Mueller says Republicans didn’t respond to Russian offers of help– but they didn’t have to do anything because Russians did all the work. Now Russians have their “useful idiot”: our President.

The special counsel has found insufficient evidence to show that any Americans (Republicans included) cooperated or conspired with Russians in their interference campaign against the 2016 Presidential election despite multiple approaches by Russian agents.  There is the issue of Manafort’s sharing of private polling data developed by the Republican party with a suspected Russian agent, Konstantin Kilimnik.  It is possible that Manafort passed additional information, but this apparently wasn’t developed despite the massive amount of investigative activity that Mueller led.

We may ask, from a practical point of view, whether the Republican Party or the individual presidential campaign needed to actually do anything for the Russian interference program to succeed.  In fact, it would be better (for deniability purposes) if there was little or no contact between the Russians and the campaign they intended to benefit.  The polling data would be one of the few things that the Russians needed to target their internet disinformation campaign to swing districts where it could be most helpful.

Thus, the target of the  Mueller investigation may be “innocent” in the sense that they didn’t have to do anything to get the benefits of the Russian program.  This makes the issue of obstruction much clearer.  Numerous people lied about their contacts with Russians because they realized that the campaign was “guilty” of allowing the Russians to interfere, and then offering them favors “if elected”.

If the Republicans were ethical and really offended by the Russian activity, they would have denounced it when it was first discovered.  In fact, they said nothing, and when they were confronted with the conclusions of the intelligence agencies they belittled them.  This is guilty behavior, and there doesn’t have to be any “there” there for them all to be conspiring to accept Russian assistance.

We can only hope that other Justice Department or state prosecutors will be more aggressive in their pursuit of wrongdoing by he who must not be named.  Otherwise, we will be in for a very bad time over the next few years.

Fortunately, (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), there are early signs of a gathering recession over the next eighteen to thirty months.  One early sign is the fact that 90-day Treasury bills get a higher interest yield than 10-year bills, an anomaly that shows that there is more demand for the long-term securities than usual– and more than the system normally accommodates.

Other signs, like a collapse in hiring, may already be here.  The last recession was ten years ago, a relatively long time, even though it seems like some things never got better after that.

If there is a recession before the 2020 election, the incumbent is likely to be overturned.  So there is that tiny ray of light/hope.

(image courtesy of pixabay.com)