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Robert Mueller Tag

Should Donald Trump sit down to a face-to-face interview with Robert Mueller and his team? The answer for me has been clear for a long time: Just Say No.

Robert Mueller did not start Trump Derangement Syndrome. That started before the 2016 election, but went ballistic when Trump won. #TheResistance movement immediately went into crisis attack mode, trying to intimidate Electors and to delegitimize the election result.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced today that a federal grand jury indicted 12 Russians, all officers with Russia's intelligence agency GRU, for allegedly hacking into the DNC and Hillary's campaign. The most important part of Rosenstein's speech: "There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime. There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result."

Rudy Giuliani's role in the Trump defense against the Mueller onslaught is part lawyer, and a bigger part public perception shaping. About a month ago I wondered what Rudy was thinking when he suggested Trump should have a sit-down interview with Mueller, Rudy’s terrible, horrible, no good idea about Trump sitting for a Mueller interview to speed things up:

An FBI Attorney who was part of Mueller's investigative team until February sent several anti-Trump texts. The texts were released in the IG report published Thursday. One of the anti-Trump text messages sent to a colleague read, "Viva le Resistance."

A new Politico/Morning Consult Poll shows the public's image of Special Counsel Robert Mueller has hit an all-time low. Now 53% of the public view him "in an unfavorable light." Maybe because the investigation has gone for over a year and all the charges have led to everything but collusion? Maybe because the American people care about the economy more than anything else?

We reported on Friday about the hearing in federal court in Virginia regarding Paul Manafort's request to have his criminal indictment and case dismissed because it was beyond the jurisdiction of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to prosecute. Statements made by the judge during the hearing generated a lot of news, Manafort Judge: Mueller only really cares about the “prosecution or impeachment” of Trump. See that post for the details on the news reports of the hearing, plus my explanation of why Mueller is exceeding his authority.

Almost since the day Robert Mueller was appointed, I have been pointing out that Mueller has gone rogue and is employing a scorched earth strategy to get Trump, on anything. The Paul Manafort prosecution on things having nothing to do with the reason Mueller was appointed, alleged Russia collusion, is a good example, as was the prosecution of Michael Flynn. There will be bodies left on Mueller's battlefield from those unfortunate enough to have associated with Trump or the campaign.

There was an interesting filing recently by Paul Manafort in the prosecution by Robert Mueller's team against him in the Eastern District of Virginia. The filing concerned leaks reported in the media that were attributed by the media to government sources. Some of those media reports alleged Manafort contact with Russians. Manafort file a Motion (pdf.)(full embed at bottom) seeking a court hearing to get to the bottom of the leaks.