The report

Some observations on Mueller by Roger L. Simon

Roger L. Simon writes in PJ Media about Mueller's testimony.

...Mueller was correct in asserting his investigation wasn't a "witch hunt." It was far worse. It was part of a treasonous and/or seditious (depending on your definitions) attempt to prevent a man from winning the presidency and then, once he had done so, to sabotage and unseat him.

...As we are now learning, the involvement in this — the real conspiracy — went up to the highest reaches of the previous administration, beginning when they were still in office. And once Trump was in office, the efforts were redoubled.

No wonder the frail Mueller has a guilty conscience. As I said above, he should.

And before you accuse me over-psychologizing, just remember that a guilty conscience can lead to depression, which, it is well known, shuts down the brain. Time and illness obviously can account for a man's decline, but also circumstances. Mueller knew how his reputation was going to be destroyed. It's the old link between the mind and the body. Almost every one of us has seen this among people we know.

UPDATE: I notice that some commenters think I am excusing Mueller's execrable behavior in the past (anthrax case, etc.) by saying he has a guilty conscience. I didn't intend that in the slightest. I never bought the heroic image of Mueller. He is and was a pompous creep who ran over people. But the human mind is a complex animal. Many things happen at once. People like Mueller and Comey think they are good, which makes them all the more dangerous. In the case of Mueller, I suspect something was beginning to impinge on that--call it a guilty conscience or whatever, an uncomfortable truth-and he started to disintegrate in the tradition of the witch in the Wizard of Oz. That's what we saw today.

SOME OTHER OBSERVATIONS: Some of the Democrats, at least, probably have a degree of fear of what is obviously to come from the Durham investigation. This in great part was a reason they insisted on this ridiculous hearing, to distract. It didn't work.

AND: Another noteworthy dishonest facet of the Mueller report and his testimony is the insistence that the Russians interfered to help Trump. This exhibits a (deliberate?) lack of knowledge on how Russian/Soviet disinfo operates. They aim to confuse, not to favor. Indeed, conveniently left out of the report and Wednesday's testimony was Rosenstein's saying precisely that when he announced the indictment of the Russian hackers. He emphasized they intended to create dissension, not choose one candidate over the other. They clearly succeeded in their true intention and then some, thanks to the like of Adam Schiff. Moreover, why would the Russians even have thought they could get Trump elected? That would have been a waste of time to any competent KGB/FSB officer. They read the same polls we did.

Read more here.

Do we have anyone better than Mark Steyn to question Mueller next month?

Why did the same people get hired to run both the investigation of Hillary Clinton and the Russian collusion investigation of Donald Trump? Mark Stein thinks he knows:

The same people had to run both investigations because otherwise the new investigators would discover the shenanigans of the old investigators. Putting Strzok and Page on the team was the FBI's way of protecting itself.

Today it was announced that Mueller is going to testify July 17 back-to-back in front of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.

Mark makes many other cogent points in this piece written in December of 2017!

Jerome Corsi begins to put his life back together after Mueller

In Real Clear Investigations, Paul Sperry takes a look at Mueller's investigations.

His witness list, which grew to more than 500, targeted conservative journalists and authors, conservative think tank analysts and Republican congressional staffers. Witnesses were compelled to comply with more than 2,800 grand jury subpoenas and nearly 500 search-and-seizure warrants. Casting an even wider net, Mueller also issued 230 orders for communications records and almost 50 orders authorizing use of “pen registers” – devices that record dialed numbers -- to collect phone records on individuals, most of whom turned out to be innocent.

But, the 10 witnesses swept up in the inquiry say those facts and figures, as well as the final determination that there was no conspiracy or collusion with the Russians, do not begin to account for the human toll of the Mueller probe.

His witness list, which grew to more than 500, targeted conservative journalists and authors, conservative think tank analysts and Republican congressional staffers. Witnesses were compelled to comply with more than 2,800 grand jury subpoenas and nearly 500 search-and-seizure warrants. Casting an even wider net, Mueller also issued 230 orders for communications records and almost 50 orders authorizing use of “pen registers” – devices that record dialed numbers -- to collect phone records on individuals, most of whom turned out to be innocent.

