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Mueller legal team approaching size of entire US Attorney’s Office for Rhode Island

Mueller legal team approaching size of entire US Attorney’s Office for Rhode Island

They are not investigating a crime. They are organizing a search party to find a crime.

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/former-fbi-director-robert-mueller-named-special-counsel-in-the-russia-investigation-946481731669

When Robert Mueller was first appointed Special Counsel, I thought, given his generally good reputation, that this might be a streamlined process with fewer leaks, focused on either proving or disproving allegations of Russian interference.

But I did acknowledge, for example in this radio interview, that there was a risk that in the wrong hands the powers vested under the Order appointing Mueller could be abused:

“He will have the authority to investigate and the authority to prosecute any crimes that he finds, and the scope of what he’s investigating under the order is fairly broad, it’s anything related to Russian interference in the campaign and any collusion, or any matters arising out of that. So it’s very broad, and very easily in the wrong hands could be a prosecutor in search of a crime, as opposed to a prosecutor prosecuting a crime.”

* * *

Q. Do you think Robert Mueller is the wrong hands [for the investigation]?

A. I don’t think so, I have no reason to believe that … but until you get there, you don’t know. If we see this turning into what I’ll call ‘process crimes,’ which is somebody wasn’t completely truthful, or was evasive, not necessarily perjury, but obstruction of justice …. If that’s where this ends up, then this would be another example of a special counsel, or special prosecutor, gone wrong.

That interview was before James Comey testified that he manipulated the media and DOJ into appointing a Special Counsel by leaking a memo of his conversation with Trump about the Flynn investigation to the NY Times.

Ever since that disclosure, the Special Counsel process and Mueller specifically, has been tainted. I argued that Mueller needed to step aside because of his friendship with Comey, Robert Mueller should step aside: Friends shouldn’t be investigating friends:

“… the case has dramatically changed since James Comey was outed, or outed himself, as the leaker of a memorandum to the NY Times and testified before the Senate. Remember this case started as an investigation of Russian involvement.

We now know from Comey’s testimony that as of the date Comey was fired in late May, Donald Trump individually was not under investigation for anything, not criminal, not counter-intelligence. So there’s nothing for Mueller to be investigating about Donald Trump individually except for one thing, which is James Comey’s conversations with Donald Trump regarding the Michael Flynn investigation. That’s where Comey famously quotes Trump saying ‘I hope you let it go, he’s a good guy,’ I’m paraphrasing there.

That is now the center of attention. That involves James Comey as a key witness. Who is James Comey personally and professionally friendly with? Robert Mueller.

Robert Mueller, if he is going to consider the alleged obstruction of justice asserted by James Comey, should not be the prosecutor or investigator in this because he is friendly with a key witness, James Comey. So that’s what I meant when I said ‘friends should not be investigating friends.’ And Robert Mueller, if he is considering Trump’s asserted obstruction of justice, cannot and should not be the investigator on this case.”

Everything that has happened since then leads to the conclusion the Mueller as Special Counsel is not investigating an alleged crime, but searching for a crime.

Andy McCarthy argues persuasively that this is not a proper role of Special Counsel under the regulation creating the position, Mueller’s Empire: Legions of Lawyers, Bottomless Budget, Limitless Jurisdiction:

So I’ve been wondering: Why on earth does a prosecutor, brought in to investigate a case in which there is no apparent crime, need a staff of 14 lawyers?

Or, I should say, “14 lawyers and counting.” According to the press spokesman for special counsel Robert Mueller—yeah, he’s got a press spokesman, too—there are “several more in the pipeline.” …

And all for a single investigation that the FBI has described as a counterintelligence probe—i.e., not a criminal investigation, the kind for which you actually need lawyers….

The way this is supposed to work is: the Justice Department first identifies a likely crime, and then assigns a prosecutor to investigate it. Here, by contrast, there are no parameters imposed on the special counsel’s jurisdiction. Mueller is loosed—with 14 lawyers and more coming—to conduct what I’ve called a “fishing expedition.” But it is actually worse than that, as sagely observed in these pages by my friend John Eastman, the Claremont Institute scholar and former Chapman Law School dean. Mueller’s probe is the functional equivalent of a general warrant: a boundless writ to search for incriminating evidence. It is the very evil the Fourth Amendment was adopted to forbid: a scorch-the-earth investigation in the absence of probable cause that a crime has been committed….

