Just when you think the country has moved past special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election interference in 2016 and possible collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign, the whole mess has been revived, thanks to the man at the center of the probe – Donald Trump, himself.
Not one to sit quietly on the sidelines for more than a day or two, former President Donald Trump issued a statement Sunday that blasted the New York Times and Washington Post for their coverage, published over a seven-month period in 2017, which he calls a “politically motivated farce.”
I have to point out that while Trump was banned from Twitter for his insurrectionist rantings, that does not mean he is off the social media platform, as noted by the tweet from a supporter who is a pro-Trump follower. It is especially scary, seeing as she has over 200,000 followers.
Journalists at The Post and The Times received the award for a series of articles published between February 8, 2017, and September 7, 2017. The Pulitzer Prize committee lauded the journalists for their “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.”
According to Business Insider, Trump said the headlines were “extremely sensational and leaned heavily on unsubstantiated anonymous sources.” He also requested the reports be withdrawn because they were awarded based on articles about the “now-debunked Russian collusion conspiracy theory.”
“Numerous conservative news outlets and commentators questioned the legitimacy of these reports,” Trump wrote, adding that he thought there were “clear logical fallacies” in them.
But here is the real kicker – Trump also writes, “It has since been confirmed that the allegations were false and I have been exonerated of these charges.”
The Mueller report in 2019
After a nearly two-year investigation, Robert Mueller reported no prosecutable evidence of a conspiracy between Trump and Russia. While Mueller did not find evidence of a criminal conspiracy, investigators made clear the Trump campaign was “receptive” to offers of assistance from the Russians.
“The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful,” the report states, “but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”
Mueller did lay out extensive evidence of links between Trump aides and Kremlin-linked Russians and said he was not exonerating Trump for attempting to obstruct justice. But Trump’s new Attorney General, William Barr refused to act, allowing Trump to claim exoneration. Mueller protested Barr’s representation of his work.
It seems that Trump’s fresh demands to the Pulitzer committee appear to be founded on the recent indictment of Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer who was previously employed by the Clinton campaign.
Special counsel John Durham has accused Sussmann of lying to the FBI about whom he was working for when he tipped the bureau off about potential covert communications between the Trump organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank.
According to The New York Times, Sussmann has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers have accused Durham, a Trump-era appointee, of going after their client for political reasons.