But, the 10 witnesses swept up in the inquiry say those facts and figures, as well as the final determination that there was no conspiracy or collusion with the Russians, do not begin to account for the human toll of the Mueller probe.

...Jerome Corsi's appearance before “angry” anti-Trump D.C. jurors was stressful, he said, but nothing compared with what he called Mueller's “mental torture.” Over the next two months, the 72-year-old Corsi said he was interrogated six times by a battery of the special counsel's lawyers and investigators inside a windowless conference room in an unmarked FBI building in southeast Washington. Some of the sessions stretched up to eight hours. He said he was often left alone in the sparse room for long periods with no cellphone, laptop or even a book to read, while investigators observed him from another room. He was not allowed to leave to go the bathroom without being accompanied by an armed agent.

He said Mueller’s investigators engaged in “Gestapo tactics,” including harassing his friends and family — as well as his sources. “They got abusive when they didn’t get what they wanted,” he said, "and they got nasty.”

...He said the stress caused him to have "a nervous breakdown.” He suffered insomnia, as did his wife, who was worried about him and crying a lot. He said Mueller’s office had leaked information from the grand jury hearing to CNN, which dispatched a news crew to camp outside their home in a black SUV. Feeling chest pains and shortness of breath one day, Corsi made an appointment with his cardiologist, who warned that the "tension from Mueller" could trigger a heart attack or stroke.

...They offered a plea deal: cop to one count of perjury for no jail time. He had one week to accept the offer.

Corsi rejected the deal and was never indicted. The Mueller report indicates he is no longer under active investigation.

In the end, Corsi was drilled by Mueller’s team for more than 40 hours, and in the process, racked up more than $100,000 in legal bills.

“I still haven’t recovered physically or financially,” he told RCI, though he has received donations from a legal defense fund. “We’re just now putting our lives back together."

They offered a plea deal: cop to one count of perjury for no jail time. He had one week to accept the offer.

Corsi rejected the deal and was never indicted. The Mueller report indicates he is no longer under active investigation.

In the end, Corsi was drilled by Mueller’s team for more than 40 hours, and in the process, racked up more than $100,000 in legal bills.

“I still haven’t recovered physically or financially,” he told RCI, though he has received donations from a legal defense fund. “We’re just now putting our lives back together."

Clearing it up!

"Mueller pulled a Comey!"

In the Morning Rant at Ace of Spades, Oregon Muse writes,

"So, Mueller pulled a Comey. You all remember Comey's infamous statement to the press that went like this, "Yeah, Hillary is probably guilty of all kinds of sh* that would land anyone else behind bars in a Federal PMITA prison, but I'm not going to recommend prosecution." And then he invented a whole new legal standard out of thin air: it was because they couldn't prove that she had 'criminal intent' when she did her illegal activities. This lame excuse had legal analysts from coast to coast scratching their heads. Fast forward to Mueller's statement to the press. He said that that Trump wasn't exonerated because they couldn't prove he didn't do things to collude or obstruct justice. Like Comey, Mueller just pulled a whole new legal standard right out of his a$$. If you're Hillary, they have to be able to prove you intended to break the law and you knew you were breaking it before a guilty verdict could ever be considered. And if you're Donald Trump, you're guilty until proven innocent. Again, these are new legal standards, never seen before, and what relates them to each other is that both were invented so the corrupt left can get what it wants. They cloak themselves in a veneer of legitimacy to disguise their grab for power. That's why, when they write books, they usually manage to work in words such as 'truth' or 'higher' or 'duty' or 'loyalty' in the title. As if their lofty intentions are all so noble and pure. But it's all a sham. I'd sooner trust a Scientology affidavit than believe any of these progressive corruptocrats are telling the truth about anything."

"This is about raw political advantage and the destruction of the presidency. A disgraceful abuse of prosecutorial discretion, giving Democrats license to impeach."

Laura Ingraham interviews Joe diGenova on her radio program. Regarding Mueller's comments yesterday, Joe says, "This isn't about the law any more. This is about raw political advantage and the destruction of the presidency. A disgraceful abuse of prosecutorial discretion, giving Democrats license to impeach."

