DOJ Appoints Former FBI Director Mueller as Special Counsel for Russia Probe
Mueller will oversee the investigation into possible Russian interference in our election.
The Department of Justice has appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller III as special counsel to its investigation into possible Russian interference in our presidential election. The Wall Street Journal reported:
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the appointment because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from any investigation related to the 2016 race. Mr. Rosenstein said in a statement that “I determined that it is in the public interest for me to exercise my authority and appoint a Special Counsel to assume responsibility of this matter.”
He cautioned that his decision wasn’t the result of a “finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted.”
He signed the order on Wednesday. Mr. Mueller, a former federal prosecutor, served as FBI director from 2001 through 2013 and has a reputation for independence. Mr. Mueller has been a partner a WilmerHale, a law firm, but is stepping down from his role there to avoid any conflicts of interest, according to the Justice Department.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
So this guy is going to come in and f@#k about for another 6 months finding sweet f@#k all…meanwhile real criminals committing real crimes go unpunished.
Gee it’s lucky Obama’s DOJ is focussed like a laser on enforcing the law.
Btw, I wonder who appointed him?
Did this obsession with Russia begin with her intervention in Obama’s elective regime change in Syria, which was a first-order forcing of catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform, or with Russia’s support for Ukrainian refugees following the Western-backed coup in Kiev?
The baby hunt continues with no baby left unturned. Hopefully, we can avoid a baby trial, because we know how those are Planned.
The Republicans allow a Presidency to be ruined at its very start. The Democrats would never be so stupid. Reign the Swamp.
This is a tactical move, on the part of the administration.
The FBI is either hopelessly compromised [one way or another-take your pick] or is perceived to be such. The DOJ answers to President Trump, who is being held up as an impediment to the Russia investigation. And, a Blue Ribbon investigative political panel would be an utter disaster [just look at the 9/11 Commission]. So, a Special Council is a good idea to bring the matter to a close, sooner or later. The only problem is how Mueller will choose to run it. There is a tremendous amount of political pressure brought to bear on a Special Prosecutor. If no active interference or collusion is found, the Dems, Libs and other anti-Trump factions will be screaming whitewash. And, so far it appears that no concrete evidence, that any significant Russian interference occurred, exists. Given Comey’s actions in Servergate, it is entirely possible that the FBI would fold to anti-Trump pressure and attempt to legitimize the charge of Russian interference.
Not a bad move. Maybe we can get some real answers here, as well as free up resources to actively investigate domestic spying and leaking of classified information.
“…FBI is…hopelessly compromised” is my bet.
I mean, come on, Comey was a decades-long, old Clinton crony from what I’ve read for months………..
P.S. This is already turning on the Dems and their slave masters.
There is plenty of Democrat Party and Hillary collusion with the Russians – well documented.
Come on, you don’t think that hokey “Overcharge” button Hillary gave the Russians was an honest mistranslation do you?
Overcharge is a classic embezzlement scheme…..
Hillary would know all about that, as all corrupt politicians do.
Brought in to oversee the investigation that perpetually finds nothing, like the war against Eastasia. The has become political pornography.
What if, his investigation included the information leaks. That would be interesting. This could backfire on the Ds.
It already is.
One guess of who the smoking gun that murdered Seth Rich leads back to…….
It wasn’t a robbery? Wrong place, wrong time? /s
It will point to exactly no one; there won’t be enough evidence to prosecute anybody.
Whoever killed Rich wasn’t just some street criminal, and hasn’t left any evidence to implicate himself (or anyone else).
I’m absolutely convinced Hillary was behind this, but that will go nowhere in Federal court.
They’ll find the same fingerprints that were on Vincent Foster’s “suicide” gun.
I don’t know much anything about Mueller that gives me concern. He is certainly a better choice than Trump’s reported first choice, the despicable Sen. John Cornyn who is trying to push an open-borders, blanket amnesty bill through the senate. Better a professional than a politician for another thing. I also understand that he is a tough customer, a law and order guy who doesn’t care about politics.
