I don’t know about you, but I had a striking revelation: The Clinton and the Trump presidential impeachments and the theatrically dramatic investigations accompanying them were remarkably the same. In each case, the news media and our congress obsessed and transfixed for months on an investigation that seemed giant, sensational, and exhaustive, yet in each case was focused on something largely irrelevant to what was actually there to be investigated. Also, in each case, the relatively trivial offenses selected to be focused on were perfect to foment and stoke distracting Red Team/Blue Team division.
I first realized the strange kinship of the two impeachments/investigations when I was reading a Whitney Webb article. It was the
fourth article in Ms. Webb's MintPress News series on pedophile sex ring operator and apparent blackmailer Jeffrey Epstein. This is the
in depth, connect-the-dots series that has attracted Ms. Webb so much attention. The series was extra-remarkable when it got started getting real attention because Ms. Webb started it before Epstein’s provocatively mysterious death.– The fourth article in the series, the first written after Jeffrey Epstein’s death, had me thinking,
“reeling” is a better word, about how there was so much about the Clintons, Bill and Hillary, that Whitney Webb was writing about that was never investigated, never surfaced as part of any formal investigation, stuff that obviously should have been investigated. . . But I remembered the Ken Starr’s Whitewater investigation that turned into the Monica Lewinsky scandal based impeachment and trial of Clinton.
Hmm.
That’s when I first thought about the commonality of the Clinton and Trump impeachments/investigations. I don’t know if it vexed you, but for me it was excruciating that there is so much to investigate about Trump, so much that he could be impeached for (violations of the emoluments clause in the running of his hotels and resorts, diverting money appropriated for other things into his “wall,” willful violations of international treaties, assassination of Soleimani, putting a fox in charge of the hen house of every government regulatory agency chartered to protect the public), and yet the Democrats ignored all the potentially strong bipartisan issues challenging Trump and they impeached him for something totally different.
Ignoring strong potentially bipartisan grounds for impeaching Trump while going after Trump on weak ones, the Democrats weaken anyone’s future ability to impeach and convict Trump on the much stronger, valid grounds available;
“What doesn’t kill him, makes him stronger.” They probably weaken the ability of anyone to impeach and convict any president in the future. Beforehand, the Democrats notably put their energy into a rather bogus
“Russiagate” investigation. That’s now morphed, somewhat seamlessly, into a Ukraingate investigation. Of all possible things, the Democrats decided to impeach Trump for steps Trump took to surface corrupt activities of Joe Biden and his son in the Ukraine.
Are you
wondering about the probable depths of the Bidens’ Ukranian corruption? If you're doubting that it’s a significant issue, I suspect that, unserved by corporate mass media, or at least the Blue media, there’s much you haven't yet paid attention to. To catch up, I recommend to you some documentary segments “UkraineGate – Inconvenient Facts” (the first is “
A Not So ‘Solid’ Prosecutor”) produced out of France. It’s available through partnering work done with Consortium News, for anyone who wants to get extra educated as they indulge their
wondering about whether the Bidens, father and son, behaved in a manner worthy of a corruption investigation that would look into how, when Joe Bidden was in charge of Ukrainian affairs for the Obama administration following the United States’ participation in the overthrow of the Ukrainian government, Hunter Bidden, his son, got a very hard-to-explain, almost insanely lucrative five-year appointment to Burisma Holdings, a huge Ukrainian natural gas company. Joe Biden was thereafter, still theoretically working of the U.S. taxpayers, when he was involved in removing and replacing the Ukrainian prosecutor in charge of investigations of that gas company’s business.
It’s possible you’re a Blue-team loyal Democrat who is in line with the feeling that Trump should absolutely not have tried to surface matters for investigation about the Bidens– If so, I suggest you try turning these things around and imagine how a Red-team loyal Republican might scoff hearing about the
refusal of Democrats to allow the Bidens to be called as witnesses concerning the corruption Trump says he wanted to surface. If impeachment witnesses are, indeed, important, why not welcome these witnesses? . . Or just imagine that it was a yet-to-take-office Democratic president trying to surface, for better investigation, matters involving corruption during a prior Republican administration, perhaps Trump’s family reaping spoils in a country where we helped depose the government. That country could be Bolivia, which is another country with natural gas resources likely to now be privatized. Or possibly it could be Venezuela, an oil rich country the Trump administration is making concerted attempts to overthrow.
The point is this: Was Trump’s interest in seeing the Biden’s Ukranian activities investigated strong grounds for impeachment, or just an issue guaranteed to cause people to divisively side more strongly with contradictory outrage being expressed, respectively, in turn by either the Blue Team or the Red Team?
