Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley has started investigating the investigators: he’s looking at FBI agents to see which of them might have voiced negative remarks about Trump, and is demanding documents from FBI director Christopher Wray related to Peter Strzok, an agent now infamous on the right for sending anti-Trump emails in 2016. Republican Congressman Mark Meadows is just one of several demanding yet another special counsel.
"It's time for Attorney General Sessions to start leading and appoint a second special counsel so that the American people can get the truth and the answers they deserve."
This would be in addition to the special counsel that Republicans demanded just two weeks ago to investigate the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One. Trump’s attorney general Jeff Sessions is already taking a break from destroying the Justice Department to look into that one.
The Justice Department said Monday that prosecutors were looking into whether a special counsel should be appointed to investigate political rivals President Trump has singled out for scrutiny, including Hillary Clinton.
Despite the fact that Mueller pushed out Strzok weeks ago and there’s no evidence that any of his personal opinions had the slightest effect on the investigation, Fox News has already gone way path to declaring Mueller’s investigation moot, declaring that the special counsel engaged in a cover-up, while the Wall Street Journal published its second editorial calling on Mueller to resign. In October, the same Journal actually called for a special counsel to investigate if Hillary Clinton colluded with Russia in the election. Because … it doesn’t matter.
It really doesn’t matter what special counsel No. 2 or special counsel No. 3 or special counsel No. 4 are supposed to be about. They really have only one purpose: call Mueller as a witness in an effort to force his investigation to end.
Robert Mueller is not Patrick Fitzgerald. His investigation into Trump’s ties with Russia is not going to end with the conviction of a single vice-presidential adviser. With four members of Trump’s campaign team already indicted and clear signs of deals that wind through the White House, even the most vocal Trump-Russia denier has become aware that this is Not Going To End Well for Trump.
Their only hope is to keep it from ever reaching an end. In addition to the call for a whole cadre of special counsels, Republicans have also tried to simply vote Mueller out of office.
A group of conservative Republican lawmakers introduced a resolution on Friday calling for Robert Mueller to recuse himself as the special counsel investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 US election and whether President Donald Trump's campaign team colluded with Moscow.
At this point:
- Three House committees have launched official investigations into the Uranium One deal that took place more than eight years ago. While a lot of the talk on the day this investigation was announced concerned the non-existent connection between Uranium One and Hillary Clinton, Clinton is not the target. Mueller was the head of the FBI at the time the deal was approved. Expect all three committees to call Mueller as a witness. Likely multiple times. And expect every one of those summons to be treated as a reason Mueller should resign.
- Expect at least two investigations into the FBI, one in the House and one in the Senate, into whether the FBI is “prejudiced against Trump.”
- Expect at least two more investigations into whether Comey, Strzok, and others “went easy” on Hillary Clinton, both because at least one of these mock investigations has to focus on Hillary and because it provides an opportunity to drag both Comey and Mueller into their chambers.
- Expect additional bills to be introduced that would either force Mueller to step down, end his funding, or limit the scope of the investigation either by topic or date.
- Expect Jeff Sessions to give in on at least one “let’s have another special counsel” request—the subject of which is just short of arbitrary, because the first thing that counsel will do is announce that both Mueller and Comey are subjects of the investigation.
And while the existing intelligence agencies become the subject of heavy Republican scowls, don’t be surprised if Trump’s plan for a loyal Cheka/NKVD/Okhrana doesn’t gain support.
The Trump administration is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals. The sources say the plans have been pitched to the White House as a means of countering “deep state” enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency.
Which seems like a great time to break out the black trench coats and little silver skulls. Because … why pretend?