Mueller investigation

Rod Rosenstein’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee was quiet, calm, almost bemused. But the tale he told was devastating — to the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the Mueller investigation. It destroyed three years of media narrative about ‘Trump-Russia’ collusion. It’s obvious now why Senate Democrats want to kill all future hearings on the topic. They lack the votes to do it, but it’s the thought that counts. Testifying under oath, Rosenstein laid out a series of fundamental problems plaguing the entire collusion investigation. Actually, he did even more.

Anyone who has children understands the importance of teaching them to say 'sorry' when they’ve done wrong. Apologizing for causing harm to others teaches our young to be empathetic. Being able to say sorry helps knit the fabric of society together. Otherwise, our social contract would devolve into petty squabbles and endless lawsuits.Alas, in the last few decades, as America has become more and more engaged in a cold civic war, we appear to have lost the ability to be contrite, especially in politics.We now know unequivocally that there was no substantial basis for the investigation of Donald Trump, his campaign, and those associated with him for Russian collusion.

In the beginning there was a clandestine ‘surveillance’ and ‘unmasking’ program by operatives in the Obama executive branch, targeting figures in some way related to President-Elect Trump during his 75-day transition period. But on January 5, 2017 the outgoing Obama administration took a fateful step. Obama convened a meeting in the Oval Office; present were his VP, the Deputy AG, his National Security Adviser, the heads of the FBI and CIA and perhaps one or two others. A decision was taken to open a counter-terrorism investigation. The target: the incoming president, Trump. The FBI chief, Comey, was dispatched the next day to brief Trump about an ongoing investigation, but hide from him that he was the target.

Robert Mueller’s appearance before two Congressional committees today was something close to a disaster for the Democrats. The former special counsel was halting, hesitant, at times unsure of himself or even confused. He looked weak and his testimony was weak. It often seemed as if there was some truth to the story broken by Cockburn in The Spectator USA that Mueller might be suffering from the early stages of dementia. I was watching CNN, where there was a slowly dawning horror about what seemed to be happening. Their anchor, Jake Tapper, said: ‘There were times in the hearing when he was sharp as a tack but there were times – we can’t avoid it – when he was not.’ Sharp as a tack, like the word ‘spry’, is something you say about the elderly and the infirm.

The Mueller report should have been a knockout blow to anti-Trump forces who invested their hopes in the special counsel. With Robert Mueller’s finding that the Trump campaign did not conspire with Russia to steal the 2016 election and that there was no clear path to indicting the president for obstruction, the enterprise should have shuddered to a stop. Instead, those who were at first dumbfounded by the special counsel’s report have since found reasons to be buoyed by it – by its grudging tone, its sly assertions resembling proof, and its insistence that not being found guilty should not be confused with innocence.

On Friday, I had the pleasure of recording a podcast with Michael Wolff at his hotel in Mayfair. Wolff is on a tour for his book, Siege, the sequel to Fire and Fury, his mega-bestseller about the Trump presidency. We talked Trump, the Trump-Russia inquiry, media screw-ups, Steve Bannon and Boris Johnson. You can listen here: https://audioboom.com/posts/7295917-michael-wolff-the-mueller-indictment-document-sits-on-my-desk Perhaps the biggest bombshell in Siege is Wolff’s claim that Mueller laid out an indictment of the president, a long document detailing how such a move would work. Mueller’s office has denied the document’s existence. But Wolff insists he has it ‘in my hands … I tell you: it sits on my desk.

It looks more and more like a foregone conclusion that impeachment proceedings will be initiated against Donald Trump in the near future. Bernie Sanders became the latest Democratic presidential candidate to call for this on Thursday, joining a cast of characters that includes Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Seth Moulton, and Wayne Messam. Bernie’s quandary is a particularly fraught one. He had equivocated for months on impeachment, lagging behind his chief ‘progressive’ competitor Warren, who was first to call for proceedings after the Mueller report’s release. You may not agree with Warren’s analysis, but at least she read the report and formed an independent conclusion.

Inquiring minds want to know, what will Justin Amash — wait, who? JUSTIN AMASH, you know, he’s the US Representative from Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District. He’s a bona-fide Trump-hating Republican. Waaaay back in 2016, he joined the lemming list of Republicans who opposed the nomination of Donald Trump. Some individuals who had signed onto that list — Sen. Lindsey Graham, for example — have had second thoughts and now support the President. But not Justin Amash. No siree Bob. His motto is ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’ In case you doubt this, consider his recent Twitter emission, which is a series of variations on a theme announced at the beginning of his Twitter thread. 1.

Did House Democrats actually want Attorney General William Barr to show for Thursday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing? No chance. The Committee knew at latest Sunday that Barr did not plan to appear under the additional strictures Democrats had decided to impose on a typical House hearing. They could have sent a subpoena. Instead, they waited for Thursday to advance the #ChickenBarr narrative and assert that the Attorney General is somehow evading the withering interrogation Democrats had planned. Democrats hoped a Barr questioning would provide their dozens of presidential contenders with viral YouTube moments.

William Barr took paternity of the Mueller report during his testimony before Congress today, declaring ‘It’s my baby.’ All that was missing was him breaking out into song, ‘I’ll say yes, sir, that’s my baby/No sir, I don’t mean maybe/Yes sir, that’s my baby now.’ Indeed it is.Barr may be Attorney General, but there was no Solomonic splitting of the baby. Barr fought a battle with an invisible Robert Mueller for possession, claiming that his old pal’s letter to him complaining about ‘public confusion’ as a result of the rollout of the report was, in fact, ‘snitty.

For so long, Democrats thought that the Mueller investigation would bring down President Donald Trump. The truth could be the opposite: without the Mueller investigation, President Trump is sunk. For two years, all that FAKE NEWS, as he so often called the allegations of collusion with Russia on Twitter, was the BEST NEWS Trump could have hoped for. The whole story was such obvious elite media madness that it induced mass sympathy towards him among the saner public. Trump knew that. Hence all the tweeting. For two years, Trump could make out that he would have already Made America Great Again were it not for the establishment collusion WITCH HUNT, and most people would say he had a point. Take away Mueller, and the heavy impeachment talk, and support for Trump starts to vanish.

If the report released Thursday proved anything, it was that Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors had an extremely broad mandate to investigate all conceivable angles of the theory that Donald Trump and/or his associates colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election. Page after page of the report describes the elaborate lengths Mueller went to ascertain whether there was any truth to this theory. And using the most emphatic language available to a prosecutor working within the confines of his legal remit, Mueller concluded with virtual certainty: No. There was no collusion.

Total exoneration? Pshaw! The Mueller report makes it clear that Trump, to use his own evocative language, was and remains a bad hombre. But whether any more voters conclude that he’s one than already had is an open question.If you like, you can read the efforts of the New York Times reporters reading the Mueller report. There are some nice salacious tidbits. Informed by Jeff Sessions about the appointment of a special counsel, Trump slumps in his chair in the Oval Office and announces, ‘Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.’Not quite.