Federal Prosecutors Drop Charges In Special Counsel’s Most Russia-Related Case For Collusion

Ben Weingarten

Under cover of the wall-to-wall coverage of Chinese coronavirus, a central pillar of the already discredited Robert Mueller special counsel investigation has suffered a major blow, further exposing the miscarriage of, and disaster to, our justice system that it represented.
Federal prosecutors have dropped the charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States against two corporate defendants in the Russian “troll farm” case. That case hewed most closely to the special counsel’s mandate in that it showed Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election, although absent “collusion” with Americans.
Recall that in the much-bandied-about case, the Robert Mueller special counsel team indicted 13 Russians and three corporate entities for “defrauding” the United States in allegedly engaging in a cartoonish, low-budget social media political meme campaign. The team presented the case as proof positive that the Russians worked to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election — although there has never been any proof Russia altered one vote nor evidence any American changed his or her vote due to seeing a crude Russian-created meme on social media.
The indictment belied this narrative, showing propaganda produced by the Russian participants in the scheme, favorable at one time or another to no fewer than four candidates, and staking out varied positions on a diverse array of issues. The primary “strategic goal [was] to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” in the words of the special counsel. It was not to help any one candidate win.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy at the time suggested the indictment was “more a political statement than a charging instrument,” since prosecutors do not file indictments publicly when the defendants have not been apprehended. In this case, the defendants would never be apprehended, as they resided in Russia.
This view appears to be vindicated now that two of the corporate defendants the special counsel included in the indictment have been dropped from it. These two entities were Concord Management and Consulting LLC (Concord) and Concord Catering (collectively, the “Concord Entities”). Laughably for Russia, Concord Catering allegedly did not even exist during the time period the indictment covered.

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