The Robert Mueller hearings continue to grind on, and perhaps especially on Mueller himself. At times, Mueller acts as nothing more than a one-word validation for Democrats reading verbatim from his report. At other times, he appears lost and unfamiliar with it — especially in this tough cross-examination from Republican Jim Jordan. Jordan highlights the curious case of Joseph Mifsud in the Russia-collusion saga, whose name comes up 87 times in Mueller’s report, included repeated references to his lying to investigators.
See Also: WaPo’s post-Mueller advice to Dems: Maybe focus on 2020 instead of impeachment
And yet, when Jordan asks why the FBI didn’t charge Mifsud for lying as he did with Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, and Paul Manafort, Mueller can’t immediately recall Mifsud or his role. When his memory gets
refreshed, Mueller can’t offer any explanation for their decision not to press charges either:
***** VIDEO OF JORDAN QUESTIONING MUELLER *****
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Mifsud’s not just a footnote in Mueller’s narrative. He first gets introduced on page 5 of Volume I as the man — as Jordan accurately notes — who tells George Papadopoulos that “the Russian government had ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of e-mails.” Papadopoulos’ indictment and conviction for obstruction by Mueller’s office directly relates to his interactions with Mifsud (pages 9 and 81 fn). On page 193, Mueller’s report outlines a number of false statements that Mifsud subsequently made to investigators:
***** SEE LINK *****
Why wasn’t Mifsud charged with the same crime as Papadopoulos? After all, they later got Papadopoulos to admit he’d lied and to cooperate with investigators. That would have cured the defects listed in this summary and allowed prosecutors to dig deeper into Mifsud, but it appears that they just let the matter drop. Mueller had no answer for this, and tried to claim that he couldn’t discuss declination and charging decisions. “It’s obvious, I think,” Mueller told Jordan, “that we can’t get into charging decisions.”
Excuse me? His report exists because the statute requires Mueller to explain his charging and declination decisions. Jordan suggests that the reason for Mueller’s refusal to answer is that Mifsud is an intelligence operative, but even if that were the case, Mueller had no trouble indicting “thirteen Russians no one ever heard of,” as Jordan put it. Why not Mifsud? Mueller won’t say. Jordan suggests that the reason is that Mifsud might not be a Russian intel asset but perhaps an American intelligence asset. And that might explain both why Mueller didn’t charge Mifsud and why Mueller won’t talk about him, because that would fall right into Michael Horowitz’ probe.
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SO MUCH MORE HERE:
http://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2019/07/24/jordan-mueller-wasnt-joseph-mifsud-charged-obstruction/?utm_source=hadaily&;utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=3d3cc08e7f4993eca7803ddfd6b7add0
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
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