THE MUELLER INDICTMENT

February 17, 2018

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,

101 Main Street #380

Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Dear Congressman,

Re: The Mueller indictment

Did you read the whole 37-page indictment of those Russians issued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller? I just finished it. It certainly puts paid to your Trump’s repeated assertion that the whole thing was a “hoax.” The meticulous, count-by-count detail makes distressingly clear the extent to which Russia involved itself in our election. And while it does not explicitly claim that their efforts were effective, it’s virtually impossible to believe otherwise. The indictment documents literally hundreds of thousands of social media posts denigrating one candidate and favoring another; how could these not have affected those few thousand votes that made the difference in the Electoral College?

And yet Trump and his enablers on Fox News and in the Republican congress absurdly claim this indictment as a “vindication,” proving the Trump campaign innocent of collusion. I beg to differ. There is no such exculpation offered in the indictment. To seize on the single word “unwitting” is to distort the implication of the whole. Indeed, right at the start the indictment declares that “Defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury) to defraud the United States.” Along with many others, I’m sure, I’m awaiting the revelation of those “persons known” to the Grand Jury.

Trump and his team return to that old (capitalized!) claim of NO COLLUSION, failing, apparently, to notice that the indictment is a devastating and persuasive account of an attack on the United States by a hostile foreign entity. The “normal” response of an American president would be to excoriate the attackers mercilessly and take bold retributive action.  Not Trump, who sees things only in his personal interest. Not the cowardly Republican leadership.

Shame on them all, Congressman. And shame on you if remain complicit in this treachery.

Respectfully,

Peter Clothier, Ph.D.