You Can’t Put America First Until Washington’s Foreign Bribery Industry Has Been Shut Down

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Commentary

Many people are wondering where things go from here, now that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has ended and the former FBI director has turned in his final report.

That report states there was no collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government before, during, or after the 2016 election. There will also be no further indictments or criminal prosecutions forthcoming from the special counsel’s office.

These two facts have exposed the more than two years worth of claims made by Democrats in Congress and by “journalists” in the Fake News media as either outright lies or disinformation that they swallowed without question.

Two years of confident assertions from people such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) were revealed to be false. Endless televised news segments and newspaper articles based on alleged inside information from anonymous sources “familiar with the matter” also turned out to be either hot air or not worth the paper on which they were printed.

As those in both the Congress and the DNC Media Complex who bought into the Trump-Russia hoax struggle to explain how they were so completely fooled–or were lying the entire time–let’s look ahead to where things stand, now that Mueller and his team have finished their work.

This is where I think things are headed: Wittingly or not, Mueller’s investigation of a hoax alleging a foreign government attempted to influence the 2016 election by helping the Trump campaign will result in the exposure of an all-too-real foreign bribery industry that the elite establishment created both in Washington and in the mainstream media. These elites created this industry in order to reap massive profits from it as they sold out U.S. interests to the highest bidders.

Curious Twists and Turns of Flynn Case

If all you go by is the popular media narrative, nothing about the prosecution of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn makes any sense.

Flynn reportedly lied to FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joseph Pientka about what he discussed in a series of phone calls with then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak. You’re supposed to believe that a highly trained intelligence professional who once was the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency simply forgot the NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies intercept and transcribe all such phone calls.

Even though Flynn knew every single one of those phone calls with Kislyak had been transcribed—meaning the FBI already knew every single thing he and Kislyak had discussed—he stupidly decided to tell FBI agents who have transcripts of these conversations at least one thing that is blatantly false and finds himself charged with perjury.

Stop for a minute and think about just how absurd that scenario is.

Flynn spent many of his more than 30 years in military intelligence warning that Russia was our biggest geopolitical foe and that Turkey was undermining NATO.

Then, Flynn went from talking about how the Turks and the Russians couldn’t be trusted and were working against U.S. interests, to suddenly flipping on a dime, starting a lobbying group, and enthusiastically seeking Turkish and Russian clients while talking up how wonderful Turkish President Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin were.

As with many other observers of the political scene, this sudden about-face on the part of Flynn looked very suspicious to me. The popular narrative pushed by the mainstream media is that Flynn is a mercenary turncoat, a sellout who decided to cash in by offering his considerable intelligence services to the highest bidder.

There have certainly been plenty of examples in the past of highly placed government intelligence officials launching new careers as shameless lobbyists for unsavory regimes abroad, so it wasn’t that hard for many people to assume this is what Flynn was doing.

My assumption is quite different from the popular narrative of Flynn the Mercenary Sellout. As I noted in an earlier column, I suspect the Flynn Intel Group was created as part of a counterintelligence sting to identify and target people engaging in illegal lobbying to influence American foreign policy.

What would be the purpose of a counterintelligence sting targeting people looking to do illegal lobbying to influence U.S. foreign policy?

You can’t really put America first until you shut down the vast illegal industry in Washington that disguises itself as “lobbying.” The Clintons, with their apparent pay-for-play deals, are merely symptomatic of the entire D.C. lobbying-and-bribery culture. American foreign and even domestic policy has been for sale to the highest bidder for a long time.

Can you handle the brutal truth? A lot of the people spending big money in Washington to shape U.S. foreign policy are not Americans.

You’re not really going to succeed in getting U.S. lawmakers and news media outlets to put America first until you cut off that massive pipeline of foreign cash that both have been getting from their foreign paymasters.

Many lawmakers in Washington and “news” media outlets sold out America to foreign interests long ago. These people needed Hillary to win that 2016 election to keep the machinery humming along smoothly.

Just from listening to Trump speaking on the campaign trail, the people involved in the massive pay-for-play industry in both the federal government and the news media knew he'd cause massive problems for them if he somehow managed to win that election.

China, Iran, Russia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and many other countries either have their governments or factions within their country paying a whole lot of money to our lawmakers and our mainstream media to “help” write U.S. foreign and even domestic policy.

Those on the receiving end of this vast pipeline of foreign money here in America, both in our government and in our media, are desperate to cover up what they’ve been doing, which is selling out the rest of us to their foreign clients and keep the money coming from their foreign paymasters.

Clear Precedents for Prosecution

It’s important to pay attention to the fact that Mueller’s investigation led to the prosecution of two prominent people for illegal foreign lobbying, and then trying to hide their gains through bank and tax fraud. The charges against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates show exactly how serious these crimes are.

Former Washington power player Tony Podesta may literally be the first person to have figured out where this is heading. Recall what Podesta did immediately following the unsealing of Manafort’s indictment.

Upon reading the Manafort indictment, Podesta:

1. Dissolved his successful lobbying firm;
2. Dove into the deepest hole he could find;
3. Still hasn’t stuck his head out of that hole.

Since Podesta did that, you’ve had the Mueller investigation demonstrate just how bad it is to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Meanwhile, it’s been in the public sphere for months that the only investigation Flynn is cooperating with—that we know about thus far—is related to ... what? Illegal lobbying in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

What else do we know? Well, media reports have suggested U.S. Attorney John Huber of Utah has been investigating the Clinton Foundation, a probe that includes massive “donations” from many foreign countries.

While the DNC Media Complex and the Democrats in Washington might have thought the Mueller investigation was just about bringing down Trump, I believe they were allowed to think that, and in many cases, they were fed deliberate disinformation so they'd go on thinking that.

In fact, the Mueller investigation, wittingly or not, was long ago turned to the purpose of setting up what Trump is going to do now: which is to shut down the massive foreign bribery industry, from which much of the Washington establishment reaps great profits.

And he'll win this fight, too.

Brian Cates is a writer based in South Texas and author of “Nobody Asked For My Opinion ... But Here It Is Anyway!” He can be reached on Twitter @drawandstrike.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.