Is this another Deep State media-coordinated smear designed to take down President Trump?
Outlets widely reported early Wednesday about a supposed bribery scheme being investigated by the Justice Department that allegedly involved individuals in the White House and unregistered lobbyists willing to give money in exchange for the securement of a pardon.
The disclosure is found in 20 pages of partially redacted documents made public by the D.C. District Court on Tuesday afternoon. According to the records, Chief Judge Beryl Howell in August reviewed a request from prosecutors to access documents that were obtained in a search as part of a bribery-for-pardon investigation.
Despite the large headlines from the MSM and the snide remarks from left-wing figures on social media accusing President Trump of pay-for-pardon, the filings don’t reveal the names of anyone involved or a timeline of the alleged scheme, nor for that matter did it appear that anyone has yet been publicly charged with a related crime.
All that is known is that communications between people, including at least one lawyer, were seized from an office that was raided sometime before the end of this summer.
“No government official was or is currently a subject or target of the investigation disclosed in this filing,” a DOJ official with knowledge of the matter told Fox News.
During the aforementioned raid, the government’s filter team seized “over fifty digital media devices, including iPhones, iPads, laptops, thumb drives and computer and external hard drives” as part of the federal investigation, per the documents. Filter teams insulate prosecutors from privileged information they can’t use in court.
Prosecutors had not provided evidence to the judge of any direct payment; rather, they showed evidence that a person was seeking clemency because of past and future political contributions. The investigators said in court that they planned to “confront” three people with the communications and finish their investigation.
Over the course of the last week, the Justice Department told Howell it wanted to keep filings related to the matter confidential in court because “individuals and conduct” had yet to be charged.
President Trump’s pardons have been a continual source of anger among the Left, with Democrats and the media fuming when the president has extended a pardon or commutation of sentence to individuals known to be his allies, such as Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Roger Stone, and Lieutenant General Michael Flynn.
President Trump on Twitter called word of the “pardon investigation” a case of “fake news.”
The news of the alleged bribery scheme investigation came on the same day that Attorney General Bill Barr claimed the DOJ has found no evidence of voter fraud that would have changed the result of the 2020 presidential election.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the Associated Press.
“There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” he added.
Is it possible that Democrats, especially if Joe Biden makes it to the White House, will use the DOJ’s pardon probe to whip up new charges against President Trump on the basis of “bribery?”
If the president manages to prevail against the fraud and begins a second term in January, Democrats may use this story as the basis of another impeachment. If President Trump leaves office, they may use it to try to put him behind bars once he no longer has the protections offered by the presidency on his side.
Democrats have already suggested that they want to investigate him even if he departs the White House. From weaponizing the IRS and Treasury to spreading rumors that President Trump can’t be trusted to not sell America’s secrets for profit once out of power, they’re clearly trying to lay the groundwork for investigations into the head of state for when he’s once again a private citizen.
Alleged bribery would give Democrats the perfect cover to exact vengeance on one of their fiercest political opponents — all in the name of justice.
At this crucial moment in the nation’s history, can Attorney General Barr be trusted? Or will he prove himself to be nothing more than another swamp rat?
