[Hoot Gibson]

If there was ever any doubt, the Mueller report removed it.
200+ pages of he said/she said about obstruction. Now lost in the narrative is the irrefutable fact that the president can fire anyone he wants to. And special counsel was in place to report on Russian interference, obstruction is a sideshow. This is how nations end up under a dictator, getting brainwashed by a few corrupt people at the top and a corrupt lying media. It's a million miracles Trump got elected. He isn't perfect (no one is) but he has saved our republic from liberals who show their evil on a daily basis and really don't even try to hide it anymore.

The sleazy tactics that the FBI used against Trump's associates and acquaintances have been used by the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies for years to obtain guilty pleas, often for charges like obstruction of justice, from targets. This is the first time that these tactics have been used in a witch hunt/fishing expedition against a sitting president, but using the unlimited resources of the federal government for political purposes is nothing new and it needs to stop.

I first realized how the federal government terrorizes American citizens by targeting friends and associates of their targets during the administration of George H. W. Bush. Lynne Martin, then a liberal, pro-abortion Republican Secretary of Labor who fancied herself a future presidential candidate, used these same tactics against small coal company executives to obtain plea bargains in coal dust sampling investigations.

As a result of Martin's abuse of the system, I have always since been skeptical of guilty pleas obtained by the federal government. They are a political tool used by politically ambitious prosecutors and other federal bureaucrats for personal advancement. If you threaten a person and their friends, whether innocent or guilty, with financial ruin and personal humiliation, many people will agree to plead guilty to offenses in exchange for light sentences, to protect their friends and families and to avoid personal bankruptcy.

Fortunately, Donald Trump had the financial resources to fight back. I hope that he signs a large stack of pardons for those who succumbed to Mueller's prosecutorial abuse of power, and for those who were convicted of crimes at trial simply because they were friends and associates of President Trump.

As sleazy a character that Paul Manafort is, the truth is that the federal government only chose to prosecute him for his dealings with the Ukrainians because he supported Trump. Federal law enforcement resources and courts should not be used as political tools and if evidence against an American citizen is weak, it should be a serious federal crime to persecute that person's friends, family, and associates to obtain additional evidence and plea bargains through unrelated prosecutions and/or threatening such prosecutions.