Delivering indictments against 13 Russian businessmen for tampering in the 2016 election, 73-year-old former FBI Director Mueller fulfilled his mandate as Special Prosecutor appointed May 17, 2017 by Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein. Whether any of those grand jury indictments stick is anyone’s guess. In a 37-page indictment, Mueller alleges that Russian operatives worked since 2014 covertly through social media like Facebook to aid the campaign of 71-year-old President Donald Trump and to harm former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Never before has any foreign national been charged with violating U.S. criminal laws for engaging in pernicious propaganda designed to influence a U.S. election. Propaganda from Russia and the U.S. has been commonplace since the end to WW II, when both countries competed ferociously for the hearts-and-minds of countries around the globe.
Mueller’s indictments insist that the propaganda started in 2014, well before Trump announced for President June 16, 2016. While Mueller dates the propaganda campaign to 2014, the truth is it’s been going on daily since the Cold War. Both countries routinely, through respective information agencies, push pro-U.S. or pro-Kremlin propaganda to advance political agendas. Fingering Russian businessmen for seeking false identities to work on placing fake stories and publicity stunts in American social media would be difficult to prove in court, despite the indictments. “The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong—no collusion,” Trump tweeted today, noting that he did not announce for president until June 16, 2016. Mueller said nothing about Trump collusion, only that he identified 13 Russian businessmen involved in propaganda peddling.
When you consider that propaganda goes on daily designed to influence political and trade deals, it’s hard to understand under the First Amendment how you can charge anyone for speaking their mind, no matter how twisted or off-the-wall. When the U.S. drops leaflets into Iran or uses Voice of America to tell citizens to rise up against the brutally repressive mullah regime, it’s not considered meddling or pernicious propaganda—only good information. Yet Russian nationals, operating in the land of the free get indicted for spewing nonsense on social media. “The indictment charges all of the defendants with conspiracy to defraud the United States, three defendants with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud and five defendants with identity theft,” leaving government prosecutors a steep slope. Talking about trying to influence an election doesn’t mean it worked.
When the dust settled Nov. 8. 2016, Hillary had won nearly 3 million more popular votes than Trump. Mueller’s indictments suggests that whatever propaganda took place it changed the outcome. Yet any read of the election results suggests Hillary did far better than Trump in the popular vote. Mueller would have to contend that the 13 Russian propagandists worked successfully in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, the so-called battleground states. No one, even the most partisan Democrats, believes that Russia succeeded in the hotly contested battleground states, when Hillary won most votes on the West and East coasts. Rosenstein called the 13 Russians’ work “information warfare against the United States” with the intent of sowing discord and distrust in the electoral process. Giving Russian hacks far too much credit, there’s zero proof that the 13 Russian businessmen succeeded in anything, certainly not changing the 2016 election’s outcome.
When information’s disseminated during U.S. election campaigns criticizing the U.S. health care system as backward, not meeting European standards, how do you know it’s not more propaganda from foreign sources, condemning the U.S. system. Yet Mueller’s indictments focus on the most nebulous possible connection to Russia, pointing fingers at Russian businessmen for spewing propaganda before, during and after the 2016 presidential campaign. Mueller seems indifferent to the fact that Hillary paid former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to dredge up dirt on Trump from his Kremlin contacts. Yet Trump, not Hillary, is accused by the press of Russian collusion because her campaign and the Democratic National Committee were too stupid to cover up shenanigans during the 2016 campaign. If revelations about Hillary’s corruption and DNC manipulations came from Russian hacks, then so be it.
If the former United State Information Agency, now the State Department’s Broadcasting Board of Governors, tailored propaganda to influence and topple communist regimes around the planet, what’s the crime in Russian businessmen trying to influence a U.S. election or anything else? “Over time, these social media accounts became defendants’ means to reach significant numbers of Americans for purposes of interfering with the U.S political system,” read Mueller’s indictment. If the American media insists that Trump colluded with the Kremlin, like Hillary said Oct. 19, 2016 in the last presidential debate, are they not trying to influence American voters? There’s far more readers or viewers in the mainstream press than on Facebook or other social media sites. Under the First Amendment, propaganda’s protected free speech, for the media and private citizens, regardless of the lies
