GREGG JARRETT: Robert Mueller's tragic fall from grace and the damage he left in his wake
Sometimes beneath the noble exterior, human imperfection is exposed, and a sturdy reputation is shattered.
With the recent passing of Robert Mueller we are reminded that even accomplished figures can stumble into an abyss of poor decisions and regrettable mistakes. His tarnished legacy is the sad coda to a once towering life and career.
Mueller’s earlier service in the military and high government positions, including as director of the FBI, was commendable. But in May 2017, he agreed to serve as special counsel to investigate allegations that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
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What followed was a contemptible partisan inquisition that tore the nation apart and severely impaired Trump’s first term in office. Thuggish tactics, coercion, and threats were deployed, innocent people were targeted and persecuted and legal rights were shredded — leaving lives in ruins.
In the end, Mueller’s belated report found that there was no Trump-Russia conspiracy. Anyone with an ounce of common sense already knew that. It was all a hoax and the worst political fraud ever perpetrated. But the damage was done, and Mueller bears much of the blame. And the shame.
I recounted the ugly details in my book, "Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History." As special counsel, Mueller’s actions were not only noxious but patently unfair to Trump and so many others.
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His inability to find a scintilla of incriminating evidence against Trump did not deter him. In violation of Justice Department rules, he publicly disparaged the president with tales of suspicious behavior instead of stating evidence that rose to the level of criminality.
The special counsel learned early in his investigation that there was no evidence of collusion and that the president had committed no crimes. Mueller admitted it to Trump’s lawyers in a meeting on March 5, 2018. He should have ended his misbegotten investigation right then and there, sparing the nation prolonged divisiveness and trauma.
But Mueller was obsessed and refused to do the right thing. Instead, he shifted his focus to whether the president somehow obstructed justice for, among other things, daring to publicly criticize the probe. Trump had a First Amendment right to do so, of course. Mueller didn’t care.
He spent the next year chasing the elusive ghost of obstruction without success. It was especially ludicrous since fired FBI Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, both testified that no one had obstructed the bureau’s investigation and that the probe continued uninterrupted after Comey’s departure.
No matter. In his March 2019 report, Mueller turned the law upside down with an incendiary statement guaranteed to ignite a fire under the president’s inveterate haters:
"While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
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Mueller’s rationale was unintelligible. As any lawyer will tell you, it is never the job of a prosecutor anywhere to exonerate people. By this one act, Mueller managed to reverse the burden of proof and invert the presumption of innocence, which are sacrosanct principles in American law.
He had no intention of treating Trump fairly or conforming to the law. Rather, Mueller spent 183 pages maligning Trump by implying that, under certain circumstances that did not actually exist, the facts might sustain an obstruction case.
Mueller declined to charge the president in a court of law but was determined to indict him in the court of public opinion with outlandish smears. He shrewdly created the impression that Trump might have engaged in wrongdoing because he could not prove otherwise. It was disgraceful.
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Mueller should never have accepted the job of special counsel. He had more than one disqualifying conflict of interest, including his close ties to Comey, who was a pivotal witness. The appointment itself had the insufferable Comey’s dirty fingerprints all over it.
Even worse, Mueller had met with the president in the Oval Office the day before he accepted the assignment to investigate Trump. It was a trap. The appointment by Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, was not just a perfidious act of retribution, it was contrary to federal regulations.
The ensuing witch hunt assumed an odious dimension as Mueller hired a "hit squad" of highly partisan prosecutors. They loathed Trump, and their toxic bias polluted the report they produced. But what they omitted was revealing.
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Nowhere in the 448 pages will you find a single word about the corrupt acts and gross misconduct at the FBI that formed the basis of Mueller’s probe. He also turned a blind eye to who engineered the collusion hoax to influence an election and destroy a presidency.
The fictional narrative was invented and funded by Hillary Clinton to sully her political opponent and tip the election in her favor. Behind a double firewall of hidden payments, her campaign and Democrats hired a bumbling ex-British spy, Christopher Steele, to conjure up a phony dossier that was then funneled to the FBI, DOJ, and the Trump-hating media, which eagerly gobbled it up as gospel.
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The faux scandal took flight. Yet all of that was deliberately ignored by Mueller and his confederates. The surreptitious acts of Clinton and her cronies to hustle and hype the nonexistent collusion conspiracy were brushed aside.
The magnum opus that Mueller eventually produced stands as an egocentric monument to the miscarriage of justice. When called to testify during televised hearings, it became an embarrassing spectacle. The special counsel stumbled and stammered. He seemed lost and confused.
Mueller struggled to understand basic questions. His answers were slow, halting, and uncertain. It was obvious that Mueller had not written the report that bore his name. He had a feeble grasp of the facts and seemed oblivious to the law that supposedly supported the evidence cited therein.
The debacle of his disoriented discourse was a disaster politically and a calamity personally for Mueller. He was not what his vaunted reputation promised. His diminished mental acuity made plain that he had been little more than a detached figurehead, ceding command and control to his cadre of hyper-partisans.
Anyone who devotes his life and career to serving our country deserves our thanks. Tragically, for all of Mueller’s exemplary service earlier in his career, his final undertaking will forever stain his legacy. His mistakes and miscalculations were laid bare for all to see. As a consequence, he committed a grave disservice to the nation. History should remember it as a tragic epilogue to a life that was otherwise well lived.
