Even President Trump’s fiercest, most rabid critics must be at the point where they sense things are not going to turn out like they once imagined. After two years of screaming about us having elected a Russian mole, after months of breathless speculation about the day Robert Mueller would perp-walk Trump out of the White House, and after reams of articles written about Trump’s indentured servitude to Vladimir Putin, they must surely see the writing on the wall. They must surely see that the collusion theory has already imploded.
Two big moments from this week.
The first was the arrest of Roger Stone. Hidden beneath all of the ballyhoo and the ridiculous scene of the arrest itself was an indictment that did everything but clear President Trump of any wrongdoing. Yes, Stone apparently lied to Congress. Yes, he may very well have lied to federal agents as well. And certainly, he appeared to try and intimidate witnesses into lying on his behalf. All of these, if proven, are crimes that could land Stone in prison for the rest of his life, should he not be so fortunate as to get a reprieve from the president.
But nowhere in the indictment does Mueller suggest that Stone committed any crime prior to the start of the investigation. “Colluding” with Julian Assange is not a crime. Trying to get information as to the timing of Wikileaks’ drops – also not a crime. Making the most of those leaks in the context of a political campaign? Not only is that not a crime, to do otherwise would amount to political malpractice.
Furthermore – and most importantly – the fact that Stone was going to these lengths to get an audience with Assange proves he did not have any communications open on the other (read: Russian) side of the equation. Which blows the collusion theory right out of the water.
The second was another big one: The revelation that, after all this time and all this speculation, Donald Trump Jr. did NOT call his father before and after the infamous Trump Tower meeting in the summer of 2016. Those calls to blocked numbers had Democrats going wild, with Adam Schiff all but certain that the son was on the phone to the father, and that those calls were going to bring down an American president the moment Democrats gained control of the House.
Alas, it was not to be. Turns out that Don Jr. was chatting with his buddies in corporate America – not to his dad. The Democrats still have no proof whatsoever that the president was in the loop on that meeting with the Russian lawyer. Nor that anything nefarious came out of that meeting in the first place.
The Russians messed around in our election, hacked the DNC, and made a whole lot of noise in an effort to see Hillary Clinton lose. That much we know. But if ever there was a thought that Trump was involved on the back end, it was almost totally debunked by this week’s revelations. It’s time for this witch hunt to end, and it’s time for the country to move on.
Read more: CFP