Senate Majority Leader Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr. and Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Davis Ryan Jr. are among several Fools on the Hill urging President Trump to just let Special Counsel Robert Mueller finish his investigation. Just let him finish the job he started, they’re saying.
That certainly sounds like a reasonable suggestion. Except it’s not.
How will McConnell, Ryan, and the other Fools on the Hill know when the investigation is finished?
What are the clearly enumerated defined investigative criteria being used to judge the sufficiency of the Mueller Hit Squad’s investigation?
Who has been designated and empowered to be the person to say that the investigation has reached its conclusion?
The answers to those questions should have been clearly enumerated and included in the authorization for the Special Counsel, but they weren’t.
Why not?
The answer to that last question may be in what was not included in Order 3915-2017 signed by Acting Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein on 5/17/17. That was the order which appointed the Special Counsel to investigate Russian interference with the 2016 Presidential election and related matters. Paragraph (b) of that Order gives Mueller almost unlimited authority to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump“. [emphasis mine]
Notice, however, the Order does not authorize as well the investigation of “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and inviduals associated with the campaign of nominee Hillary Clinton.” Had the Clinton campaign been mentioned specifically with the Trump campaign in the Order, it would have forced Rosenstein to include the kind of specificity I suggested. It would have made it difficult for Mueller to ignore the Clinton campaign’s and the DNC’s now-proven financial relationship with the Russian government to create the fictional Steele dossier. It would have made it difficult for Mueller to focus his entire inquisition on Trump.
By specifically excluding the Clinton campaign from the Order, Rosenstein gave Mueller complete authority to ignore Clinton campaign complicity with the Russians and also to ignore other crimes committed by the Clinton campaign and others.
For an exceedingly clear explanation of just how corrupt the US Department of Justice has become, read ‘Talk to Mueller? No, Trump Should Use His Bully Pulpit to Expose Mueller’s Corruption‘. It was written by Kurt Schlichter and was posted April 12, 2017, on townhall.com.