These lawyers, overwhelmingly, are Democrats. Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff and the Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross have been tracking it: Mueller’s staffers contribute to Trump’s political opponents, some heavily. The latest Democratic talking-point about this unseemly appearance is that hiring regulations forbid an inquiry into an applicant’s political affiliation. That’s laughable. These are lawyers Mueller has recruited. They are not “applicants.” We’re talking about top-shelf legal talent, accomplished professionals who have jumped at the chance of a gig they do not need but, clearly, want.

Alan Dershowitz has been arguing against the type of investigation that Mueller appears to be launching, finds fault both with the friendship with Comey and the selection of Clinton-related prosecutors:

https://youtu.be/8oBqZ1RWRAw?t=2m54s

Put this Mueller staffing in perspective. My home State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations frequently is used as a unit of measure.

The entire U.S. Attorney’s Office for Rhode Island, including both the criminal and civil branches, numbers only about 20 attorneys. This for a State of a million people with a long and rich history of organized crime, labor racketeering, and political corruption. We also have our fair share of narcotics trafficking and violent crimes, including multi-state gang activity.

Mueller’s Special Counsel probe is approaching the staffing level needed to deal with an entire state.

Something is not right here. They are not investigating a crime. They are organizing a search party to find a crime.

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Comments

But the anti-Trump crowd complains when Trump calls this a witch hunt?

Something is wrong here. Congress needs to rein this in.

    mariner in reply to puhiawa. | June 23, 2017 at 10:14 pm

    Congress has no power to rein this in; the best Congress can do is limit the power of future special counsels.

    The only person who can rein this in without causing political paroxysms is Rosenstein, who has the authority to modify the order appointing Mueller.

told you so

Comey is corrupt. Mueller is corrupt.

The state is corrupt. All of it.

Sam in Texas | June 23, 2017 at 10:32 pm

The correct analogy: It is like a pride of hungry lions on the Serengeti Plains. Some will not escape.

Rosenstein needs to limit the scope of this fishing expedition. If he won’t/doesn’t, I wouldn’t be upset if Trump fired him directly, damn WaPo & the NYT. There’d be a shit-storm, but it would not be illegal or the basis for a successful impeachment.

A further thought – I wonder if the appointment order was literally ‘laying around’ in ‘standard template’ form from the Fitzgerald witch hunt and Rosenstein simply filled in the blanks without really reading or considering all its language. He pumped it out within a day, after all.

Somewhere (much much hotter than here) Beria, Lenin and Stalin are smiling that their “style” of “law” has become entrenched in the US. This is not a coup so much as a purge in a cold civil war.

It’s a baby hunt. To their discredit, they have only managed to expose witches, warlocks, and disenfranchised, now deceased Democrats.

And to think the Democrats itched such a fit over the birther issue. It seems that when Republicans do something that the Democrats do not like, the Democrats come back with something several orders of magnitude worse.

    YellowSnake in reply to Cleetus. | June 24, 2017 at 12:45 pm

    Was President Obama born in these United States? Yes or NO?

      Barry in reply to YellowSnake. | June 25, 2017 at 6:45 pm

      Wherever the hell he was born, he isn’t “American”.

      His own book has him being born outside the country. Maybe the commie knows better than you.

        YellowSnake in reply to Barry. | June 28, 2017 at 12:01 pm

        Obama must have been pretty shrewd. He writes a book that says he was born outside the country and then he runs for president, anyway.

        Sort of like Trump claiming he sent investigators to Hawaii to get the facts on Obama. Still waiting for that investigation to complete. I think Trump-Russia has longer legs.

        Milhouse in reply to Barry. | June 29, 2017 at 11:00 am

        His own book has him being born outside the country.

        No, it doesn’t. Stop with the lies.

