The media reaction to Friday's special counsel court filings on Michael Cohen suggest a politically damaging narrative for President Donald Trump, perhaps, but legal experts have come out to remind there is nothing from Paul Manafort nor Cohen linking the president to Russia attempts to influence the 2016 election.
That was, after all, the purpose of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
After Friday, it still has bore no fruit, as President Trump tweeted this weekend: "After two years and millions of pages of documents (and a cost of over $30,000,000, no collusion!"
Dead ends and dead money.
In fact, the Cohen filing rebutted the hunt for the collusion evidence. Cohen said a contact offering "synergy" with the Russia government in 2015 was never followed up on. Also, the charges levied on Paul Manafort reveal no ties to election meddling nor a conspiracy to coordinate with Russian operatives to affect the 2016 presidential election.
While there were some crimes uncovered in the effort, none were under the actual mandate of Russian meddling, legal expert Hans A. von Spakovsky wrote in an opinion piece for Fox News.
"Some crimes that people have been charged with or even admitted to have nothing to do with Trump, but rather pertain to wrongdoing or alleged wrongdoing by people with some association with him," he wrote. "Unquestionably, this is a fishing expedition that has caught some fish. Mueller and his team of prosecutors have secured indictments, convictions, and guilty pleas from people with some affiliation with Trump – but as yet, there is no 'smoking gun' saying there was Trump-Russia collusion to defeat Hillary Clinton and install Trump in the Oval Office."
And, legally, Friday's filings are merely a prosecutorial tactic to publicly reveal information that will not be used in an actual criminal trial — and cannot be cross-examined by a defense — according to legal expert Alan Dershowitz, as neither Manafort nor Cohen can be used as a witness because they have "lied so much."
"Manafort can't ever be used as a witness because he's lied so much — the same is true of Cohen, but what's really a problem with the report is they can use Cohen and Manafort because they're not going to be subject to cross-examination," Dershowitz told Fox News. "They would never dream of putting them on a witness stand as actual witnesses subject to cross-examination but they can use their material in a report."
It was not just Friday's court filings either that have come up as a mere dog and pony show. During his congressional testimony Friday, FBI Director James Comey showed a bad memory, and most important a bad reason to begin the investigation in the first place, media executive John Solomon remarked in an op-ed for The Hill.
The salacious dossier the FBI used to obtained the FISA warrant to surveil the Trump campaign was "uncorroborated" when presented to the secret court and when the special counsel was appointed, Comey said Friday.
"The FBI used an unverified dossier, paid for by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party as political opposition research, to justify spying on the duly nominated GOP candidate for president just weeks before Election Day," Solomon wrote.
"The towering ex-FBI boss confessed that the FBI had not corroborated much of the [British spy Christopher] Steele dossier before it was submitted as evidence to a secret court to support a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in the final weeks of the election. And Comey admitted much of the dossier remained uncorroborated more than six months later when he was fired by President Trump."
Again, while the investigation has levied support for criminal conspiracy with Russia, it has been an attempt to damage President Trump, said Judge Jeanine Pirro, who called on those waging their "nonstop personal vendetta against the president" to turn "fold up their fantasy tents" and their "focus on winning the 2020 presidential election."
"The nonstop personal vendetta against the president by Mueller and his rabid team of Trump-hating prosecutors breathlessly reported by the Trump-hating media at every turn is so intense they proudly beat their leftist chest any time they issue an indictment against someone, anyone, most are whom are living in Russia.
"Bottom line: none of the indictments that the special counsel has brought has tied the president to Russia."