There is a light-weight, even comical element to the recent Mueller indictment of 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies for "meddling" in the 2016 presidential election. This indictment's wording suggests that gossiping or kibitzing are now criminal offenses. It even has the smell of desperation or possible purposeful misdirection to it ... keeping this investigation alive until bigger game can be bagged.
Despite the narrow range of this indictment, there are other possible issues emanating out of Mueller's modest accusal:
- Much of the information and even some of the text of this indictment came from a Russian business journal story that was published last fall ... see: NY Times article
- Steve Robnson of the Howie Carr Show has asked about a very interesting omission from this indictment, namely where are the accusations about Russian hacking into the DNC computer and the stealing of John Podesta's emails and putting them on Wikileaks? This would seem a natural inclusion since we have been told that "17 of our intelligence agencies" agree with this obvious crime.
- The Mueller indictment claims that the Russians were spending upwards of a million dollars a month on Facebook fake news and ads ... whereas Facebook itself testified to Congress recently that the sum total of all this meddling was at most $100,000.
All in all this indictment, since it comes close to exonerating Trump from the original reason for Mueller's appointent ... Russian collusion ... seems a fart in a windstorm.