OwenKellogg-Engineer | June 24, 2017 at 7:30 am

What if, they are not there to search for a crime, but to erase evidence of crimes already committed by a previous administration?

Bork up!

If former Prez O. and/or his administration is implicated in a crime due to this expanding investigation, how quickly commenters will modify their opinions.

    mailman in reply to shrinkDave. | June 24, 2017 at 4:05 pm

    Not at all. There is a huge difference between the witch hunt against Trump where no crime has been committed or even identified vs the very many crimes committed by Obama and his administration.

“So I’ve been wondering: Why on earth does a prosecutor, brought in to investigate a case in which there is no apparent crime, need a staff of 14 lawyers?”

I don’t know what to believe but in keeping with a line of reasoning I introduced a couple of days ago, maybe this is the way you prepare to drain the swamp of criminals at the top? With so many public revelations of high treason even before the Trump/Russia nonsense began, wouldn’t that justify staffing up?

What we’ve been witnessing for years is a government by mafia that operates via intimidation and blackmail. Several (maybe all?) including Comey (long-time family scandal fixer) and Mueller (Russia uranium deal) have been involved in the Clinton mafia for many years. They know how it works from the inside. It would take more than one of them to take them down. This is a legal team that can produce evidence themselves without the need of fact-finding investigations. They know where to look. And much of it may be in their personal files.

And there is strength in numbers. Especially when they are on a crowded national stage. The Clintons have left a trail of dead bodies and ruined lives. How many of them knew too much and when they went wobbly,….? It’s a lot easier to pluck a small unknown player here and there but to take out a team of high-powered lawyers while the world is looking?

I think it’s well and good that Republicans are calling for Moeller and Comey to be investigated for all of the reasons stated and the above. I think that created even a stronger narrative for a few patriots who may have been ensnared in a corrupt operation with no way out to finally make things right. It sure makes it personally safer for them to do so.

I’m not being naive, just looking for pathways. Trump cannot do it by himself. It takes more than well-structured sentences and largely rigged elections to take down a murdering, corrupt system.

Machiavelli famously wrote “Never wound a king.” How much worse would it be to wound a Deep State hydra? This isn’t like taking down a corrupt president like Nixon. This is taking down an entrenched organization. You can’t “erode” it away. It must be a quick take-down with broad Americans support.

What choice do we have but to keep hoping that there are patriots taking their positions to once again take our asses out of the fire? The history of America started with patriots snatching our colonial asses out of the fire. Abe Lincoln is another example. Maybe we are living through the latest one. Personally, I cannot accept a Stalinist end for the American Experiment. If we are to avoid an all-out civil war or military takeover, it is going to take something very elaborate, something never before witnessed in history. Let’s hope that this is what is going on.

More to think about:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-24/angry-dems-turn-obama-pelosi-schumer-talk-less-about-russia

“Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday told lawmakers that the White House held back on responding to Russia because it didn’t want to play into fears, propagated by then-candidate Trump, that the election would be “rigged.”

But Trump won after which everyone learned just how rigged the election was, especially on the Democratic Party side. Suddenly the Russia hacking becomes important to the Dems. It has back-fired in spades.

Now the Senate Dems are calling for a FOURTH investigation into Trump/Russia and the non-geriatric Dem incumbents are rebelling in droves against party leadership. If everyone is so sure that Mueller & Co. are preparing to take down Trump, why this new investigation?

And why is Obama suddenly charging back into the news? Why now? ObamaCare? HAH! No! It’s his ass that is being drawn into the fire in all of these investigations. There is no honor among thieves and the Clintons still have the option of redirecting the fire Obama’s way. Investigating Lynch is the Obama-Clinton fork in the road. Obama fears being road kill on the way to Clinton. The Clinton Family International Crime Syndicate holds most of the strong cards. Is Obama being taken down to protect the Clintons?