"Although Mueller lacked evidence of an actual crime, he zealously spent two years and $35 million hunting for a crime, any crime, that he could pin on Trump."

Bookworm writes,

...The fact that I put myself to sleep at night, not by counting sheep but by figuring out different ways to poison my enemies is irrelevant if I never poison my enemies or inflict any other criminal harm on them. My motives also do not make it a crime if someone later catches me sneering at one of those enemies, because sneering, while rude, is not a criminal act.

The record shows that Trump did not fire anyone and that his subordinates spoke freely to investigators. As for refusing to appear for a deposition, Mueller acceded to Trump’s request that he be subject only to written questions. That was a bargain, not an obstruction.

...a continuously emerging stream of new information tells us that government investigative agencies under Obama used illegal means to spy on the Republican presidential candidate. Then, when Trump won, he was accused of doing something bad with the Russians, although no one could quite finger what the precise illegality was. Trump’s FBI director then illegally leaked classified material to the media to trigger a special prosecutor. Although Mueller lacked evidence of an actual crime, he zealously spent two years and $35 million hunting for a crime, any crime, that he could pin on Trump.

...That’s not justice. That’s Soviet-style political persecution.

Read more here.

Mueller did interview Trump regarding obstruction case!

In the Sonservative Treehouse, Sundance is seeing clearly some aspects of Spygate.

...The DOJ (Rosenstein) and FBI (McCabe) activity in coordination with the Robert Mueller team was always about the obstruction case from day one; heck, from even before Robert Mueller was appointed.

The totality of all primary effort has always been to protect the ruse of the Russia investigation by throwing out nonsense Russian indictments and keeping Manafort, Flynn and Papadopoulos (the original spygate targets) under control…. while the focus was on building the obstruction case against President Trump.

It could not be any more clear than it is today.

...It’s all about controlling the “narrative”.

This investigative ‘small group’ are the people inside Main Justice (DOJ) and FBI headquarters who redacted the Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text messages; removed messages and communication antithetical to their goals; kept key documents and information away from congress; stalled any effort to expose the unlawful aspects of “SpyGate’ and the fraudulent foundation behind the Carter Page FISA application; and undermined any adverse discoveries in the leak investigations (James Wolfe) writ large.

This investigative small group didn’t change when Mueller arrived, they just retooled the focus of their effort based on new leadership and new objectives. Those who created the Trump-Russia collusion/conspiracy case of 2016, evolved into creating the Trump obstructing justice case of 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Everything Mueller and Rosenstein were doing in late 2017 and throughout 2018 was intended to drag-out the Russia conspiracy narrative as long as possible, even though there was no actual Trump-Russia investigation taking place.

...It was always the “obstruction” investigation that could lead to the desired result by Mueller’s team of taking down President Trump through evidence that would help Pelosi and Nadler achieve impeachment . The “obstruction case” was the entirety of the case they were trying to make from May 2017 through to March 2019.

Read more here.

Cohen friend:"Mueller threatened to throw Cohen's wife in jail for up to 30 years!"

The woman standing behind Congressman Mark Meadows is Lynne Patton. Sundance at The Conservative Treehouse tells us that on January 18 of this year she wrote a Facebook post, saying in part,

What many of you may not be aware of is the fact that I can personally confirm that the ONLY reason Michael Cohen “turned on” the President of the United States is because Mueller threatened to throw his wife in jail for up to 30 years. Period. She is the co-guarantor of a $20M personal loan that Mueller discovered Michael secured back in 2015 by falsely inflating the value of his taxi medallions – effectively making her part & parcel to the federal charge of “Making False Statements to a Financial Institution,” to which Cohen ultimately plead guilty.

Sundance continues,

This is a rather stunning statement. However, it holds the elements of truth and explanation as to why the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller/Andrew Weissmann, would pass off their assembled Cohen prosecution to the Southern District of New York.


If this leverage against Cohen’s wife to gain virtually unlimited legal and political cooperation is true; and it does follow a pre-established pattern of unethical prosecutorial conduct previously displayed by Andrew Weissmann; then many of the issues surrounding the behavior of Michael Cohen do begin to make sense.

