QUESTION: You don’t remember? But if he did, you could’ve been a fact witness as to the President’s comments and state of mind on firing James Comey.
MUELLER: I suppose that’s possible.54
It is difficult to fathom that Mueller could not remember a critical Oval Office conversation with the president that would have required his recusal. More likely, the special counsel knew his disqualifying conflict of interest had been exposed and sought to deflect it by claiming total memory lapse.
The appointment of a special counsel does not happen spontaneously. Surely Mueller knew he was under consideration when he met with Trump. We know from McCabe’s book that Rosenstein had been pursuing the idea for a week. He must have been consulting Mueller about accepting the position. Regardless of the purpose of the Oval Office meeting, Mueller sat there talking with Trump but never advised the president that he might decide to investigate him. That duplicity was more than a sufficient basis to require that he disqualify himself from the special counsel position. It is hard to believe that Mueller had the temerity to accept the job of investigating the very person with whom he had just met the day before. Maybe that had been his plan all along. Perhaps his intent was to secretly gather evidence from Trump himself that he could then use against him in some way as special counsel, while pretending to be interviewing for the job of FBI director or offering some “perspective.” Mueller’s actions were deceptive and dishonest.
And what is one to make of the cozy relationship among the three men who were at the heart of the special counsel appointment? Comey admitted having leaked the presidential memos to trigger the naming of a special counsel. Was it a mere coincidence that Rosenstein just happened to pick Mueller, of all people? Or was it all coordinated? Was there a plan hatched whereby Mueller would become either the new FBI director or the special counsel in order to take down Trump? From either position, he could investigate the president. Why would he want to return to the job he had already held for twelve years, having retired from government service? Why the sudden motivation? According to Trump, it was Rosenstein who suggested Mueller to replace Comey, and the deputy attorney general was present during the Oval Office interview on May 16. When the president rejected Mueller, Rosenstein appointed him as special counsel the very next day. Comey and Mueller were close, and Rosenstein had worked with both men. The timing of their actions is suspect. They have never divulged the curious details of how it all came about. Congress should demand answers, and so should the Department of Justice.
During my June 2019 interview of President Trump at the White House, I asked him directly whether he and Mueller had discussed the reason Comey had been fired during their Oval Office conversation:
JARRETT: Was there any discussion at all about your having just fired Comey? Did you say to him, “This is why I fired Comey”?
PRESIDENT: [long pause] I have no comment.55
Trump then told me he could easily answer the question because he had a strong recollection of their discussion that day. However, he was reluctant to delve back into it.
“I just want to put this stupid thing to bed,” he offered by way of explanation.
The reader can draw his or her own conclusion. But it was abundantly clear to me, sitting there in the Oval Office with the president and judging his reaction and demeanor, that the answer was “yes.” Of course they had talked about why Comey had been fired. It would have been a natural, and perhaps necessary, subject. It is hard to imagine a scenario in which it would not have come up. Again, it cannot be overemphasized that all of this would have made Mueller a witness in his own case, which is strictly forbidden. The president provided more context:
PRESIDENT: Mueller wanted very badly to have the job as FBI director and to return to the FBI. I didn’t want him. I rejected him. By the way, how much of a conflict is it when a guy comes in wanting a job, I say no, and the next day he’s your special prosecutor? It’s outrageous.56
Trump then spoke about another matter that he felt was a significant conflict of interest. Mueller had resigned from the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, and asked that he be refunded his membership fee.
PRESIDENT: We had a business conflict, too. We had a dispute over his golf fees. He wanted his money back. I said no. It would set a bad precedent. Everyone else would want their money back if they left the club at some point. I wouldn’t do it. He didn’t like it. I never gave him back his $15,000, approximately, and I think he was mad about that.57
One can debate whether that “dispute” and any underlying ill will or anger over it constituted a true conflict of interest requiring disqualification. Mueller, in footnote 529 of volume II of his report, seemed to dismiss their squabble as insignificant, but that may have been another self-serving explanation.58
However, all of the other conflicts of interest, either individually or taken as a whole, meant that Mueller should never even have interviewed for the job as special counsel, much less accepted it. His failure to recognize that calls his awareness and prudence into serious question. “Bob Mueller should never have been allowed to do this case,” said Trump.59
Investigating a president of the United States is a serious matter and therefore necessitated a special counsel who was beyond reproach in both conduct and appearance. Mueller’s decision to accept the position in the face of the federal regulations and ethical rules discouraging it indicates that his judgment was compromised.
Then he made matters worse. If there had been legitimate reservations about his ability to approach the Trump-Russia investigation impartially, he removed all doubt by assembling a team of prosecutors composed almost exclusively of Democrats.
Mueller’s Team of Partisans
After ignoring his own conflicts of interest, Mueller went about the business of selecting as his prosecutors a group of people, many of whom were bias ridden. Their lack of impartiality polluted the report they produced. Although they found no crimes related to “collusion,” their monograph on obstruction of justice was a decidedly political document aimed at Trump. Of course, that was consistent with the partisan composition of the special counsel team. It called into question their motives and delegitimized their observations. In that regard, Mueller sabotaged his own investigation.
