I don’t think Mueller takes shit. Certainly not based on his record. And if Barr can claim he won’t be biased because this is his last rodeo, then take that to the hundredth power about Mueller.
On the bright side, the Fox Trumpsters are praising Mueller for this which kind of messes up the whole witch hunt thing. But in their glee to own the libs, I don’t think they realize that yet.
I agree he doesn’t take shit. But he is also the ultimate Institutionalist. He will work within the rules, even if he hates them.
That said, he’ll find another way to get his information before the public. Within the rules, of course. 
For now, his efforts may be stymied by forces beyond his control.
Seems very unlikely, given his independence to date.
I’d love to be wrong and will happily retract my supposition at the first fall of the next indictment. But… how would we know?
Up to now, he’s had free rein under Rosenstein. Then Whitaker shows up, and no indictments since – even though he gave Jerome Corsi notice that he would soon be indicted. Seems like an awful long lead time to give someone a heads-up that they are in imminent peril of indictment.
I’m just chewing my cud, obviously, but I’ve noticed the only things coming out of his office at the moment are of the housekeeping variety: Continuances of sentencing hearings, e.g.
It strikes me as odd. Or maybe I’ve just gone fully round the bend.
I’ll throw in with a theory about the Mueller statement. Suppose Michael Cohen is on the fence about testifying. He’s worried about retribution. Mueller has promised him that anything he says in confidence will be kept private. So when there’s a story that appears to cite the Special Counsel, he rushes out a carefully worded denial to provide reassurance to Cohen (or other cooperating witnesses) that they remain tight lipped.
I think that’s reaching and wishful thinking frankly.
I am just speculating, not wishing. Even if it is true that Buzzfeed offered a badly sourced story, it doesn’t change the fact that Cohen appeared to lie to congress about how long the trump team was negotiating a tower in Moscow. What changes is whether trump specifically told Cohen to lie - this would not be true. But the larger story - trump was in cahoots with Russia during the campaign, and has been financially dependent on Russian money for decades - still remains reasonably correct.
Maybe yes, maybe no. I do think Mueller wants to stay in very specific control of this investigation, and stories that jump ahead of his plans need to be swatted down, especially if they reveal a little too much.
And the more I think about it, if this story was really wrong, it would be easy as pie for the Mueller team to simply ignore a story off of fucking Buzzfeed. This team’s spokesperson spends most days issuing “no comments;” bullshit speculation pieces come out all the time, and there’s complete silence from Mueller.
But then Buzzfeed comes out with some pretty hardcore damning shit, and they feel the need to throw water on it? It may not have been 100% correct, or immediately verifiable, but *something *in there motivated Mueller to slap back.
Psst. You’ve overlooked Andrew Johnson who, like Clinton, was impeached but not convicted.
To me, this is the crux of it. The Mueller team has been nothing but “no comment,” and then there’s a great big fat COMMENT?? The Mueller people don’t seem like a group that would use a sledgehammer when a scalpel is needed. Everyone is interpreting their *comment *as a sledgehammer, and I doubt if it’s that. Something is up, and I’ll bet it’s not what it looks like.
Except the Buzzfeed story would have been hard for Mueller’s office to ignore. The difference between the Buzzfeed story and all the other stories and rumors about what Trump may or may not have done is that (a) this was a slam-dunk for impeachment, and (b) it was based on specific claims about evidence that the Mueller team allegedly had. For those reasons, we were already seeing serious calls for starting an impeachment inquiry; for example, CNN still has online an opinion piece by Princeton historian Julian Zelizer calling for exactly that, and based largely on the Buzzfeed allegations (they modified it later with a one-liner acknowledging the statement from Mueller’s office).
I don’t believe the “reveal[ing] a little too much” theory of why Mueller’s office nipped this in the bud. I think it’s more plausible that there was enough wrong with some of the specifics of the Buzzfeed allegations that anyone who started impeachment proceedings on that basis would have had them blow up in their face. I think Mueller felt an ethical obligation to prevent this from happening. That tells us nothing about what evidence Mueller does have or may yet have that may justify impeachment in the future. Directing Cohen to lie to Congress would be absolutely in character for Trump and I believe he probably did. Trump is a congenital liar with the ethics of a nocturnal rodent who may yet deservedly end up in jail.
Trump is a congenital liar with the ethics of a nocturnal rodent, but unfortunately, he will never go to prison. You may quote me on that.
There was no need to make a comment previously because whatever news leaked out, the Republican Congress was not going to do anything about it. But, now, with Democrats in charge of the House, there were already calls for investigations and impeachment hearings based on that article. Which might be premature and hinder the investigation. So, I can imagine the need for a comment this time, as opposed to all the other times, is that inaction is exactly what is necessary for the investigations and this time there might have been action.
While I might prefer that he choose a second amendment exit for himself, I can see him getting a life term for his crimes.
This reminds me of that scene in All The President’s Men, where Woodward & Bernstein run a story that turned out to be wrong, because they misinterpreted what their source was saying. They blew it, but it didn’t mean that Nixon wasn’t a crook and that justice did not eventually prevail.
Well said.
Excellent point.
And if I’m remembering correctly, in that scene, when Bradlee is chiding The Boys (as he called them) for blowing that story, he tells a story on himself when he was a reporter about LBJ getting ready to appoint someone besides Hoover to head the FBI. Then LBJ did appoint him, and Bradlee said he took a lot of heat, “for sticking us with J Edgar for life!” And then Bradlee adds, “But I wasn’t wrong.”
I haven’t watched that movie in a month or so. Better crank it up tonight…
On behalf on all nocturnal rodents world-wide, I demand an apology:
As I remember it the problem was the story said Hugh Sloan testified before the grand jury about something very specific (maybe it was who the people were that had access to the secret cash in Maurice Stans safe, maybe that wasn’t it exactly). The problem with the story was that Sloan had never told the grand jury this information, not that the information was inaccurate.
Which I guess is probably analogous to what’s going on today with BuzzFeed. Cohen definitely lied to Congress; Trump probably told him to lie; but there is some flaw in Buzzfeed’s reporting of those facts.