    Since I posted these two comments, it sure looks like the investigation IS headed in an unexpected direction:

    1. Bipartisan calls for Loretta Lynch to testify under oath (thanks to Comey testimony).

    2. John Podesta testifying before the House Intel committee today

    3. Obama lawyers up (actually, EVERYONE is lawyering up)

    4. Calls today for special investing committee for Obama

    5. Project Veritas CNN video exposing Trump/Russia hoax

    6. Zucker personally takes charge of inside CNN investigation.

    7. Memo leaked regarding Zucker personally telling staff “enough with Paris Accord. Get back to Russia”

    8. CNN imploding. Will they lose credentials as a news organization?

    Sure doesn’t look to me like Mueller & Co. are focused like a laser on taking Trump down. Will they be calling all of the above (plus BJ Clinton himself) to testify? With CNN being exposed as a fraud, can they now be forced to testify before Congress no longer protected by the pretense of being journalists? How long will it take for Mueller to burn through the Obama mafia to get to the Clinton (Bush too?) mafia?

    This is going very well so far for Trump. Will we be witnessing a dramatic moment where, having presented all of the evidence necessary to take out the entrenched criminals, and having revealed his own incriminating involvement, Mueller recuses himself while throwing himself to the mercy of “the people”? Presidential pardon?

    Hey. It could happen.

      Edward in reply to Pasadena Phil. | June 28, 2017 at 5:48 pm

      You have listed a lot of “action”. But every bit of the “investigations” are Congressional Committee, not Mueller. It may be that Mueller will get around to those people, but there is absolutely no guarantee that his investigators and lawyers will do a thing about those issues/people. Right now it appears you are engaged in wishful thinking.

        Doesn’t matter. There is no reason for Mueller to keep investigating Trump when there is so much criminal evidence being produced every day. I really doubt that he wants to be remembered as THE GUY who did his best to usurp a presidential election and ended up in prison. And now with CNN having self-“decertified”, he has a clear path to taking on the MSM part of the swamp without getting into constitutional obstacles. Are BezWaPo and SlimNYT next for “decertification”?

        The momentum is now clearly with Trump (if he can remember who got him elected and why…REPEAL ALREADY!!) The Tea Party is alive and well but Trump needs to focus. Kill that God damned ObamaCare and both GOP versions to “improve” it!

Mueller brought in to “drain the swamp”?

I need some of what y’all are smoking.

This is the sort of thing which should have an online Countdown Clock. Or Countup Clock. A running tally of what this bloated staff is costing the poor abused American taxpayer every minute, to investigate a crime which hasn’t even been charged.

JackRussellTerrierist | June 24, 2017 at 2:10 pm

Johnson’s testimony provides good timing and opportunity to fire all of them, including choir boy Rosenstein.

Henry Hawkins | June 24, 2017 at 4:32 pm

Since Trump will draw full liberal fire for the duration of his administration no matter what he does, he ought to just fire Rosenstein and Mueller and be done with it. Sessions can pick up the Lynch obstruction investigation.

I said the day he did it that appointing a special counsel was a mistake. Just like with the crap with Valerie Plame (or whatever her name was).

They ‘investigate’ until they can find somebody to punish to justify their existence, regardless of actual guilt.

Sam in Texas | June 24, 2017 at 10:01 pm

Kind of like the Ox Bow Incident.

I understand the interest in the number of lawyers involved. When we consider the cost to the taxpayers, don’t forget that the lawyers aren’t the investigators. There is/will be an entire section of Special Agents who will be doing the actual interviews, record reviews, etc. Those investigators will greatly outnumber the lawyers. While they are already employed by the government, the time they work on this “investigation” is time which will not be spent on real criminal investigations.

Fitzgerald, IIRC, continued his “investigation” into who revealed Valery Plame’s CIA status for two years after he had to know there was no violation of the criminal statute making it a felony to reveal the name of a CIA “Agent” because Plame hadn’t been an “Agent” overseas for more years than the statute specified (she was a Desk Officer in the US). I’m not sure how soon he knew Richard Armitage was the “leaker”, but it was long before he ended the “investigation” with charging Libby. Not to mention the allegations from the beginning that pretty much everyone in the DC cocktail circuit knew who she worked for. Plame, and her husband Wilson, made no secret of the fact that she worked for the CIA.