In any event, I see this a good for Trump. There certainly are Russia issues within his administration with Paul Manafort being the most glaring (business ties with pro-Russian Ukrainians and to that Russian billionaire) and Gen. Flynn not only for sharing classified information with that tootsie he was boinking but failing to disclose a Russian investment when being vetted by Trump’s people.
Trump is on record stating that he himself wants to know the truth and so long as Mueller isn’t part of the Deep State conspiracy to take him down, Trump wins. Not that my opinion counts but I think this is a good choice and also a good sign that he allowed himself to be persuaded to not go with his first choice.
I think it is possible that the investigation has found nothing and was reaching the point that it would conclude saying no evidence of collusion. So bring in Mueller to review everything and after a bit of time say there is no collusion regarding election and case closed.
How much of our tax dollars is going to be wasted and how long we are going to have to endure the investigation into why Hillary the rotten Democratic candidate, lost?
At what point will sensible people decide “enough is enough?” Or will the resistance, the backstabbing and the search for dirt on Trump go on forever?
It’s pretty well established that Russia tried to influence the election.
FOR whom, HOW, and to what EFFECT are the questions.
It doesn’t suggest “collusion”.
Remember, Russia is NOT our friend.
Russia did try to influence the election, maybe. But every government does the same thing. Obama attempted to influence the Kenya elections, the French elections, the Canadian elections and Brexit, all directly. Nobody thought anything was wrong with this. In both election campaigns, Barack Obama received millions of dollars in donations from outside the US. Not only outside influence but illegal. Nothing to see there. It was ignored. HRC received hundreds of thousands [or more] of dollars from foreign {Chinese] donors handled by a Chinese national, in 2008. In 2013 and 2016, the Clinton Foundation received several million dollars from a Chinese company. Again, all of this is ignored.
The people of the US do not need to know to what extent Russia may have tried to influence our elections. Our IC will simply exact revenge as we always have, surreptitiously.
The current “Russia tried to influence the US elections” has nothing to do with foreign influence and everything to do with stymieing Trump’s agenda and getting rid of Trump, by any means necessary.
P.S. I forgot to mention Obama influencing the Israeli elections, as well.
Yea, of course, they do it, we do it, and everybody else does it.
And there ain’t a damned thing you or anyone else can do about it unless you wish to sanction them or declare war over it.
Which has nothing to do with President Trump.
Oh, so you’ve seen the evidence firsthand, have you? Which precincts, which states? Name names, Rages.
I’ll agree with that. Look at how many millions of Russian dollars went into the Clinton Foundation. That’s a lot of quid, and they certainly got their ‘pro quo’ out of Hillary.
I think this is the best thing that could have happened at this point and I think it will speed up the resolution to this case. There is one effect this will have that the Dems are gonna hate, the information spigot it about to snap closed and they are gonna lose all their little tidbits that they have been blowing out of proportion for the past months.
Mueller,
Hard to drain the swamp when you invite former Swamp People to repopulate the ranks.
goo.gl/ETK442
I don’t know that Mueller wants to come in and pick up the baggage the progessives at the FBI left covering up for Hillary and trying to get Trump. I think he isn’t going to sacrifice himself to help a bunch of Deep Staters. I hope of course I am not wrong. What these fools don’t seem to understand is the country is not going to stand still for a take-down of Trump. It will explode with rage at the elites.
This is going to sting a bit. The LAST thing the dems wanted was a special prosecutor. They wanted to shout for one, get denied, then scream ‘coverup!’
They will scream much more authentically when they realize just how broad an investigation is going to open up before them like a pit to the 9th circle of Hades. Or did they forget their claim that Russia hacked the DNC? The Special Counsel will definitely investigate that. I seem to recall Special Prosecutors having broad subpoena powers.
Does Special Counsel = Special Prosecutor?
They are also gonna be upset because their source of “Leaks” is about to snapped closed like a bear trap.
The is a saying we had in the military: “It sucks being the infantry bug when Artillery decides to go swatting around.” Well Mueller is the artillery and no one wants to be the infantry bug.