Now let’s go back in time to the Clintons.
Reading the Whitney Webb
article with so many unsavory facts and allegations about the Clintons in one place, made me think about how I felt when Ken Starr, having supposedly started with Whitewater, was relentless pursuing President Bill Clinton for not telling the frank truth about his philandering sex life. I remember, at that time, honing in on the principle that you should investigate the
crime, not investigate the
man. That’s because in this complicated world if you selectively devote enormous resources to investigate just about any single individual there is probably something you can find that that individual did wrong if that is your intent. And it seemed that was exactly what Ken Starr was doing.
I remember how back at the time in the 1990s, I felt increasingly aligned with, and defensive of Bill Clinton, because I felt he was being
persecuted not
prosecuted. At that time, it forced me to ask whether we needed to know about and judge peoples’ personal sex lives as a predicate for determining their suitability to hold a governing office. My answer on this subject was basically, no, with some exceptions. In particular, I felt those exceptions pertained to those individuals in politics who were
hypocritically trying to dictate and moralize about the sex lives of others by holding up rules they didn’t follow themselves: I was keenly aware that top Republicans prosecuting the Clinton impeachment, including
three Republican House Speakers at the time, Dennis Hastert, Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, were all involved in their own sex scandals.
I wasn’t the only one reacting to the Clinton impeachment this way. Democrats picked up seats in Congress as the probable result of the impeachment. The impeachment of Clinton launched MoveOn as an organization to raise money for candidates opposing Republicans. Bill Clinton’s sex life and the potentially hypocrisy of some Democrats seeming to defend even its predatory aspects, helped build up
both sides. MSNBC, only a few year old at the time was able, as
pointed out by Matt Taibbi, to build up a Blue-Team type audience reporting on the Clinton impeachment hearings– It was an alternative to Fox, which was relishing a semen-stained dress. Matt Taibbi
points out that,
“Fox struck gold with the Lewinsky story and the Clinton impeachment.” Both
“sides” were inflamed to more Red Team/Blue Team rooting by the issue.
Similarly, today, even as Blue Team-rooting Democrats were cheering the Trump impeachment or coaxed to do so, indications are that the Democrat’s flailing impeachment of Trump is
driving Trump’s
ratings up.
Flash back to the Clintons: After the Ken Starr investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton culminating in the targeting of Clinton for impeachment for quibbling about what
“is” meant when he was uncomfortably being questioned about his sex life, I felt as if the Clintons had been thoroughly investigated. They must have thoroughly investigated, or so it seemed. Ken Starr spent massively on his investigation of the Clintons. Starr is estimated to have spent between
$70 million and
$80 million on his investigation (with all Clinton investigations combined, it may have been
$92 million), and didn’t it seem that Starr was obviously stretching to hit the Clintons with whatever he could dig up, even it was something flimsy about Clinton not honestly answering questions concerning his sex life? To appreciate whether that was a lot of resources devoted to an investigation, consider that the entire 9/11 investigation, the investigation of the event that launched
multiple wars and
trillions in spending, was initially
budgeted just $3 million.
$11 to
$15 million was what was finally spent on that investigation; it was obvious it was to keep it on a short leash.
Fast forward to find we have Trump in office. We have another investigation that involves headlines awesomely plastered everywhere, Mueller’s “Russiagate” investigation. Again we sense that enormous resources are being devoted to the delving. This time though the investigation actually costs the taxpayers a little less. Although Trump
tweets and Giuliani as his lawyer
asserts that the Mueller’s “Russiagate” investigation is costing
$40 or more, the actual cost of it, coming out gradually,
over time is probably in the
mid-30s. But then, of course, the “Russiagate” investigation is followed up with Ukraingate from which its is financially distinct, although they get thematically linked ('
election help for Trump from foreign governments that use Cyrillic alphabets'). While we had the spectacle of what was referred to as the
Trump-accusing “whistleblower” in Ukraingate (probably not an individual, but a
CIA team effort), which must have involved some inevitable investigative followup, there are no figures yet offered for the cost of the impeachment investigation to
add to the perhaps
$35 million Mueller spent on Russiagate.
