Super Takedown Of NeverTrumps And Team Mueller

Right, that's a pretty broad title. What I'm talking about is shipwreckedcrew's brutal deconstruction of a David French article on the supposed scandal of Trump commuting Roger Stone's sentence:

David French Reveals The Depth Of Intellectual Dishonesty Needed For The NeverTrumpers’ Vituperation of Roger Stone

The article is an absolutely brutal evisceration of French, but it also gets into the dishonesty of the Mueller Report and everything that flowed from it. Here's how shipwreckedcrew starts out:

David French has written a deeply dishonest story today about the prosecution of Roger Stone, and how the commutation of his sentence by Pres. Trump doesn’t change the “facts” of the case. 

Well, if you’re looking for “facts”, David French’s “story” isn’t the place to start. 

“Mueller’s investigation revealed Stone’s contacts with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and hacker Guccifer 2.0 during the 2016 campaign.” 

So, what did Mueller’s investigation “reveal” on this question?

The answer to that question, as shipwreckedcrew demonstrates in detail, is that Stone had NO contacts with Julian Assange--not even through intermediaries such as Jerome Corsi. As for the supposed GRU hacker Guccifer 2.0, those contacts amounted to the merest handful of texts--initiated by the Guccifer persona--culminating in Stone stating that he was unimpressed with the material Guccifer had released. Quoting the Mueller Report (p. 44):

On September 9, 2016, the GRU – again posing as Guccifer 2.0 – referring to the stolen DCCC documents posted online and asked Stone “what do u think of the info on the turnout model for democrats entire presidential campaign.”  Stone responded “pretty standard.”

And having untangled all the various stories surrounding these supposed but actually NON-events, shipwreckedcrew concludes:

The fact that Stone bragged about non-existent events to Bannon, Gates, Cohen, and others doesn’t make them real.  But THAT is the innuendo that has been peddled by the press and NeverTrumpers like David French who so badly want it to be true that Roger Stone WAS a connection between the Trump Campaign and the Russian GRU. 

The Mueller Report doesn’t claim that any Stones comments to anyone else were “factual evidence” of actual communications between Stone and Assange.  That is because the SCO knew there were no such actual communications.  The entire section on Roger Stone is about what Stone claimed he was doing based on what other people said he told them.  There is ZERO corroboration in the Report that anything Stone claimed he was doing ever actually happened.

From that shipwreckedcrew moves on to a Michael Cohen story about Stone and Trump that reveals a lot about Team Mueller. According to Cohen, he was present in Trump's office in July, 2016, and overheard--via speakerphone--a conversation between Stone and Trump. In the course of that conversation Stone claimed--according to Cohen--that he had been in contact with Julian Assange (p. 53).

What's the first thing you'd want to do as a Team Mueller investigator? Corroborate Michael Cohen's story, of course. One very obvious way to do that would be to comb through those mountains of phone records you had at your disposal and confirm that Roger Stone had called Trump around the time in question. Problem:

But NOTHING is offered in the Report to corroborate Cohens’ story ...

Which leads one to conclude that the reason Team Mueller offered no corroboration was because they had no corroboration. But, that being the case, why wouldn't the report not point that fact out? After all, this was supposed to be report, not an indictment:

The Mueller investigation left no stone unturned (no pun intended), and no rabbit hole unexplored.  They had all the money and all the time they wanted.  They had GJ subpoena power to grab phone records and email communications.

Why not include such information for the sake of completeness? Shipwreckedcrew has an answer to those questions, and it doesn't reflect well on Team Mueller:

The Mueller Report doesn’t make any reference to telephone records one way or the other with regard to Cohen’s story. Why? Because they DON’T reflect the calls as recounted by Cohen. If the Mueller Report had truthfully reported that no such calls were reflected in Stone’s telephone records, that would have been confirmation of 1) Cohen was lying to make himself look good and assist in building the false narrative of a Trump-Wikileaks connection, and 2) Roger Stone had no connection to Assange.

And that would have been bad for the public Russia Hoax narrative. This was all of a piece with the Concord Management case, in which Judge Dabney Friedrich had to tell Team Mueller that, no, they would not be allowed to make allegations about Russian government involvement--not without some actual evidence! And so, at Stone's trial, with the judge totally on their side, Team Mueller didn't even make the attempt to connect Stone to Assange:

The SCO had Roger Stone on TRIAL.  They could have put in whatever evidence they wanted regarding their “key discoveries” about Roger Stone.  They called 5 witnesses in total.  They all talked about fabricated stories Stone had told them.  There wasn’t a single witness who the SCO called who provided evidence that Stone had connections to Assange or Wikileaks.  If they had such evidence you would have heard it.

Here's the bottom line on how Team Mueller worked:

George Papadopolous tells an innocuous “half-truth” by providing an inaccurate date, and he’s forced to eat a “false statement” charge. Why? He was a Trump campaign advisor. 

Gen. Michael Flynn omits information from answers to FBI agents, and he’s forced to eat a “false statement” charge. Why? He was Trump’s National Security Advisor. 

Roger Stone is convicted for lying to Congress where his “lies” are almost exclusively related to covering up the fact that he had not been honest with Trump and campaign officials about a connection to Assange and Wikileaks — he had none — and the SCO seeks an 87-month sentence. Why? Because he’s been a 30-year friend and advisor to Trump. 

Jerome Corsi is none of those things.  Even though his lies to the SCO are set forth in the Report, and he’s given a plea agreement to sign but he refuses to do so, and the SCO drops the matter rather than indict him. 

If you want proof of a “two-tiered” justice system under the SCO, there it is. If there was narrative value in nailing your scalp to the wall, the SCO did it — even when they knew they could not prove the underlying crime — Gen. Flynn. When there was no narrative value, they dumped you off on the nearest street corner with cab fare to get you home. 

But there is evidence in the Mueller Report that reveals the “hit job” that was performed on Roger Stone, and the level of disinformation that permeates the Report if you recognize when things look out of place. 

Pretty damning. That's America today. That's how "justice" works.

And there's more--much, much more, narrated in extensive but highly readable detail. There's more about the Team Mueller approach to "justice," but there's also lots more about the dishonesty of David French and NeverTrumps generally. Go for it!

However, I can't resist one more closing quote:

But at the end of his story French finally gets to the boil on his ass that he’s been trying to lance all along: 

Even before his involvement in Trump’s 2016 campaign, Stone’s reputation preceded him. He began his career in the 1970s as a staunch supporter of Richard Nixon and ends it with a shrewd appreciation for the calculated and thick-skinned approach to politics that the former president instilled in him. 

That’s what this is all about – Roger Stone’s “original sin” is that he’s unapologetic about his past relationship and support of Richard Nixon.  Along with his connection to the hated Roy Cohn, Roger Stone will never escape that condemnation by his “conservative betters” like David French and those at places like The Bulwark and formerly the Weekly Standard.

And make no mistake about it. That is also why Roger Stone was such an attractive target for Andrew Weissmann and Team Mueller, as well as why the Left is so hacked off at Trump's commutation of Stone's sentence. This is about the Long War of the Left that goes back to the New Deal and even beyond that to the Progressive Era. They thought they had victory in sight at last. And then came Trump.