After nearly two-years “investigating” President Donald Trump — cheered on by a relentless “resistance” of Democratic liberals, NeverTrump Republicans and the entire middle-class left — special counsel and former FBI Director Robert Mueller submitted his final report. He was forced to admit that there was not a shred of evidence of “collusion with Russia” by Trump or anyone in his family or administration.
This deflating end to the witch hunt deals a blow to the Democrats and to the FBI — the capitalist rulers’ political police, which had been substantially transformed into a partisan tool of the anti-Trump crusade.
The Russia conspiracy theory was pushed by a range of former and current FBI and CIA officials, from ex-CIA chief John Brennan to former FBI Director James Comey, as well as Mueller.
The main target was never really Trump — who like his Democratic Party opponents is in the business of defending the interests of U.S imperialism — but “deplorable” working people, especially in smaller cities and the countryside, who dared to vote for him, hoping to “drain the swamp” in Washington, and those who didn’t vote at all.
The attempt to use the FBI and criminal prosecutions to settle political differences within the capitalist class is new, and a danger to the working class. The FBI is tasked by the propertied rulers with going after working-class fighters and political organizations, like the Socialist Workers Party, the unions, Black rights groups, opponents of imperialist war and the like.
There was never any evidence of collusion with the Vladimir Putin regime. The so-called dossier the political police used to justify opening the witch hunt was a product of the Hillary Clinton campaign. Mueller’s gang ended up filing a series of unrelated charges against former associates of Trump.
Mueller’s failure to indict or impeach Trump is a death blow to the “resistance” and will intensify the Democratic Party’s internal fractures between “progressives,” “socialists” and others. Barring something like a new economic crisis, it sharply increases the odds of Trump’s re-election in 2020.
Next week’s Militant will take a look at these developments and the political crisis of the capitalist rulers’ parties — and the stakes for the working class.