Is their real goal to uncover the truth? Or is it to undermine the duly-elected President?
There were questions about the Independent Investigation right from the beginning:
Comey admitted his specific intent of leaking of his memo (legally dubious in its own right) was to trigger this investigation (and previous ones on both sides have had a habit of digging WAY past their established mandate).
Mueller was a personal friend of Comey.
Mueller had unsuccessfully interviewed for Sessions’ job.
Mueller’s team is chock full of Hillary Clinton hacks and flunkies… including a lawyer the Clintons had hired for the Clinton Foundation.
It was hard enough to take their integrity and objectivity seriously.
But now? Now people who have the legal authority to dig into Trump and his family’s personal business are politically weaponizing confidential information.
Information has come out about deals and activities that are not even remotely connected to the election, or any election-related activities that were within the mandate of the original investigation.
It’s looking more and more like an illegal opposition research fishing expedition masking as an ‘investigation’.
The team charged with investigating whether there was any collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia now appears to be leaking details of the probe to damage him.
“A person familiar with the probe” told Bloomberg that the special counsel is examining a broad range of transactions involving Trump and his associates’ businesses.… “The information was provided by someone familiar with the developing inquiry but not authorized to speak publicly,” the report said.
…That probe, launched last year during the presidential election, involved gathering information on Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort, according to “two people with knowledge of that probe.” That probe is now consolidated into the special counsel’s probe.
John Dowd, one of Trump’s lawyers, told Bloomberg he was unaware of this element of the investigation.
“Those transactions are in my view well beyond the mandate of the Special counsel; are unrelated to the election of 2016 or any alleged confusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and most importantly, are well beyond any Statute of Limitation imposed by the United States Code,” he said in an email to the outlet. –Breitbart
The late-night pundits seem to agree that a conflict between Mueller and Trump is coming, and that Mueller seems to be baiting Trump to fire him, which would be — some say — political suicide. It would be painted — fairly or unfairly — as ‘Nixonian’.
In fact, even Schumer is counting on it, and he’s deliberately setting up that conflict:
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said President Donald Trump would trigger “a cataclysm’’ if he fires Special Counsel Robert Mueller or pardons himself, even as one of the president’s lawyers said pardons aren’t being discussed.
…“It would be one of the greatest, greatest breaking of rule of law, of traditional democratic norms of what our democracy is about,” Schumer said on ABC’s “This Week’’ on Sunday. “It would cause a cataclysm in Washington.’’ —Bloomberg
Is there another way?
Is it possible that the Power of the Purse that Congress holds could be used to hold Mueller accountable?
Could Congress give Mueller fixed periods of time in which Mueller would have to report to a Committee, and have him justify his continued investigation?
If it turns out that it’s just an unending witch hunt, could they just stop funding it?
That’s where the idea of the power of the purse came from in the first place. English Congress simply refused to provide funding for their king’s stupid, wasteful plans. And if he couldn’t fund it, he couldn’t do it…any ‘authority’ to do it became irrelevant.
Couldn’t that reign in a run-amok Investigation, without triggering Impeachment hearings?
that has nothing to do with the original question or is digging into things that are — as in this instance — irrelevant muckraking and/or addressed by the statute of limitations.
And of course, we look forward to the arrest, trial, and lengthy imprisonment of whichever political flunkie has been abusing his power to leak. Confidential information.
