The one big thing everyone has forgotten about Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation
Over the past five weeks we’ve seen two Republicans in Congress criminally indicted for financial crimes. It wasn’t lost on anyone that Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter were the first two members of Congress to endorse Trump for president, but their alleged crimes have nothing to do with Donald Trump and nothing to do with Russia. Somehow we’ve all forgotten about the fact that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s filings have fingered a GOP House candidate who is alleged to have conspired with the Russians.
This summer, Robert Mueller indicted twelve Russian spies for having hacked the Democratic Party for Donald Trump’s benefit during the 2016 presidential election. In the court filings for those indictments, Mueller spelled out that a “candidate for the U.S. Congress” in the 2016 election contacted Russian government spy collective Guccifer 2.0 to ask for copies of stolen documents. Knowingly attempting to receive stolen goods is the kind of felony you go to prison for. So why hasn’t this person been arrested?
As far as the person’s identity, there’s no way of knowing. Since the stolen goods were Democratic Party secrets, it’s fair to assume that this was a Republican. From there it becomes much more difficult to narrow it down. “U.S. Congress” can refer to the House and Senate, but most often means just the House. If we’re counting House incumbents who ran for reelection in 2016, then all 435 people currently in the House fit the description. That’s before getting to the 2016 House candidates who ran and lost. But the bigger question is what Mueller has and hasn’t done to this person.
If this person was a winning candidate in 2016 and is still in Congress, it would raise questions about why Robert Mueller didn’t indict this person before th 2018 election cycle. After all, you can’t have someone running for reelection in 2018 while on the verge of being arrested for illegally conspiring with a foreign enemy to alter the outcome of the 2016 election. This could mean that the person in question lost in 2016, and therefore is not currently in Congress.
On the other hand, there are a number of GOP House members who decided not to seek reelection in 2018 without stating a particular reason. It’s possible Mueller has already secretly cut a plea deal with this person, and the deal required the person not to run again. Why would Mueller choose not to publicly reveal that a sitting member of Congress has cut a plea deal in the Trump-Russia scandal? The only plausible explanation would be that this member of Congress has since been acting as a mole for him.
The above theories are all over the map for a reason: aside from one line in an otherwise unrelated indictment, Robert Mueller has given us no information about this candidate for U.S. Congress in 2016 who feloniously conspired with the Russians in an attempt at altering the outcome of the election. All we know for sure is that the other shoe is going to drop on this eventually, and that Mueller surely has a good reason for continuing to keep it a secret.