Interestingly, this type of unlawful coercion and threat to compel a guilty plea and cooperation from a defendant are specifically prohibited:

Commenter John added,

This is a longstanding tactic of Meuller and Weismann as is solitary confinement going back thru General Flynn and his son, the tactics used to arrest Roger Stone, the solitary confinement of Paul Manafort, their destruction of Arthur Andersen and the four Merrill Lynch execs, all the way back to Boston and Whitey Bulger. The pattern is clear and irrefutable. They use Gestapo tactics to threaten, intimidate and physically punish to coerce false testimony and “cooperation” to fit their narrative.

Commenter Sentient agrees,

Exactly. They got Mike Flynn to plead guilty to a questionable “crime” by threatening his son. The fact that the “they” is a different set of people doesn’t matter. It’s the Swamp. They’re going to eventually go after Trump’s family, too, if they can. They’d threaten Barron if it could help get Trump removed. As soon as they saw Cohen’s wife’s name on that $20M Note, they knew they had him. They’ll probably try the same thing with Roger Stone. He can’t “sing” (there’s nothing to sing about), but they could try to make him compose.

Read more here.

"It's up to you, Mr. Barr. Save us. As you know, America is owed the whole truth and nothing but."

Writing in PJ Media, Roger Simon makes the case for issuing the Mueller report and the Horowitz report simultaneously. Read more here.

Yup!

"He was worth billions and politically connected. He walked."

Don Surber discusses the recent ruling by a federal judge criticizing the way Florida prosecutors and the FBI let off Bill Clinton's buddy Jeffrey Epstein after Epstein had sex with 30 underaged girls. Who was the FBI Director when this happened? Bob Mueller!
Read more here.

Did Mueller's lead investigator tip off CNN of the impending arrest of Roger Stone?

Here is another one from Sundance at The Conservative Treehouse. He reports that Gateway Pundit has a major scoop involving the tipping off of CNN of the impending arrest of Roger Stone.

"Mueller is the single most powerful person living in America, and yet, nobody voted for him!

"He is a living rebuke to the principles of our democratic system."

"Some people skate, others are destroyed."

Tucker Carlson has Roger Stone as a guest on his program tonight. Stone seems very confident that he will be vindicated. He says it is a war against the First Amendment, which is really a war against the press! He also talks about shadow banning on Facebook and being broke and asks the audience for money.

Andy McCarthy was Tucker's next guest. He called Stone's arrest "complete overkill." I wonder if the tipping off of CNN of the raid will backfire on Mueller, as the Swat team was so heavily armed, Stone was unarmed and his wife is deaf! "They treated him like he was a mafia don or Osama bin Laden!

Are you just talking, Rudy, or are you going to push hard for this?

Ashe Schow reports in Daily Wire,

Two days after Christmas, former New York City mayor and President Donald Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, told The Hill’s TV program that Robert Mueller, who is investigating alleged collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government, should be investigated for destroying text messages related to the case.

Giuliani was being interviewed by Hill.TV’s Buck Sexton when he accused Mueller and his office of destruction of evidence because the special counsel erased text messages between fired FBI agent Peter Strozk and the FBI employee he was having an affair with, Lisa Page.

“Mueller should be investigated for destruction of evidence for allowing those text messages from Strzok to be erased, messages that would show the state of mind and tactics of his lead anti-Trump FBI agent at the start of his probe,” Giuliani told Sexton.

The Inspector General for the Department of Justice released a report earlier in the month that text messages between Strzok and Page were not fully preserved and had large gaps missing. The report blamed a “technical glitch” for the erasure of those messages, even though it recovered 19,000 texts from the couple sent prior to Mueller being named in the Russia probe. Strzok and Page were the two agents who helped launch that probe, after exchanging anti-Trump texts and talking about an “insurance policy” if Trump actually got elected in 2016, which he did. That “insurance policy” appears to be the claim that the Kremlin assisted Trump’s campaign and helped the president steal the election.

Conveniently, the missing text messages between Strzok and Page were from the time when they both worked for Mueller. Their phones’ memories were cleared after the two left Mueller’s team when it was revealed they were working on the probe and sending anti-Trump texts.