It is significant that none of the nineteen lawyers hired by Mueller is registered as a Republican, according to investigations by Fox News and Daily Caller.60 Public records show that the vast majority were Democrats and most had donated to their party. Many had given money to the Obama and Clinton presidential campaigns, as well. Though Mueller himself was once a Republican, the status of his “current party registration is not clear.”61 President Bill Clinton nominated him to be a US attorney, and it was President Barack Obama who asked Mueller to remain as director of the FBI.62
The “partisan in chief” on the special counsel team of prosecutors was Andrew Weissmann. Infamous in legal circles for wrongful prosecutions that had earned both reversals and rebukes, he attended what was supposed to be Clinton’s election-night victory party on November 8, 2016, that eventually resembled a funeral service.63 When Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, an Obama holdover, was fired by Trump shortly after he took office, Weissmann expressed his contempt for the president in a fawning email to Yates.64
Weissmann is a prosecutor who is known for what has been described as abusive tactics, using the law as a weapon in an unprincipled quest to convict. He has been accused of suppressing evidence and threatening witnesses.65 Innocent people have been victimized by his maneuvers. Some of his biggest cases have been overturned by higher courts. Former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell observed that “the truth plays no role in Weissmann’s quest” and “respect for the rule of law, simple decency and following the facts do not appear in [his] playbook.”66 Weissmann’s tactics don’t end there. Justice Department documents show that he quietly met with reporters for an “off-the-record” discussion about Paul Manafort in April 2017.67 The next day, the s
tory broke that Trump’s former campaign manager was being investigated for financial improprieties. A month later, Weissmann joined the special counsel probe that eventually charged Manafort, although none of the crimes involved “collusion.”
Mueller knew full well what he was doing when he brought Weissmann on board, since the two had worked closely together before at the FBI. John Dowd, Trump’s lawyer, told me that whenever he had met on behalf of the president with the special counsel team, he had refused to be in the same room as Weissmann. “He was so unethical and untrustworthy, I said I wouldn’t talk with him present,” recalled Dowd.68 According to Dowd, Weissmann was banished from those conferences. His notorious reputation did not seem to bother Mueller in the least. Just the opposite: he gave Weissmann complete authority to lead the effort to hire other members of the special counsel team, as evidenced by documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.69 It is no wonder the deck became loaded against Trump.
When I interviewed another of the president’s lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, he offered an equally harsh assessment:
Weissmann can see a crime if you’re just walking down the street. He was out of control—unscrupulous and unethical. Implicating the president for “collusion” was all Weissmann’s plan. He was steering the ship. Mueller was along for the ride. Bob lets other people take over, run the ship, and then he takes credit for it.70
Mueller also brought to his staff Jeannie Rhee. The two had been partners in private practice. The hiring of Rhee was especially brazen since she had defended the Clinton Foundation in a civil racketeering case and donated $5,400 to Clinton’s presidential campaign. When Clinton had jeopardized national security by using a private server for classified documents, it was Rhee who had reportedly represented the former secretary of state in litigation that had sought to force her to produce the emails she was hiding.71 Suddenly, Rhee was in a position to prosecute the person who had defeated the candidate she had supported and defended.
Given how obvious a conflict of interest that represented, it was shameful for the special counsel team to even consider hiring her. But there was more. Compounding Rhee’s conflict was the fact that she had previously worked for Deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, an important witness and source of information in the Trump investigation. She had also represented ex–Obama aide Ben Rhodes during the congressional investigation into the Benghazi attack, an inquiry that had focused primarily on Clinton’s misconduct.72 Rhee’s multiple disqualifying conflicts of interest were stunning. Mueller seemed unbothered and undeterred by them, which may speak volumes about an underlying motivation to damage Trump by utilizing people who held the same anti-Trump prejudices. Amazingly, Mueller sheepishly admitted during his congressional testimony that he had no idea of Rhee’s involvement with Clinton when he hired her.73 It appears that Mueller either didn’t care about conflicts of interest or had left it all up to Weissmann, who had his own glaring conflict.
The Clinton connections extended to others on Mueller’s team as well. Aaron Zebley was chosen, even though he had served as the lawyer for Justin Cooper, who had worked for Clinton and set up her private email server, registering the domain in his own name instead of hers. Cooper had admitted to destroying Clinton’s BlackBerry devices, “breaking them in half or hitting them with a hammer.”74 He had not had security clearance for any of the classified documents on Clinton’s server, yet had had access to it. Zebley’s involvement in the Clinton cases created yet another glaring conflict of interest and, at the very least, the appearance of impropriety in the Mueller probe. Mueller must have known all of this because he and Zebley and Rhee all worked together at the WilmerHale law firm that was actively involved in representing Clinton during her email scandal.75
Another of Mueller’s prosecutors was Kyle Freeny, a donor to both the Obama and Clinton campaigns.76 As a lawyer acting on behalf of the Obama administration, she had been excoriated by a federal judge in a 2014 case for “intentional, serious and material” misconduct.77 After an apology from the DOJ, the judge had accepted the department’s claims that her representations to the court had been unintentional. But is this the kind of lawyer who should be involved in an investigation of the president of the United States? If nothing else, the optics reflect poorly on Mueller’s judgment. Perhaps a person capable of misconduct was exactly what he wanted on his team of prosecutors.
