Monday, June 17,
2019
Trump-Barr’s Manipulation of the Special
Counsel Robert Mueller report of March 22, 2019: The Political Cover-up of the
Century?
By Dr.
Rodrigue Tremblay
“In the big lie there is always a
certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always
more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than
consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds
they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they
themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to
resort to large-scale falsehoods.
—It would
never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not
believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so
infamously…“ Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), (in ‘Mein Kampf’, 1925, vol. I, ch. 10)
“If
you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to
believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can
shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of
the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its
powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and
thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), (as quoted
in Thinkexist.com)
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions
of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who
manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government,
which is the true ruling power of our country. We are
governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely
by men we have never heard of. “ Edward Louis Bernays (1891-1995), (in
‘Propaganda’, 1928, ch. 1)
“In politics, stupidity is not a handicap!”
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), (as
quoted by http://www.parismarais.fr)
We live in a very corrupt era. A case
in point is the current and scandalous manipulation of the
Mueller report by
the Trump administration, with hardly any outcry from people in authority.
Indeed, of the close to 400 pages (excluding tables and appendices) of the Mueller report delivered to
the U.S. Attorney General on Friday March 22, 2019, not a single page has yet
to be made public, as of Tuesday April 2, a deadline established by the House
of Representatives, either to the elected Congress and/or to the American
people to see for themselves the real content of the full report.
The only thing made public, so far, is a four-page
memo written by
Attorney General William Barr, a recent appointee of Donald Trump, which says
nice things about his boss and contains a vague promise to release a heavily
censored version of the Mueller report sometime in the future (see below). To
take at face value what a Trump’s appointee says, especially a lawyer, could be
a big mistake.
This is an
administration known for its serial lies. It has no respect for the truth
whatsoever. —It has only partisan interests. In fact, Donald Trump is a
believer in the “Big
Lie” political
theory, a propaganda technique first advanced by Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) in
his 1925 book Mein Kampf. According to this theory, the bigger a politician's
lies and the more out of the ordinary, the more part of the population will be
ready to believe them.
Donald Trump was
at it again on Thursday March 28, when he wrongly
claimed in a speech in
Grand Rapids, Michigan, that the Mueller report “fully exonerated him” of any wrong doing. This is curious since no
part of the report has yet been made public and Barr’s own opinion and brief
interpretation were only that “Mueller had reached no conclusion about
whether Trump had obstructed justice”! This is an example of stretching the truth, if I’ve
ever seen one. Trump’s political career has been a long series of lies,
falsehoods, untruths, exaggerations and misrepresentations, and there is no
reason to think that the future would be different from the past.
But, there is
something fishy here. —If the 400-page report by the Department of Justice’s
special Counsel Robert Mueller (about Donald Trump cheating and obstructing
justice in his relations with Russia) really does contain positive conclusions
about the current occupant of the White House, his family and associates, don’t
you think the tandem Trump-Barr would have rushed to make it public? At the
very least, wouldn’t they have delivered copies of the full report to Congress?
Why are they willing to fight to keep it secret from the elected Congress? The
only logical answer is that the complete Mueller report contains very damaging
material about Trump, his family and his administration, and William Barr does
not want Americans to see it.
In any case, even
if some media have jumped onboard Mr. Barr’s presentation of the contents of
the report, a net majority of Americans are not falling for the Trump-Barr
sleight of hand trick of hiding the report. Nor do they accept their game of
hide and seek, claiming that the report contains conclusions favorable to them, but keeping those conclusions secret. A NPR/PBS NewsHour/Maris
poll, for example, indicated that only Trump’s gullible
political base, just 36 percent, believe the Trump-Barr manipulation of the
report, i.e. that Donald Trump has been “cleared” from wrongdoing. What is
more, 56 percent believe the contrary, and 75 percent want the full report,
uncensored, un-redacted, unedited and with no blackouts, to be made public
ASAP.
Attorney General
Barr has lately pulled a rabbit, or maybe a red herring, out of his hat to
stall things further, in an obvious attempt to ‘drown the fish’ and take the
sting out of the Mueller report. Indeed, on Friday March 29, Mr. Barr wrote a letter
to the chairmen
of the relevant committees of both the House and the Senate offering to rewrite
the Mueller report on his own in order to exclude some so-called “sensitive”
sections, some of which no doubt referring to his boss and his immediate family
working in the White House. It is doubtful that such censorship is really
necessary because it is most likely that special counsel Mueller and his team,
knowing full well that their report will be made public, have been very careful
not to include any sensitive or classified intelligence or any other touchy
legal information. —This could be the political cover-up of the century.
