Special Counsel Jack Smith charged former President Donald Trump on Tuesday with four counts relating to his challenges to the 2020 presidential election, including “conspiracy to defraud the United States.” The supposed act of “fraud” was that Trump said the election had been stolen, despite knowing, or at least being told, otherwise. But if pushing a false claim of stolen elections is a federal crime, then Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party, the media, and the Department of Justice itself should be charged.
To recap: Hillary Clinton falsely claimed in 2016 that Russia was colluding with Trump. With help from election lawyer Marc Elias, Hillary’s campaign, and the Democratic National Committee, hired the Fusion GPS opposition research firm to create the phony “dossier” on Trump’s Russia ties. They shopped it, successfully, to the FBI, which began spying on a Trump campaign aide. Aides like Jake Sullivan (now the National Security Advisor) continued to spread the “Russia collusion” claim within the media.
After Trump won, the hoax took on new life. Despite conceding to Trump the morning after Election Day in 2016, Hillary kept claiming that the election had, in fact, been stolen. The Department of Justice renewed surveillance warrants even after it knew the “dossier” was false. Outgoing FBI director James Comey triggered the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate, though he had reason to know there was no evidence of “Russia collusion” — and, indeed, none was ever found.
The hoax undermined the legitimacy of the incoming Trump administration and interfered with its ability to conduct foreign policy. Even after Mueller came up empty, the hoax took on new life in the form of the 2019 impeachment investigation, which focused on Trump’s conversation with the Ukrainian president but implied that the president was secretly trying to help Russia. In the 2020 election, the perpetrators of the old hoax claimed, falsely, that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.”
In short, there has never been a greater or more consequential hoax in modern American history than the “Russia collusion” hoax. And yet no one has ever been prosecuted for it — least of all Hillary Clinton, who was ultimately responsible for it. The Department of Justice, through Special Counsel John H. Durham, pursued a few low-level prosecutions, but no one was ever targeted for the overall “fraud” — even though the story of how the “Russia collusion” hoax was concocted eventually emerged.
Arguably, “fraud” is not an applicable charge. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court issued two decisions, Percoco v. United States and Ciminelli v. United States, that restrict the use of fraud statutes. As one summary put it: “For decades, the Court has grappled with federal fraud prosecutions creeping further and further from offenses grounded in traditional property interests … the Court sent a clear signal that the wire fraud statute has its limitations and that it is not a catchall for any and all deceptive conduct.”
But if “fraud” is to be used, the “Russia collusion” hoax certainly qualifies. And it is more obviously a fraud than Trump’s “Big Lie” about the 2020 presidential election. While Jack Smith’s indictment claims that “These claims were false, and the Defendant knew they were false,” the indictment does not show direct evidence of Trump’s state of mind — only that he was told by aides that his allegations were untrue. There is overwhelming evidence in the public record to suggest Trump really believes that he won.
Regardless, the fact that the Department of Justice is willing to prosecute one side’s claim of a stolen election, and not the other, as a “fraud against the United States,” suggests a deep political bias in the agency, despite Attorney General Merrick Garland’s assurances. And it also points to the fact that senior officials at the Department of Justice, through their false warrant applications and leaks to the media, were co-conspirators in perpetrating the fraud of “Russia collusion,” for years, on the American people.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.