Certainly, from all the headlines and the leaks reported by Rachel Maddow, the New York Times, et al, there again had to be a feeling engendered that the investigation of Trump was thorough. Furthermore, the mainstream press assured us ahead of time that Robert Mueller could be relied upon for a credible investigation. As just a sample, the New York Times
said Mueller was
“a former federal prosecutor with an unblemished reputation” whose appointment would
“alleviate uncertainty about the government’s ability to investigate the questions surrounding the Trump campaign and the Russians,” that he was
“hailed by Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, who view him as one of the most credible law enforcement officials in the country.” We were told Mr. Mueller’s
“record, character, and trustworthiness have been lauded for decades by Republicans and Democrats alike.”
Accepting any assurance of the expected validity of any of Mueller’s investigations is ill advised . . . While the Times was writing about about Mueller’s
“unblemished reputation” and sterling qualifications to be the Russiagate Special Prosecutor on May 17, 2017, just four years prior, May 9, 2013, you would have been reading in the Times the prediction that Mueller’s legacy would be
unforgettably besmirched by Mueller’s botched investigation of tips the FBI was given ahead of time concerning the Boston Marathon Bombing.
If you
review the entirety of Mueller’s career, you will find that Mueller’s forte is, in fact, craftily botching investigations to reach incorrect and misleading results. The investigations he is involved in regularly focus on, pursue, and indict the wrong people for the wrong things. Researching and
writing about his record, I discovered over a dozen
extraordinarily high profile cases and investigations (BCCI, Iragate, Iran-Contra, Anthrax, Enron, Pan Am Flight 103 Lockerbie, Whitey Bulger, Khobar Towers Bombing, Timothy J. McVeigh, 9/11, etc.) running from the 1990s consistently to the present where his results were conspicuously suspect. At one time or another the inadequacy of various investigations were all covered by the mainstream corporate media, but the media usually has a conveniently short memory when they want to
report about Mueller’s record. The actual facts are that Mueller doesn’t seem to have very much in his record to boast of where the results of his investigations, when examined, did not seem to involve misdirection.
There was, of course, at the end, the publicly conducted jousting of Mueller William Barr that grabbed extra attention. That jousting made Mueller’s Russiagate investigation efforts to `nail’ Trump seem sincere, but it helps to set aside that distraction if you
know that Mueller and Barr are actually good friends who have worked together, often closely, on many of Mueller’s misdirecting investigations in the past.
As for Ken Starr, the Clinton Special Prosecutor, Starr just
showed up as part of Trump’s legal impeachment defense team to make news by not-so-adroitly reversing himself on the subject of whether the country should pursue
“divisive” impeachments. Should we consider Starr’s investigation of Clinton any more credible in terms of it's being on target in terms of what really needed to be investigated? Starr is also very good at ignoring things and not investigating what needs to be investigated. In 2016 Starr was fired from his job as president of Baylor University,
accused of ignoring a fairly massive scandal about sexual assaults on his campus. How ironic, after going after Clinton for sexual conduct issues. Ironic too that the president Starr would choose to defend is the pussy-grabbing Trump . . .
. . Starr was also part of the legal defense team for pedophile sex ring operator and apparent blackmailer Jeffrey Epstein, which brings up back around to uninvestigated cover-ups. It also bring us back around to that
fourth article in Whitney Webb’s Jeffrey Epstein series that laid out so much damaging information about the Clintons in relation thereto.
That then is what I believe deserves noticing: The Trump and the Clinton presidential impeachments and related investigations resemble each other so closely, that it is almost as if the Clinton impeachment and investigation was used as the playbook for what we just witnessed with Trump. It’s the same subtraction, division, distraction formula with the same results:
• Start with important serious complex matters worth investigating, that would need to be investigated in order to hold the powerful to account.
• Subtract out for investigation only some things that are trivial and not worthy grounds for impeaching a president.
• Have those things that you investigate be sensational and controversial to ensure escalating division of the populace from differing Red Team/Blue Team perspectives.
• Have a big showy investigation where it looks like all the stops have being pulled out and the investigators are really anxious to “get” the president any way they can.
And what you get is:
• A more divided populace, pushed more into the deepest corners of the Red Team/Blue Team factionalism that helps ensure, fuel, finance and perpetuate the duopoly that traps and controls the electorate. In this regard it is important to note that factionalism pushing people into rooting emotionally for the Red Team or the Blue Team, respectively, turns off critical thinking and analysis. Additionally, it causes people not to think in terms of the many common interests they share would otherwise naturally prevail.
• A public misguided by its strong impression that everything that needed to be investigated has been delved into deeply and relentlessly, that no stone has been left unturned. The public thinks that, like in a court of law, there has been a contest that ensures this, not that it amounts to a certain form of collusion.
• A government that is even less subject to being held to account than it was before.
