Republican lawmakers allege Special Counsel Robert Mueller may have perjured himself before Congress in his sworn testimony last month, when he gave what they say were incomplete answers regarding why he held an earlier press briefing. Recently released court documents suggest Mueller may have made his surprise appearance before the press in Washington on May 29 as damage control after a federal judge privately threatened to hold his team in criminal contempt of court over what she called misleading language he included in his final report about Russian government interference in the 2016 election.
Read More...On a more meta level, editorialists began plotting a rhetorical course that abandoned the search for conspiracy between Trump and Russia, and focused instead on obstruction of justice as the big reveal. Legal analysts like Jeffrey Toobin were put back to work building the public case. We were reminded frequently that a charge of obstruction does not legally require an underlying offense. These arguments by themselves essentially admitted the previous two years of speculation about criminal Trump-Russia conspiracies involving blackmail, bribery, election fixing, espionage, even treason – all the theories about pee tapes and secret servers and five year cultivation plans and meetings with hackers in Prague and bribes from Rosneft — had been dead ends.
Read More...And before you accuse me over-psychologizing, just remember that a guilty conscience can lead to depression, which, it is well known, shuts down the brain. Time and illness obviously can account for a man’s decline, but also circumstances. Mueller knew how his reputation was going to be destroyed. It’s the old link between the mind and the body. Almost every one of us has seen this among people we know.
Read More...The most notable aspect of the Mueller report was always what it omitted: the origins of this mess. Christopher Steele’s dossier was central to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe, the basis of many of the claims of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. Yet the Mueller authors studiously wrote around the dossier, mentioning it only in perfunctory terms. The report ignored Mr. Steele’s paymaster, Fusion GPS, and its own ties to Russians. It also ignored Fusion’s paymaster, the Clinton campaign, and the ugly politics behind the dossier hit job.
Read More...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 figure-head for an investigation that was carried out by the team of zealots he assembled.
Read More...The 448-page Mueller report has been public for two months, so it might seem strange that the Justice Department’s original instructions to special counsel Robert Mueller, outlining what he was assigned to investigate, are still a secret. But they are. And now, it turns out those instructions were more extensive than previously known. Until now, it was widely understood that there had been two “scope memos” from DOJ to Mueller. Now, it turns out there was a third, as well.
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