Are indictments coming for the Russiagate players? Will the Obama-era officials who weaponized the U.S. Intelligence Community against an undesirable presidential candidate face justice? How close will those indictments come to the former occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? While nobody who knows – or may have contacts who know – seems willing to give definitive answers to these questions, it surely is more and more likely, with each passing week, that indictments are in the future of at least one or two of the co-conspirators.
Investigative journalist Sara Carter, who has doggedly pursued this scandal from the beginning, recently had on her podcast two congressmen who dropped some heavy hints. Neither Reps. Steve Scalise (R-LA) nor Doug Collins (R-GA) gave any guarantees. Both men strongly suggested, though, that legal jeopardy may indeed lie ahead for some of the people involved in the attempt to influence the 2016 election and, later, to bring down a sitting president with false accusations.
Uncovering a Plot
It took more than three years to draw back the cover on the Trump-Russia conspiracy, only to find that there was nothing there. It has taken about the same length of time to figure out that certain senior officials within the federal government knew, all along, that nothing lay beneath the cover except for their own fabrications and wild conclusions, born of gossip and whispers and fueled by their political biases.
The pieces have been slowly falling into place, the most recent being a list of names of Obama administration officials who requested the unmasking of former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn. The general was not the only American citizen to be unmasked by the previous administration, though. Carter pointed out that unmasking requests increased three-fold between 2013 and the end of former President Obama’s second term in office. Then-U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power alone made almost 300 unmasking requests – an unheard-of volume from a single official.
Indictments Coming Out?
Rep. Scalise confidently predicted to Carter that the so-called “Russiagate” affair is not going away. “This is a major national scandal,” Scalise said. “People need to be held accountable. People need to go to jail, and I think once you start digging and you see charges filed, this could go all the way up to the top.” It was something the congressman said a little later in the interview, though, that may have allowed a peek behind the curtain:
“I mean, this is something that never should have been allowed. It happened. We know what happened. We know some of the names already, that are out there in the public. There are probably more. I think once you see some of these indictments come out, some of these people are gonna talk because it goes higher up.”
Was Scalise merely speculating? Perhaps, although the words he used imply more than a simple hope that charges are being prepared: They suggest that indictments for at least some of the co-conspirators are ready and waiting.
Rep. Collins pointed out the trouble ahead for former Vice President Joe Biden, who requested Flynn’s unmasking just eight days before he, Biden, was to leave office. That fact alone puts the Democratic Party’s presumed 2020 candidate on the spot. As Collins noted, Biden could not possibly have had a valid national security concern that would have compelled him, with a week left in the White House, to personally require the information he requested.
The entire unraveling of the Russian “collusion” story and the surveillance of Trump campaign associates has been a pressure cooker for too long already. Half the country is anticipating the findings of federal prosecutor John Durham. The other half is dreading those findings. Those indictments? Are they nothing more than speculation, at this point, or are they already awaiting unsealing?
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Read more from Graham J. Noble.
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