Have you heard the news?! It will change

The nation’s capital is awash in hysteria

WASHINGTON is awash in so much muchness these days it’s hard to follow the story. And that may be the point. Every new development or revelation is a “blockbuster” and smoking-gun proof that “this is bigger others.

Now, I actually believe that Clinton’s handling of classified material was outrageous. I am largely persuaded by the case laid out by my National Review colleague Andrew McCarthy, a former prosecutor, that the fix was in at the Justice Department to protect her from a criminal investigation because any such investigation would also implicate President Barack Obama.

I think the texts between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page are somewhat damning — of Strzok and Page. They clearly didn’t like Donald Trump and were clearly too interested in the political ramifications of their work (hardly unheard of at the FBI). But so far, the claim that these private texts between lovers prove profound FBI corruption and a vast conspiracy to destroy Trump strikes me as close to paranoid delusion. (Sometimes people say silly things to paramours.) Several GOP lawmakers instantly transformed a joke about a “secret society” into proof of a fifth column in our government — an embarrassing, gravity-defying leap to conclusions.

As for the surveillance court, I have no idea what the full story is. Some allege that the Obama administration used the so-called Steele dossier to get a warrant to monitor the machinations of Carter Page, an unpaid foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. If the Steele dossier was indeed the only evidence used to authorize a warrant, I think that’s a problem. If it were merely part of the application, I fail to see the Watergate-level scandal.

But here’s the thing. So far none of this has anything to do with whether Mueller can do his job properly. For all the phonus-bolonus about Strzok’s Deep State skulduggery, you’d think Strzok was secretly running the Mueller investigation. He was there for a little more than a month last summer. And Mueller dumped him once he heard about the texts and the affair.

Mueller, a man appointed to the FBI by a Republican, has a sterling reputation — even according to the president’s praetorian guard, before partisanship forced them to change their story. And he was in private practice during all of these other events.

But such facts don’t matter when fog and outrage are your most reliable weapons.

Steve Kelley Creators Syndicate