Why 3 probes of Mueller probe?
They’ll keep Trump happy through 2020
Every lawyer has difficult clients. There’s always someone who wants unreasonable things, refuses to follow advice and blames you when things go wrong. By all accounts, Donald Trump has always been the client from hell, even before he was president.
Trump is not Attorney General William Barr’s client. The United States of America is his client. Nonetheless, in his short career in the Trump administration, Barr has gone out of his way to mollify the president multiple times. One example is his appointment of John Durham, a longtime Department of Justice attorney and currently chief federal prosecutor for Connecticut, to investigate the origins of what eventually became the Mueller investigation, and related FBI surveillance activities.
This is the third investigation into this “issue.” The first is being overseen by the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Justice. The OIG regularly investigates how department business is conducted. It investigates allegations of wrongdoing and recommends how to improve DOJ processes and policies. It’s not at all uncommon for the OIG to do such an investigation after a controversial or high-stakes probe. The office did one, for instance, on the Clinton email investigation.
Jeff Sessions launched the second investigation back in March 2018, while he was attorney general, for the same reason Barr launched the third one last week: to try to keep Trump happy. Sessions appointed John Huber, the top federal prosecutor for Utah, to conduct more or less the same investigation Durham has just been handed.
Half-baked conspiracy theories
These serial, overlapping investigations are troubling for a couple of reasons. They are largely political theater about half-baked conspiracy theories, and they give the impression that they are meant to provide a narrative that continues until the 2020 election. It’s hard to justify launching a third investigation before you’ve gotten the results of the first two — unless your goal is to keep the investigations running rather than to conclude them.
So here are a few useful tools to help you cut through the fog of hysteria being pushed by Trump and his allies.
Rule 1: Anytime someone uses the phrase “Hillary’s email” in connection with the origins of the Mueller probe, stop listening. This is pure whataboutism in its most ridiculous form.
Rule 2: Follow the rule of “Yes. And so?” If any of the allegations were true, would that invalidate any of special counsel Robert Mueller’s conclusions? He uncovered and exposed a massive Russian attack on the 2016 elections. It was a deadly serious conspiracy, even if the Trump campaign wasn’t technically part of it.
Mueller filed over 30 criminal indictments regarding this plot. If he had not investigated, we wouldn’t know about any of it and we would be utterly defenseless when the Russians try to do it all again in 2020. Certainly, Trump would never have organized such a thorough investigation into Russia’s interference himself. He doesn’t even want to admit it happened.
No FBI plot against Trump
However the FBI was alerted to Russia’s attack on our democracy, the agency was duty-bound to investigate when it caught wind of it. That’s not “spying,” as Barr said, that’s a counterintelligence investigation. Once the FBI found evidence that the Russians were attempting to infiltrate a U.S. presidential campaign, would you really expect them to look the other way?
Rule 3: No harm, no foul. The general complaint underlying all these theories seems to be that the FBI was out to “get” Trump and prevent him from becoming president. And yet, the FBI kept an incredibly tight lid on its investigation. None of the extremely damaging allegations it had uncovered became public until after the election — and this includes the famous “Steele dossier.” It’s nonsense to suggest there was some enormous plot to dig up dirt on Trump but then only release that information after the election was over.
The Department of Justice and the FBI are fiercely dedicated to defending America and providing scrupulous and apolitical justice. That’s their job. Sometimes they make mistakes. If that happens, investigators for the Office of the Inspector General will bring those mistakes to light. That’s their job.
But there is no point in launching multiple investigations into the same issue, and certainly not until the OIG has completed the one it is doing. Starting an investigation for the purpose of suggesting that there’s something to investigate — as Barr has done — is a dangerous step toward turning DOJ into a political tool.
In Barr’s case, where there’s smoke, there’s mirrors. Don’t fall for it.