The time is coming when Mueller will wrap up his work. He will transmit a report to Congress that may or may not be made public. We deserve to read everything the Mueller people have to say: complete, unredacted, uncensored, and unexpurgated. All those virtue-signaling upholders of democracy, based as it is on voters being informed, must agree with maximal transparency. Besides, we’re grownups and we paid for it.
Mueller’s document will likely contain and connect enough dots to paint a damning picture of Trump-Russian collusion. However, the question is HOW DAMNING? Will it prove beyond a reasonable doubt the most serious assertions, currently uncorroborated, made in the Steele dossier?
For objective accounts of the dots and the Steele allegations, see here and here, respectively.
The latter article pinpoints the critical Steele dossier allegations that so far remain unproven. They are that Trump and his men walked a two-way street with Russian government officials, offering them quid pro quos, not simply being receptors of Russian intelligence but working with them.
“But much of the reporting simply remains uncorroborated, at least by the yardstick we are using. Most significantly, the dossier reports a ‘well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [Trump and his associates] and the Russian leadership,’ including an ‘intelligence exchange [that] had been running between them for at least 8 years.'”
What will matter in Mueller’s report will be whether or not he verifies statements like these in the Steele dossier that are currently unsupported by evidence. Damning the Russians alone won’t do this.
“…the official record connects Russian intelligence—behind the guise of Guccifer 2.0—to Wikileaks and, to a lesser extent, to Stone. It also connects Corsi and Stone to Wikileaks. It does not, however, corroborate the statement in the dossier that the Russian intelligence ‘operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of Trump and senior members of his campaign team.'”
The connection to Guccifer 2.0 has been seriously challenged by others, but it’s the Steele dossier allegation that also matters greatly in beefing up the collusion charge. That charge is that Trump’s senior campaign team was enmeshed (“full knowledge and support”) with the Russian intelligence team.
There is a serious question as to how credible Cohen, Flynn and Manafort can be as witnesses in order to avoid punishment. How much self-abasement and truth-embroidering may occur under the pressures of prosecution by the Mueller team? Is there corroboration for what they testify to? Are there two independent witnesses to confirm critical statements?
9:10 am on December 26, 2018
