RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14595/office-of-special-counsel

Ordinary prosecutors are not allowed to comment about why they decided not to prosecute the subject of an investigation. The Mueller Report, when made public, violated that salutary tradition. It contained negative information about people, including the president, who will have no opportunity to respond in a legal proceeding.

The report and the testimony introduced the novel and dangerous concept into our legal vocabulary: “Not exonerated.”

From day one, I proposed an alternative: namely the appointment of a nonpartisan expert commission whose job it is to investigate the role of Russia in trying to influence American elections and to influence our American democratic processes. Like the 9/11 Commission, this Russia Commission would not be pointing prosecutorial fingers for past derelictions, but would be focused primarily on preventing Russia from continuing to influence our American political processes. Prosecutors, like the Special Counsel, operate behind closed doors and in secret. They hear only one side of the story.

Robert Mueller’s performance in front of Congressional committees should mark the end of special counsels, special prosecutors, independent counsels and the like. These hearings demonstrated, if any further demonstration was required, how dangerous it was to go outside of the normal processes of criminal justice.

Ordinary prosecutors are not allowed to comment about why they decided not to prosecute the subject of an investigation. The Mueller Report, when made public, violated that salutary tradition. It contained negative information about people, including the president, who will have no opportunity to respond in a legal proceeding.

The report and the testimony introduced the novel and dangerous concept into our legal vocabulary: “Not exonerated.” This concept, which finds no basis in the rules of the Justice Department or the Special Counsel, is a variation on the nefarious theme articulated by the disgraced former FBI director, James Comey, when he went beyond announcing that Hillary Clinton would not be prosecuted, and expressed his opinion that she had been extremely careless in her treatment of emails. This statement said, in effect, that Hillary Clinton was not being exonerated.

Mueller’s testimony was confused and confusing on many scores. He couldn’t explain why he had reached a formal decision on conspiracy with Russia but had failed to reach a formal conclusion about obstruction of justice. He had to pull back on his answer to whether the decision not to charge the President was based on a Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president. There was no explainable pattern as to why he chose to answer some questions while declining to answer others. He seemed not to be familiar with the contents of the Report that bears his name. It was almost as if he had signed his name to the Report without carefully reading or understanding it.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/07/

There’s an old saying in newsrooms: News is stuff that people have forgotten. Robert Mueller’s dramatic appearance before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning was a striking reminder of this adage. The former special counsel did not drop any new revelations about the Trump-Russia affair. Yet in a simple but important manner, he reiterated the basics of this scandal—perhaps the most consequential political scandal in American history. These are the fundamentals that have often been subsumed by all the never-ending partisan squabbling and by the ongoing crusade mounted by Donald Trump and his defenders to distract from his perfidy. These are the facts that Trump has refused to acknowledge, and they are the facts that taint his presidency and undermine its legitimacy.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/24/this-was-the-most-powerful-man-in-america-for-two-years

For two years, Robert Mueller was the most powerful man in America. Since May 2017, he has ruled the media, the government, and the public discourse. Elusive by design, Mueller, along with his team of partisan prosecutors, operated in a rarified sphere exempt from the normal political constraints of scrutiny and accountability.

Americans repeatedly were assured that Robert Mueller possessed superhuman faculties. His integrity is unimpeachable, his professional track record is flawless—or so we were told. A war hero and former FBI Director, appointed by Republicans doncha know, Robert Mueller was the man, the patriot, who would get to the bottom of how Donald Trump and his corrupt campaign associates colluded with the Russians to throw the 2016 election in Trump’s favor.

Leaders on both sides of the aisle assured us that Mueller would act in a fair manner, that he would oversee every detail, and that any case against the president would be rock solid. Any tepid criticism of the special counsel was the equivalence of treachery, an attempt to subvert the rule of law; any Trump tweet aimed at the man in charge of a politically-motivated investigation intended to take down his presidency was proof of his criminality.

For two years, Congress, mostly led by Republicans during that time, cowered in the powerful shadow of Robert Mueller. Governance ground to a halt as our country’s legitimate challenges, including a porous southern border, were ignored. Conservative commentators piled on, working with the Left to attack anyone who dared to challenge Mueller’s power. Americans repeatedly were warned that “the end is near,” “the walls are closing in,” “Trump’s days are numbered,” as Mueller’s team notched one indictment after another, although none was related to election collusion. Americans braced for the worst, or the best depending on one’s political affiliation, as we became convinced Donald Trump would be hauled out of the Oval Office by the Messianic Mueller.

https://spectator.us/democrats-events-mueller-trump-2020/

Lights! Camera! Inaction!

The hearing, pushed hard by House Democrats, was supposed to be a major public event, designed to highlight allegations against President Trump in the report by special counsel Robert Mueller. It was always about convincing the public that the report was far more damning than the public initially thought. It was never about new evidence — only about putting the existing report up in lights.

It failed in that theatrical goal. The phrase of the day is a stumbling Mueller asking, time and again, ‘Can you repeat that?’

For Democrats: the hearing was all about revving up public support for impeachment. That meant building enthusiasm well beyond their base. The key was to highlight President Trump’s alleged obstruction of justice in a convincing, gripping fashion.

For Republicans, the hearing was all about stopping that and defending the president. Their party cannot retake the House and retain the Senate if the top of the ticket is badly damaged.

Given these political stakes, the Democrats needed to ‘win’ the hearing outright, to show that they need to keep investigating the president, even if that prevents them from advancing other legislation. The Republicans had an easier task. They merely had to stop the Democrats from using the Mueller report to fuel impeachment. That’s exactly what they did. They succeeded not by winning outright but by blocking a Democratic victory.

As political theater, the hearing was a dud. The five-minute question periods, alternating between parties, made it hard for Democrats to build a convincing narrative. Even worse, the Democrats’ star witness was a visibly aged special prosecutor. Robert Mueller capped a distinguished career of public service with an undistinguished performance. He looked weak and sometimes befuddled, repeatedly asking for questions to be repeated. He refused the Democrats’ invitation to do a ‘show and tell,’ in which he would read his report aloud and embellish its findings. He essentially told the country, ‘I have nothing to say beyond the report itself. Please move along.’