The word “dragnet” was
made famous in the mid-50s by the NBC TV show Dragnet, which featured Sergeant Joe Friday played by Jack Webb (pictured left).
A dragnet is a law
enforcement term used to describe coordinated measures for apprehending criminals
or suspects.
As a matter of
principle, the law enforcement arm of the United States government must operate
on a presumption of innocence. A
prosecutor should be assigned only
if there is strong evidence that a crime has been committed. In the absence of such evidence, a prosecutor
should never be assigned to investigate whether an American may have committed
some unknown crime.
What former FBI
Director James Comey described in his testimony before the House Intelligence
Committee in March of 2017 and what Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein
later adopted to define Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s jurisdiction was not a
criminal investigation or a prosecution nor did it provide a factual basis for
either action.
The Obama
Administration seized on, perhaps even created, the Russian probe in order to
paralyze President Trump─to strangle his capacity to govern─and Obama holdovers
in the Justice Department, for more than a year now, have been outrageously
public about the existence of a “counterintelligence probe” and the Trump
campaign investigation.
When Comey leaked his
memos to the press, he knew it would instigate the appointment of a special
counsel.
The collusion narrative
was spawned by an unverifiable dossier bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton─a
fact that was deliberately kept secret from the FISA court when the DOJ and FBI
wanted warrants issued.
So far, four former
Trump campaign associates─Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Richard Gates and
George Papadopoulos─have been charged in Mueller’s inquiry into alleged Russian
interference, though none of the charges are directly related to any misconduct
by the President's campaign.
Alex van der Zwaan, an
attorney, pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators during
the investigation, and was sentenced to 30 days in prison in April. He was the
first to be sentenced in the probe.
Regarding Papadopoulos,
there’s something
fishy about the charge filed by Mueller against him according to
former top federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy.
“While much that has gone on in the Mueller investigation
is curious, I have assumed the candor of the special counsel’s portrayal of the
Papadopoulos case: The young man was
approached by an agent of Russia [Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud], who eventually informed him the Kremlin had
‘dirt’ on the Democratic Party’s nominee, Hillary Clinton, in the form of
‘thousands of emails of Clinton’. To my
mind, then, the only questions involved (a) the nature of Mifsud’s relationship
to the Putin regime and (b) whether the emails in question were the hacked DNC
emails or the thousands of emails Clinton deleted from her homebrew server.”
[SKIP]
“Remember, there is no allegation that Mifsud actually knew
the Russians had Clinton emails, let alone that he ever showed Papadopoulos any
such emails. The claim is that Mifsud
was told by unidentified Russian officials that the Kremlin had the emails.”
“So, what happens after Mifsud, allegedly, told
Papadopoulos the Russians had these emails?
According to Mueller’s statement of the offence, the following day
Papadopoulos sends two emails to high-ranking Trump campaign officials about
his meeting with Mifsud and neither one of them says anything about
emails. It appears Papadopoulos was
myopically focused on the possibility─farfetched, but apparently real to
Papadopoulos─that Mifsud could help arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin.”
McCarthy is no
hack. He is a member of the Federalist
Society and a former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney in New York, best
known for leading the prosecution against the Blind Sheik (Omar Abdel Rahman)
and eleven other jihadists for waging a terrorist war against the United States
– including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York
City landmarks. After the 9/11 attacks, he supervised the U.S. attorney’s
command-post near Ground Zero. He later served as an advisor to the Deputy
Secretary of Defense.
The mainstream media
has weaponized the storyline of Papadopoulos’ meeting with Mifsud as the
exchange of information about emails that were hacked from the DNC and
published during the 2016 presidential campaign.
McCarthy’s take
is: A very low-level, inexperienced
Trump campaign adviser was interacting with a Maltese academic who had no real
Kremlin ties and no inside information about whether Russia actually possessed
damaging information about Clinton in the form of emails or otherwise. This young campaign adviser then made a vague
claim to an Australian diplomat, who did not hear him say anything about emails
and did not report the conversation to his government through regular channels.
McCarthy adamantly
asserts that after nearly two years of collusion banter, Congress needs to find
the truth regarding whether Mueller’s contention that Mifsud and his associates
were authentic agents of Russia or merely that Papadopoulos just thought they
were.
NBC’s police drama, Dragnet, depicted law enforcement
working methodically to investigate and apprehend criminals. A gumshoe cop named Sergeant Joe Friday
always insisted on “Just the facts, ma’am.”
Until just recently,
the FBI’s credo of fidelity, bravery and integrity symbolized the world’s
greatest law enforcement agency. Now,
the FBI [Comey, McCabe, Ohr, Strzok, Page] has damaged the constitutional
values Americans embrace by picking a front-page fight with Donald J. Trump.
Dragnet 2018, what I prefer
to call the Mueller probe, is an out of control investigation that was supposed
to be about Russia has been more about money laundering in rug stores and porn
stars than about the Kremlin’s meddling in the election.
Partisan forces (Obama
holdovers) eager to feed the resistance inside the DOJ and FBI freely crusaded
against a legitimately elected President and a lopsided team of Democrat
lawyers working with Mueller have turned a mole hill into a mountain. Every
conceivable angle has been probed; many of them far removed from Red Square.
Even with all the tools
of spy craft, they’ve found nothing. Nothing.
“The
Curious Case of Mr. Downer” by Kim Strassel (The Wall Street Journal)
“FBI
Spy Stefan Halper’s Media Contacts Could Pose a Problem, Retired FBI Officials
Say”
by Chuck Ross (The Daily Caller)