Special Counsel and Special Prosecutor are essentially the same thing. The current law governing the appointment of a special officer to investigate potential wrongdoing by a government official refers to that person as a Special Counsel and makes the AG the appointing official. In the past the position was called a Special Prosecutor or Independent Counsel.
Yes, I think I have even heard it referred to as “Special Investigator” at one time.
This has become such a spiderweb that unpacking it piece by piece is necessary.
1. The Russians allegedly interfered with the ’16 election by hacking the DNC, RNC and Podesta. No question hacking is a crime (even in the instance of Podesta where it was Phishing more so than hacking). But we know that WikiLeaks has repeatedly said they received no information from Russian sources and we know from reports the DNC did not turn over the server to the FBI for an investigation. We know that the allegation is bring publicly made that Seth Rich maybe the source of DNC email leaks. Finally we know that neither the DNC or Podesta have refuted the authenticity of the emails and the content of those emails has been largely ignored. Imagine, the DNC openly worked to subvert the primary and ensure a coronation for Sec. Clinton but THAT isn’t the story!
2. Exactly what did Russia allegedly do? Pres. Obama is on record saying, as are others, that not a single vote was changed nor was a single voting system hacked into. So Russia supported one side over the other but were not really sure how, exactly, and in fairness we’ve seen our own government take vocal sides during the Israeli election, Britexit vote, French election and so on.
3. We’re told that Carter Page and Paul Manifort had Russian business interest. Okay but is that, in and of itself, illegal? Moreso, did either attempt to influence Mr. Trump directly because of those interest?
4. We’re told that Gen Flynn was open to leverage because he (a) gave a speech in March ’15 in Moscow and never disclosed the income as required. (b) he had a connection to Turkey and may have swayed military planning in a manner that favors Turkey and (c) he lied to the VP about his telephone calls with Russian officals. For points a and b, first keep in mind that this occurred under the Obama administration so if there were such grave concerns why was nothing being addressed? In terms of c, fact is the Trump administration fired Gen. Flynn for misleading the VP which to be fair is the most they can do as while it’s unethical and ignorant to mislead your boss, it’s not illegal. Now the media reports that even after being fired Trump and Flynn spoke! No, really! This is outrage seems hollow as a shot glass considering it’s from the same folks that simply moved on from investigating Rev. “No, no, no. . . GOD DAMN America” Wright after Candidate Obama said (to paraphrase), “I can no more disown him then I can my racist Grandmother who crossed the street to avoid a black man”.
5. It’s said that Pres Trump tried to obstruct justice by saying he “hoped” the FBI director could let the Flynn matter go. Okay, that’s fine accept the FBI director (a) testified that no pressure had been put on him be anyone and (b) there exist no suggestion that Dir Comey told the DOJ, “hey, the old man is putting pressure on me”. Further we’re forgetting that during 2016 we have multiple examples of Pres. Obama, VP Biden, Sen. Sanders and other Democrats publicly declaring the FBI investigation into Sec. Clinton was, in effect, unnecessary. Further we know the AG met directly with former Pres. Clinton during the campagin, while the investigation was ongoing, in a private meeting that even the AG herself admitted was, “ill-advised”. Yet, we’re being asked to believe all of that was “A-OK” but uttering “hope” crosses the line.
6. We all seem to be leaving the fact that someone, somewhere leaked the direct name of an American citizen (Gen Flynn) to the media after thar name was “unmasked” in classified communications picked up by the NSA. Imagine, 1-5 above are all “speculations” of possible criminal activity but on this we know the behavior is a felony and yet little is being said, why is that?
In full disclosure, I’m not a YUUGE Trump supporter. He is my President and I respect that. My problem is how this story is being massaged and worked to sell a narrative that doesn’t, as of now, exist. Unlike many here, I am not a lawyer but I work for the courts (probation) and am used to hearing the grand blending of facts and details to “sell” a story and my ears are burning over this. John Mayer was right when he sang about the media, “when they own the information, they can bend it all they want”.