Bait and Swith

Mueller Bait and Switch by Bill Wilson

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. He has handed down indictments of two of President Donald Trump's former campaign officials-Paul Manafort, former campaign chairman, and Rick Gates, former Trump advisor and partner of Manafort.

According to the indictment, these men laundered money, failed to register as foreign agents, evaded taxes, and misled the Department of Justice. Interesting though, that these 12 counts of indictments are only for dealings with the Ukranian pro-Russian political Party, the party of Regions, and the Ukraine government. The indictment indicates that Manafort and Gates are big time crooks, but Mueller is quite off topic.

 

These counts are related specifically to these two men's dealings with Ukraine, not about Russia meddling in the 2016 elections. The indictment mentions "Russia" only in the following context: "In 2005, Manafort and another partner created Davis Manafort Partners, Inc. (DMP) to engage principally in political consulting.

DMP had staff in the United States, Ukraine, and Russia...The Party of Regions was a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine...In 2010, its candidate for President, Yanukovych, was elected President of Ukraine. In 2014, Yanukovych fled Ukraine for Russia in the wake of popular protests of widespread governmental corruption."

 

Mueller also announced that former Trump campaign aid George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about the timing and detail of his attempts to line up meetings between Russian government officials and the Trump campaign.

According to AP, "The plea by George Papadopoulos marked the first criminal charges that cite interactions between Trump campaign associates and Russian intermediaries during the 2016 presidential campaign...In court papers, he admitted to lying about the nature of his interactions with "foreign nationals" who he thought had close connections to senior Russian government officials."

To date, there are no allegations of Trump and Russia coordinating efforts to influence the elections.

 

To me, this is very interesting considering there are mountains of evidence that the Democratic National Committee and the Clintons had intimate business dealings specifically with Russia and Russian agents.

The Special Counsel, however, hands down indictments on crooked dealings from work with Ukraine that doesn't appear directly related to Russia or to Trump.

Jesus' words in Luke 8:17 come to mind with all this: For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither anything hid, that shall not be known and come to light."

Did Russia meddle in the US elections? As in elections past, Russia probably tried. With whom did Russia conspire with and were they successful? The plot thickens as the light hits the darkness.