By virtually all accounts, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the “author” of the Mueller Report, came across like a uniformed, absentee landlord in his Capitol Hill testimony on Wednesday about alleged Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 presidential election. As such, the momentum among House Democrats for a Trump impeachment as a result of this disaster seems to have stalled.
Among other things, Republican lawmakers (who for once seemed well prepared) finally had a chance to ask the former FBI director why he hired only anti-Trump, Clinton- and Obama-connected lawyers (the “18 angry Democrats” as President Trump repeatedly described them on Twitter) for his prosecution team. Mueller’s answer was totally unsatisfactory, however.
Ironically, the Clinton campaign’s purchase of Russian-sourced fake opposition research, the Steele dossier, is the only election-related collusion that has been established. Mueller never investigated the circumstances around the dossier and how it lead to the FBI surveilling the Trump campaign for reasons that he declined to explain.
A Department of Justice investigation is pending into how this sham investigation by resistance-minded, Trump derangement syndrome-suffering, zero-integrity federal government officials got started in the first place.
New York Post columnist Michel Goodwin explains that Robert Mueller was merely a figurehead in the attempt to get Trump:
“Bumblin’ Bob was a train wreck of epic proportions. The fallout is immediate, starting with this: Impeachment is no longer an option. It had a slim chance before Wednesday’s painful slog and no chance after it. Mueller was that bad, seemingly hard of hearing, often confused, and contradicted himself several times. The Dems’ fantasy of having him breathe life into his report backfired.His dismal performance killed any possibility that his 450-page tome could serve as a road map for overturning the 2016 election and driving Trump from office.
“Although Mueller’s general demeanor was disturbing, it was also instructive. He did not project the mental and physical vigor of someone capable of leading the complex two-year probe into Russian meddling, possible Trump collusion and obstruction of justice. More likely, the 74-year old former FBI director was something of a figurehead for an investigation that was carried out by the team of zealots he assembled.
“That is not an incidental issue. As Andy McCarthy at National Review has written, and as Trump has repeatedly charged, the prosecutors were primarily people who had donated to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats or who otherwise made known their support for her. Perhaps Mueller’s detachment explains his failure to remedy these obvious conflicts of interest that undercut his credibility from the moment they became known. Oddly, Mueller removed FBI agent Peter Strzok because his bias against Trump became public, but apparently had no concerns about public reports showing that chief prosecutor Andrew Weissman and others were in Clinton’s camp.
“Mueller’s detachment may also explain the bizarre standard his team created, where Trump’s presumption of innocence was shredded because they could not find sufficient evidence to ‘exonerate’ him. Several Republicans pointed out that prosecutors either file charges or don’t, but have never imposed the impossible standard of exoneration. Those flaws are among many that undercut the report, including the fact that much of it reads as if it were written by Trump-hating reporters from the New York Times.
“As one GOP member noted, the report cites nearly 200 articles and broadcasts, giving the impression that the media set the probers’ agenda. At the very least, Mueller’s team and the media were joined at the hip from the get-go…
“So from start to finish, Trump was targeted by partisan law enforcement officials who had no business being on the case. And yet, despite a probe that ran a combined three years, involved hundreds of witnesses, thousands of subpoenas and surveillance on Trump associates and maybe the president himself, investigators could find nothing — nothing! — worthy of a criminal charge.”
According to FNC’s Greg Gutfeld, the Democrats “wanted the Empire Strikes Back, but [instead] got a rerun of Matlock.”
