Political warfare in Faschingstein heats up
Barry Grey, WSWS, Jan 25 2018
The political conflict within the Pindo ruling class and state over alleged Russian meddling in Pindo politics and collusion by the Trump administration has entered a new and more explosive stage. Reports emerged this week that Mueller interviewed Sessions and Comey and is planning to question Bannon and Trump himself. This triggered a frenzied counter-attack from the president, Thug congres critturs and pro-Trump media outlets. Both contending factions are reactionary. Trump embodies the fascistic and militarist outlook of the Pindo financial oligarchy. The Demagog Party, no less an instrument of Wall Street, is spearheading the campaign by sections of the military-intelligence establishment to force Trump to take a more confrontational line against Russia, or possibly remove him from office. The right-wing character of the Demagog opposition to Trump is underscored by three facts. First, the escalation of the fabricated anti-Russia campaign coincides with the Demagogs’ capitulation to Trump’s assault on immigrants, signaled by their cave-in on DACA recipients and Trump’s border wall during the stage-managed three-day government shutdown. Second, the Demagogs are rushing to defend the FBI against attacks by Thug opponents of Mueller’s investigation. Third, they are using Mueller’s anti-Russia investigation to escalate the campaign for Internet censorship, by charging that Russia is behind a pro-Trump social media campaign to derail the Mueller probe, and demanding that Facebook and Twitter intensify their clamp-down.
Mueller is homing in on Trump’s inner circle in what has all the earmarks of an obstruction of justice case, a key charge in the impeachment drives against Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. The special counsel’s team of FBI investigators questioned Sessions for several hours last week, making him the first Trump cabinet member to be hauled before his office. Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation after it emerged that he had falsely told Congress he had had no contacts with Russians while serving as adviser to the Trump campaign. He was heavily involved in the decision to fire Comey last May, after Comey refused to clear Trump of collusion charges and rebuffed White House pressure on him to drop his investigation of Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign from his post as Trump’s national security adviser in February. According to press reports, Mueller wants to question Trump on his decisions to fire Flynn and Comey and his threats last year to fire Sessions. Trump’s lawyers are reportedly in discussions with Mueller on the parameters of an interview which would likely include face-to-face questioning. In late 2017, Mueller indicted two former Trump campaign boxtops, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, on money laundering and other charges not related to alleged collusion with the Russian government. His office also announced that a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign named George Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians during the election campaign.
Last month, Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI about his conversations with Kislyak in the run-up to Trump’s inauguration. In his plea deal, Flynn pledged to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation. By the end of 2017, Mueller’s team had interviewed DNI Coats, DNS Rogers, DCI Pompeo, Reince Priebus, Sally Yates, White House Counsel Don McGahn and other members of Trump’s campaign and White House inner circle. Trump and the Thug critturs, backed by media outlets such as the WSJ and Breitbart, have launched a multi-pronged attack on Mueller and the FBI, excoriatingd Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a holdover from the Comey regime whose wife ran unsuccessfully as a Demagog for the Virginia State Senate in 2015. Thug critturs have called for his resignation. This week, it was reported that Trump and Sessions pressured FBI Director Wray to fire McCabe. Wray refused and threatened to resign if McCabe was ousted. He has replaced his chief of staff, a Comey holdover denounced by Trump and Thug congress critturs, as well as the FBI’s general counsel. The Thugs have stepped up their agitation over the text messages of the FBI staffers Strzok-Page expressing opposition to Trump and support for Clinton, the favored candidate of the intelligence establishment. Mueller removed Strzok from the investigation when he became aware of the texts last July, but the White House and congressional Thugs have repeatedly cited the case to charge the FBI and Mueller with anti-Trump bias. The result is a farcical and cynical spectacle, in which the Thugs badmouth the FBI and the Demagogs jump at the chance to claim the mantle of law-and-order and defend the police agencies of the state. This week, White House spox Raj Shah said in a statement:
The President believes politically motivated senior leaders of the FBI have tainted the agency’s reputation for unbiased pursuit of justice. New FBI Director Wray would clean up the misconduct at the highest levels of the FBI.
The Thug Party has more recently launched a campaign over news that the FBI has no record of text messages exchanged between Strzok and Page from mid-Dec 2016 until May 17 2017, the day Mueller was appointed special counsel. Thug Sens Charles Grassley and Ron Johnson, chairs of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committees, announced Tuesday night that they had written to DoJ IG Michael Horowitz about the missing messages. Finally, right-wing media outlets and some Thug boxtops are waging a twitter campaign under the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo, calling for the release of a classified four-page memo drafted by staffers for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes arguing that the Obama administration violated surveillance laws to spy on the Trump campaign and transition team. Thus far, the White House has withheld a decision on whether to support the demand. Adam Schiff, the ranking Demagog on the House Intelligence Committee, has been in the forefront of the anti-Russia hysteria. He called the memo “a deep disservice to our law enforcement professionals.” He and Sen Dianne Feinstein issued the letter this week demanding that Facebook and Twitter investigate supposed Russian involvement in the social media campaign around the Nunes memo.
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