“That should be investigated, damn it, that should be investigated fully. You want a special counsel, get one for that,” Giuliani said on Hill.TV.

Giuliani then compared the erasure of the text messages to the erased tape in President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal when asked if he thought the move was intentional.

“It’s actually worse than Rose Mary Woods [Nixon’s secretary],” he explained. “She erased less than 19 minutes of conversation, but the FBI got rid of more than 19,000 messages.” Thousands more may be deleted forever.

"...we have reached the point where the Mueller team may be constructing more crimes than it is finding."

Victor Davis Hanson writes in American Greatness,

If you take media-sensationalized sex out of the equation, Trump, like any other American, has the right to pay anyone whatever he wishes to keep quiet about past embarrassing behavior, whether that be secretly gulping down too many Big Macs or cheating on the golf course.

...Add it all up, and we have reached the point where the Mueller team may be constructing more crimes than it is finding.

Read more here.

The Resistance has a new hero! Flynn stays on Mueller's leash.

What did the commenters at Ace of Spades Headquarters think of today's actions by Clinton-appointed judge Sullivan?

Charlotte the sailor said,

I really hate these people. They are willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that someone like Trump is never elected again so they can continue to make this country into a banana republic while all of them are exempted from the odious laws they pass for the hoi polloi.

May they rot in hell for an eternity.

They are scum to the max and the willing media is so stupid they don't realize that when the government these people want is implemented, the media will be the first to be dragged to the slaughter.

Bah wrote,

I do appreciate the acknowledgement that we are truly not a nation of laws but vindictiveness and raw power play, and no matter if one has served well the country one may still be a victim of the political class.

Ace added,

>>>I can't imagine why a Mueller fan would expend this much energy on calling attention to the 302s.

Because he was looking for MOAR EVIDENCE against Flynn.

And because he wanted to bring up this idea that if Flynn complains about FBI tactics, then he's not really accepting responsibility, and can be thrown in jail.

he wants to throw him in jail and is looking for any reason to do so.

Mikey NTH wrote,

If you are accepting the plea deal you cannot proclaim your innocence to the court at the same time. If you do you are rejecting the plea deal and the greater sentence can be imposed.

G.Gnome asked,

So. Who called the judge during the break and made him back off from the treason stuff?

Ace again:

He met with the Special Prosecutors team during the break, not Flynn's team.

Cuthbert the witless wrote,

Anywho it seems to me that the mental ravings of this judge with regard to treason, to the extent that Mueller had to reign him in, might indicate that this judge is a legit mental case and prolly should be taken off the case.

Ruthless prosecutorial abuse

In American Greatness, Roger Kimball gives his views on the Cohen sentencing.

...To my mind, what actually happened last week is the same thing that has been happening since the summer of 2016 when the Obama Administration began taking out “insurance policies” (classical reference there!) by trying to frame the Trump campaign with bogus charges of “Russian collusion.” After November 9, 2016, that effort mutated into an effort to destroy the Trump presidency. The “Russian collusion” meme was the fons et origo of the effort. But that was only the beginning, and after almost two years and $35 million, Robert Mueller and his merry band of anti-Trump rogue prosecutors have failed to deliver a shred of evidence of any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Instead, they have latched on to various associates of Trump, uncovered real or imagined wrongdoing that has nothing to do with the president, and proceeded to squeeze them in an effort to encourage them to “sing”—or, if there is no relevant song, to “compose,” i.e., fabricate something harmful to the president.

Paul Manafort, who was briefly the president’s campaign chairman, is the most public figure to have come into the crosshairs of Mueller’s open-ended prosecutorial campaign. They dug and dug and dug and discovered some serious financial improprieties from a decade or more ago. None of these had anything to do with the president. But Manafort’s closeness to Trump led them to suspect that he might know, or be able to make up, something damaging. So they threw him into solitary confinement only to drag him out periodically to ask if his “memory,” or at least his powers of invention, hadn’t improved. It is disgusting behavior, worthy of Lavrentiy Beria. One wonders if these specimens of ruthless prosecutorial abuse will suffer a fate at least metaphorically similar to their hero. (“Show me the man,” said Beria, “and I’ll show you the crime.”)

Read more here.