at McCallion & Associates LLP. He is a nationally recognized expert on constitutional law, especially the impeachment clause, and has significant expertise in the fields of civil RICO, criminal law, and the history of Treason and Espionage in U.S. history. McCallion spent the early part of his law career working as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice, handling high-profile organized crime prosecutions and working on major labor racketeering cases, including some investigations that dealt with labor racketeering involving the construction of Trump Tower and other major construction projects in the New York area. He also worked on numerous sensitive counterintelligence investigations involving Russian espionage in the U.S., involving coordination between and among U.S. Department of Justice and FBI agents with the CIA and U.S. State Department. McCallion received his B.A. from Yale, and his J.D. from Fordham Law School. Previous publications include Shoreham and the Rise and Fall of Nuclear Power, and The Essential Guide to Donald Trump.
Treason & Betrayal will be released on April 15, 2019 wherever fine books are sold.
Featured image: Public Domain, by The White House, via Wikimedia
