While we’re at it.
You realize Hillary Clinton was investigated yet no charges were ever brought against her, right?
So why aren’t we investigating her investigators? Because, since she was proven innocent, it must have been a put up job by her political enemies.
Why aren’t we investigating that? How is that any different? I await your answer.
Don’t hold your breath.
Robert Mueller: Republican, appointed by George W Bush
Rod Rosenstein: Republican, appointed by George W Bush + Donald Trump
James Comey: Republican, appointed by George W Bush, was more hardcore about prosecuting Hillary Clinton for Whitewater than Kenneth Starr was. Caused a ruckus because he thought Loretta Lynch had spied on the FBI for Clinton and given the information to them when meeting with Bill on an airport tarmac.
Alexander Downing: Right-wing Australian politician
Peter Strzok: Republican, favored Kasich in the primaries, hated the Clintons, Sanders, and Eric Holder. Successfully convinced the Obama DOJ to expand their request for materials when investigating Clinton.
Lisa Page: Republican, favored Kasich in the primaries.
Andrew McCabe: Republican, voted in the Republican primaries.
And, I believe you will find, Mueller concluded that Manafort was working with Kilimnik - a Russian intelligence agent - but that the evidence was just barely strong enough to try and convict him for.
And, I believe that you will find that Mueller concluded that the Trump campaign made a strong effort to contact and work with Russia. They were just unsuccessful at doing so - likely because the Russians realized that they were too stupid to work with. Is it really exonerating to say that if the person you’re hiring to defend your nation from foreign attacks didn’t succeed in helping a foreign country to attack your nation, then they’re a clear fit for the job?
I would put it to you that that would be moronic.
They can’t.
They just like two-syllable rally chants.
Great. Let’s get everyone, including Trump, under oath.
You know, it’s a long time ago now, but I remember something I read James Comey said about Rosenstein that stuck with me. I don’t remember where I read it, but I sure remember what he purportedly said. Something like, Rosenstein is a go-along, get-along guy. He’s a survivor. He’ll blow whatever way he must in order to survive.
Sure seems like that was an insightful assessment.
Yeah, I heard that. The latest assessment is that he’s weak.
One could always be a survivor by being weak, and therefore amenable to whatever circumstances presented with, like the bending stalk of a daisy blowing in the wind.
To quote Ari Melber, the “strangest player in all this may be Rod Rosenstein”, who “probably had the widest range of conduct on the Russia probe of any DOJ official.”
Rosenstein has been the most enigmatic figure throughout this, always there in the background at key moments, unblinking, his motives and allegiances uncertain, yet possessing a boyish face that gives him a rather innocuous air. If this were a horror movie with an obligatory upcoming twist ending, all the signs point to it being - to be revealed in dramatic fashion before the finale - that Rod Rosenstein will turn out to be the chief vampire.
I have never envied Rosenstein. Given his ‘go along to get along’ approach to his career, his position throughout the investigation must have been excruciating.
His situation was complicated by two things: First, that he is a witness to the obstruction of justice charges surrounding Trump’s firing of Comey; and second, the departure of… damned if I can remember her name, but a female assistant AG who left for private practice so the burden wouldn’t fall on her if Rosenstein left. So I think he felt stuck.
My best guess is that he tried to split the baby, reasoning that he couldn’t protect the investigation if he was fired, so he rationalized his mollification of Trump.
That said, if you can’t take the heat… it sounds like he badly compromised his principles.
I am disappointed in Rosenstein. I had a lot of faith in him, and it appears to have been misplaced. He was quite out of his depth, and he is not a courageous man.
Possibly this is getting overly conspiratorial minded (though, contrary to most conspiracies, a positive one) but we have Lindsey Graham - best friend of John McCain - going from being a savage anti-Trumpist to trying to buddy up to him, Rosenstein going from being the guy who offered to wear a wire and hiring the most certain and reliable pick for a person to investigate Trump as exists in the country to being a toady, and Barr - a guy who got the nod from George HW Bush - writing in a bizarre letter that seems like exactly the sort of thing that Trump would use to hire based on and then be strongly endorsed and defended by Rosenstein. The numbers don’t quite add up. Something funny is going on. And, as I have noted on my blog, for all their pretenses of being faithful to Trump, there are strong indications that Trump is simply being managed by the Republican party and that they have strong doubts about his loyalty to the nation.
So there is the hope that some of these guys are doing what it takes to go in for the kill, even if it means pretending to be one of the bad guys for a while.
Though, whether this is true or not, I think that we can trust that if the fallout of the Mueller Report is not significant and the world decides to move on from it without actually taking any serious consideration of what’s inside…well there are a lot of people who were willing to do things by the book, in the belief that this would work and that Congress would and should do their job, in accordance with their oath and in accordance with their Constitutional duties.
Those people are going to be a lot less tight-lipped as they come to grasp the (seeming) complete apathy of the American public and the Republicans in Congress.
Before, probably most leaks came from Adam Schiff and Trump’s own people - releasing everything in a slow leak to deal with, piece by piece. The new leaks might start coming from more authoritative and less political sources, with actual documents to back it.
It does help that he looks a bit like Edward Hermann.
Yeah, that may be how the seed was planted in my mind, but I wasn’t sure where it was from. 
Here’s Ed Herrmann in The Lost Boys as Max, the…[spoiler alert]
…head vampire.
More like Mr. Peepers. (Ask your parents)
Now, let’s be fair. “Lock 'er up!” has three.
And: “Build the wall” and “drain the swamp”. I guess Trump is 0 for 3. I think they still chant “Lock her up” at his rallies, believe Trump that the wall is being built, and think Trump’s appointments aren’t corrupt or self-interested. SAD!
I know some Trumpsters who were just praising Barr because we finally got a “top cop” who is honest and tough on immigration. Never mind that Sessions was an anti-immigration bigot and enacted the child separation policy as a deterrent. They just can’t wait for Barr to prosecute the treasonous Russian probe investigators. You know, the real villains.
These Trumpsters view the fact that the “adults in the room” are gone as a great thing because they were stopping Trump from Making America Great Again.
Those would be the same people who completely miss the point of The Emperor’s New Clothes. They positively hate that kid in the story.
Contrast them to these folks (Warning: bit of an ick factor, nude Trump statue).
It’s true, I unfairly maligned Trump fans by guessing their limit was two syllables, when it was actually three.
We’re real smart!! We’re real smart!! We’re real smart!!!
Probably more like “We’s real smart!!!”
The simpler explanation is that Trump is wildly popular among Republicans in particular and generally popular among people who self-identify as conservatives. Lindsay Graham knows that Trump came into what was considered to be Bush Country and handed Jeb Bush’s ass to him during the primary. If you’re Lindsay Graham, that’s a lesson you’d do well not to forget.
Beyond that is the fact that the Republican party has an agenda: remaking as much of the federal judiciary in the image of right wing ideologues as possible before a Democratic president and Senate can retake the country again. And while they’re doing that, their agenda simultaneously involves reversing all kinds of regulations and laws related to environmental protection, labor protection, labor wages, banking regulations, taxation, immigration control, religious fundamentalism, and entitlement spending. They want to take America back to about the year 1910, and Trump helps them do that in a way that, right now, no other Republican possibly can. Sure, there might be a more decent and/or more moderate Republican out there who can appeal to a broader cross-section of the population, but doing that would mean sacrificing their nastiness and nasty antidemocratic and anti-egalitarian policies, which is antithetical to what they want to achieve right now. They have a rare opportunity to effectively impose a legally-sanctioned form of oligarchy and they’re not going to waste that opportunity.
