Victor Davis Hanson: Mueller investigation ignores actual lawbreakers

by WorldTribune Staff, April 27, 2018

As special counsel Robert Mueller pursues his search for “hypothetical lawbreaking” he also continues to ignore “actual lawbreakers,” an analyst noted.

Special counsel Robert Mueller. / Reuters

“For over a year, we have had two standards of legality when there can only be one,” Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, wrote for National Review on April 26.

Hanson continued: “Mueller has searched far and wide for wrongdoing but so far has found little. Meanwhile, there is plenty of other wrongdoing already found, but no one seems to be looking at it.

“Ironically, Mueller’s investigation has reminded America that it is past time to call Comey, McCabe, and a host of Obama-era DOJ and FBI officials to account.”

“Politics have infected these investigations” Hanson wrote, adding that President Donald Trump “was seen as a threat to the status quo, and FBI and DOJ lawbreakers were seen as custodians of it.”

High-ranking Obama administration officials may be subject to indictments, Hanson noted, “given that they may have requested the ‘unmasking’ of American citizens whose communications were intercepted during the surveillance of foreign parties and then leaked the names of those citizens to the press.”

By charging former national security adviser Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI, “Mueller emphasized that even the appearance of false testimony is felonious behavior,” Hanson wrote.

“If that is so, then the DOJ will probably have to charge former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe with perjury or related offenses. A report from the Office of the Inspector General indicates that McCabe lied at least four times to federal investigators.

“Former FBI director James Comey may also have lied to Congress when he testified that he had not written his report on the Hillary Clinton email scandal before interviewing Clinton. Former director of national intelligence James Clapper and former CIA director John Brennan lied under oath to Congress on matters related to surveillance.”

Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, aides to Hillary Clinton, “probably lied when they told FBI investigators they had no idea that their then-boss was using an illegal private email server. Both had communicated with Clinton about it,” Hanson wrote.

Mueller reportedly is “still looking into the possibility of election-cycle collusion with Russia by Trump officials,” Hanson noted. “That track will require Mueller’s DOJ counterparts to look carefully at the Clinton campaign, which paid opposition researcher (Christopher) Steele, a British subject, for dirt on Trump that was produced through collusion with Russian sources.”

Mueller is also said to be investigating “whether Trump or his advisers broke laws concerning the release of confidential government information,” Hanson wrote. “If so, the DOJ may have to indict Comey. He confessed to passing along confidential FBI memos to a friend for the expressed purpose of leaking their contents to the press.


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