Two of the lawyers Mueller selected had known as early as the summer of 2016 that the FBI investigation of Trump and his campaign over “collusion” was rife with bias and that the “dossier” was likely a phony document. That was revealed in the testimony of Justice Department official Bruce Ohr.78 After meeting with the “dossier” author, Christopher Steele, in late July 2016, Ohr said, he had immediately shared his improbable intelligence with Andrew Weissmann and Zainab Ahmad, warning them of Steele’s anti-Trump bias, the Clinton campaign’s funding of the document, and the document’s unreliable allegations.79 Incredibly, those two lawyers were hired by Mueller, despite their early involvement in the defective “dossier” and the spurious FBI investigation that had been inspired by it.
It should not be forgotten that FBI agent Peter Strzok and his paramour, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, were also picked by Mueller to join his investigation. Their animus toward Trump and admiration for Clinton were embarrassingly chronicled in their numerous text messages. Page departed the probe, and Strzok was removed by Mueller and McCabe when the inspector general at DOJ discovered the shocking communications.80 Yet when Congress demanded to know why Strzok had been terminated from the probe, the true reason, together with the prejudicial texts, was concealed.81 Mueller must have known that the Strzok-Page messages would raise bright red flags that warned of a partisan witch hunt against Trump. Under questioning before the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, Strzok conceded that when he had met with Mueller the day of his dismissal, the special counsel had never bothered to ask him if his bias had unduly influenced the special counsel investigation.82 Did he not care? How much of the probe up to that point was contaminated by the lead investigator’s malice toward Trump? Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who had appointed Mueller, attempted to deflect the controversy by insisting that none of those conflicts or blatant antipathy toward the president constituted even the appearance of impropriety.83 It was an absurd claim to make.
Like a deck used in a crooked game of cards, it was stacked. The special counsel could not have put together a group of Democrats more “terminally hostile to Trump, or at least certifiably pro-Hillary.”84 Beyond Mueller, there were no Republicans on the team and no prosecutors who could be described as apolitical. The team’s hyperpartisan composition could not have been accidental. It had to have been done by design. The handpicked lawyers would be highly motivated to damage Trump by pursuing a case “based on false pretenses and a fake dossier funded by Democrats.”85 They were armed with unlimited resources and unfettered power. Nineteen politically biased prosecutors eyed Trump through their investigatory scopes and took direct aim. The president never stood a chance. He was a sitting duck for Mueller’s assembled team of legal sharpshooters.
The Left’s Hysteria
The truth always has a nemesis. Representative Adam Schiff spent more than two years pretending that he was privy to evidence that he did not have. That illusion gave him a comfortable home on television networks that offered no pretense of their antipathy toward Trump, especially CNN and MSNBC. The more Democrats and the media worked in concert to advance their hallucination that Trump had conspired with the Kremlin, the more audacious Schiff became in his public denouncements of the president. He frequently insinuated that he had special access to damning information that few others could procure. Even after the House Intelligence Committee issued its majority investigative report concluding that it had all been a hoax, Schiff announced, “I can certainly say with confidence that there is significant evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia.”86 He produced no such evidence, b
ecause it did not exist. But that didn’t stop him from perpetuating the “collusion” delusion. On CBS’s Face the Nation, he ventured that Trump “may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time.”87 Schiff was so heavily invested in the scam and the celebrity it brought him that there was no reversing course. Maybe a part of him really believed his claims, and he was hoping that some magical revelation would appear out of nowhere to vindicate them. Like a guy with a counterfeit bill, he kept trying to pass it off to others.
Schiff kept good company. There was no shortage of fellow Democrats (and even an outlier Republican or two) who echoed false allegations, some with unhinged warnings. The most ridiculous came from Norman Eisen, the former White House ethics attorney, who stated that the criminal case against Trump was “devastating” and he had been “colluding in plain sight.”88 If so, few could see it, including the special counsel, who peered furiously into every obscure corner and crevice for some proof that the president had coordinated or conspired with Russia. People such as Eisen and Schiff were convinced that Trump’s election had been illegitimate. They could not conceive how Americans had voted him into office absent some treasonous conspiracy hatched by him in the bowels of the Kremlin. Here are just a few of the members of Congress who pronounced Trump and his campaign guilty of “collusion” in advance of the Mueller Report:
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