One year ago today, Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate Russian interference into our 2016 elections as well as possible collusion by Americans with that foreign interference.
As we mark that anniversary, it’s important to remember two things:
1.) Mueller’s appointment became necessary only when President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, and when he bragged publicly in an interview and in private to Russian officials that he had dumped Comey in an effort to halt the Russia investigation in its tracks. Contrary to Trump’s claims that the Mueller probe is a Democratic conspiracy, it is very much his own creation. He brought this on himself, he forced it, and the blame for it is entirely his.
2.) At the time of Mueller’s appointment, Republicans rushed to embrace it, lauding him as the perfect man for a difficult job. The tweet above, published one year ago today, tells you all you need to know.
Yet within three short months, everything had changed:
What could possibly explain such a sudden change of heart? How could Mueller go from a man with an impeccable reputation for honesty and integrity into the leader of a partisan witch hunt?
The answer is fear. Over these last 12 months, Mueller has done exactly what people such as Gingrich claimed to want from him. He has run a professional, almost leak-free operation that does not attempt to argue its case in public, that keeps its mouth shut and its profile low, and that so far has produced five guilty pleas, 19 indicted individuals, three indicted companies and one very nervous and anxious president.
As an indication of that nervousness, we can again turn to Twitter:
The theory seems to be that Mueller, a lifelong Republican, is leading a secret liberal FBI cabal dedicated to destroying a Republican presidency, which is ludicrous on its face. There are no facts to support such a claim, no logic by which it might be true. The theory exists and thrives solely because Trump and his supporters need it to exist and thrive.
Remember, Comey was also a lifelong Republican. FBI Director Christopher Wray, a lifelong Republican appointed by Trump to replace Comey, testified to Congress as recently as yesterday that there is no witch hunt. Yet another Republican and Trump appointee, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, also continues to defend the integrity, legitimacy and necessity of the Mueller probe, as do a number of Republican senators.
Yet none of that seems to faze today’s conservatives, many of whom live in a world of their own creation, a world that they can explain to themselves only by resorting to increasingly implausible conspiracy stories. That implausibility is so obvious that it can be proved by posing a single question:
The FBI investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government did not begin with Mueller’s appointment. It began in July 2016. For the next four months, as the presidential campaign raged on and as the FBI conducted a high-profile, public investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email system, the American public never learned about the existence of a parallel and potentially sensational investigation into the Trump campaign.
If the intent of the FBI and the “Deep State” was to destroy Trump, why didn’t they leak news of that investigation during the campaign, when the discovery likely would have sabotaged Trump’s chances altogether? Why did they instead go to great and successful lengths to keep it so secret?
Claims of an FBI conspiracy against Trump simply cannot be reconciled with that clear record of impartial professionalism. That remains true today. If the intent of the Mueller team is to harm the Trump presidency, they could do so quite effectively and easily with a campaign of leaks that would try the president in the press rather than in a court of law. Instead, more silence.
Finally, as we look back over the past year, it’s important to keep things in perspective. In May of 2017, we had yet to hear about the Trump Tower meeting. We had yet to read the emails to Donald Trump Jr., promising dirt on Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump.” We had yet to see Trump Jr.’s enthusiastic response to the offer of Russian government help in getting his father elected. We knew of course that Trump Jr. had emphatically, repeatedly denied any meetings with Russians, “certainly none that I was representing the campaign in any way, shape or form,” but we did not yet know that such statements were blatant lies.
A year ago, we did not know many, many things that we know today. A year from now, we will know even more, and that prospect makes a lot of people very very nervous.
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