Indeed, the
Attorney General now wants to make public his own censored version of the
Mueller report by excluding four broad categories of information from the
official report:
- 1 Grand jury
material;
- 2 Information
that could compromise sensitive intelligence sources or methods;
- 3 Details
related to ongoing investigations; and
- 4 Information
that would unduly infringe on ‘the personal privacy and reputational interests
of peripheral third parties’.
This is an
obvious attempt to gut the entire report.
In conclusion, it
appears that the Trump administration is very busy making sure that anything in
the Mueller report found damaging to the president, his immediate family and
associates will be purged from the censored version, to be released in a few
weeks. I doubt very much that the Democratic leadership in Congress will
acquiesce to such blatant censorship of a report about political figures and
originally designed to be made public in its entirety.
Mr. Adam Schiff’s indictments of Republicans
Considering this
development, it may be useful to recall House Intelligence Committee
chairman Adam
Schiff’s admonitions to
his Republican colleagues, on Thursday, March 28, about their lack of probity
and honesty and their “immoral,” “unethical,” “unpatriotic,” and “corrupt”
behavior:
“You [the Republicans] might think that
it is okay:
• That the Russians offered dirt on the
Democratic candidate for president as part of what’s described as the Russian
government’s effort to help the Trump campaign. You might think that’s okay.
• That when that was
offered to the son of the president (Donald Trump Jr.), who had a pivotal
role in the campaign, that the president’s son did not call the FBI, and that
he did not adamantly refuse that foreign help — no, instead that son said he
would ‘love’ the help of the Russians. You might think it was okay that he took
that meeting?
• That Paul Manafort,
the campaign chair, someone with great experience running campaigns, also took
that meeting. You might think it’s okay that the president’s son-in-law (Jared Kushner) also took that
meeting. You might think it’s okay that they concealed it from the public. You
might think it’s okay that their only disappointment after that meeting was
that the dirt they received on Hillary Clinton wasn’t better. You might think
it’s okay. — I don’t.
• That, when it was
discovered a year later that they had lied about that meeting and said it was
about adoptions, you might think it’s okay that the president is reported to
have helped dictate that lie. You might think it’s okay. — I don’t.
• That the campaign
chairman of a presidential campaign would offer information about that campaign
to a Russian oligarch in exchange for money or debt forgiveness. You might
think that’s okay. — I don’t.
• That [Donald
Trump’s] campaign chairman offered polling data, campaign polling data, to
someone linked to Russian intelligence. — I don’t think that’s okay.
• That the president
himself called on Russia to hack his opponent’s emails, if they were listening.
You might think it’s okay that, later that day, the Russians in fact attempted
to hack a server affiliated with that campaign. — I don’t think that’s okay.
• That the president’s
son-in-law (Jared Kushner) sought to establish
a secret back-channel of communication with Russians through a Russian
diplomatic facility. — I don’t think that’s okay.
• That an associate of
the president (Roger Stone) made direct contact with the GRU (the Military
intelligence service of Russia) through Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks, that is
considered a hostile intelligence agency. You might think it’s okay that a
senior campaign official was instructed to reach that associate and find out
what that hostile intelligence agency had to say, in terms of dirt on his
opponent.
• That the national
security adviser-designate (Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn) secretly conferred
with a Russian ambassador about undermining U.S. sanctions, and you might think
it’s okay he lied about it to the FBI. You might say that’s all okay. You might
say that’s just what you need to do to win. — But I don’t think it’s okay.
I think it’s immoral, I think it’s unethical, I think
it’s unpatriotic and, yes, I think it’s corrupt, and it is an evidence of
collusion…
• [Moreover], I don’t think it’s OK that
during a presidential campaign Mr. Trump sought the Kremlin’s help to consummate
a real estate deal in Moscow that would make him a fortune — according to the
special counsel, hundreds of millions of dollars. I don’t think it’s OK to
conceal it from the public. I don’t think it’s OK that he advocated a new and
more favorable policy towards the Russians even as he was seeking the Russians’
help, the Kremlin’s help to make money. I don’t think it’s OK that his attorney
lied to our committee. There is a different word for that than collusion, and
it’s called ‘compromise’.”
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Please click here to read COMMENTS
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International
economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is
the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten
Humanist Principles”, of the book “The New American Empire”, and the recent book, in French
« La régression tranquille du
Québec, 1980-2018 ».
Please
visit Dr. Tremblay’s site:
N.B.: To watch a
Youtube conference of Dr. Tremblay, please click here:
Posted,
Tuesday, April 2, 2019, at 8:30 am
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© 2019 by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay