The Washington Post, which has done everything in its dwindling power with articles, editorials and columns denouncing, demeaning and attempting to destroy President Trump, appears to have temporarily — but only temporarily — raised the white flag. A headline following former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s appearance before two House committees said: “Democrats struggle to figure next move against Trump after Mueller Hearing falls flat.”
Democrats’ hatred is so deep for the president, who refuses to submit to their demands — the usual scenario for Republican presidents — that they feel compelled to continue their attacks, if for no other reason than to raise 2020 campaign money.
Democrats thought they could spin Mueller’s statement before the House Judiciary Committee following a question from Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., who said, “The reason that you did not indict the president is because of the OLC (Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice) opinion that you cannot indict a sitting president, correct?“
Mueller agreed, but later before the House Intelligence Committee corrected himself: “I want to go back to one thing that was said this morning by Mr. Lieu, who said and I quote, ‘You didn’t charge the President because of the OLC opinion.’ That is not the correct way to say it. As we say in the report and as I said at the opening, we did not reach a determination as to whether the President committed a crime.”
At that moment you could almost hear the air escaping from the gasbags on the committee.
The other dubious Muller statement came in response to a question about the way attorneys were selected for his team and why all are Democrats. Mueller claimed they were hired because of their experience and he did not know their politics.
Think of it this way: If you put the names of 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans into a hat, what are the odds only the names of Democrats would be drawn?
Federal Election Commission records examined by CNN analysts found one of the Mueller attorneys contributed more than $56,000 to Democrats before the 2016 election and two lawyers contributed the maximum of $2,700 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Mueller wants us to believe they conducted their investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia without political bias. Imagine if the situation was reversed and a special counsel had hired only Republican attorneys to investigate a sitting Democrat president.
Kimberley Strassel got to the heart of the investigation’s bias in her Wall Street Journal column. She said it wasn’t as much about what was investigated as what was ignored.
“The most notable aspect of the Mueller report,” she wrote, “was always what it omitted: the origins of this mess. Christopher Steele’s dossier was central to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe, the basis of many of the claims of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. Yet the Mueller authors studiously wrote around the dossier, mentioning it only in perfunctory terms. The report ignored Mr. Steele’s paymaster, Fusion GPS, and its own ties to Russians. It also ignored Fusion’s paymaster, the Clinton campaign, and the ugly politics behind the dossier hit job.”
Mueller said an estimated 200 times this and other related matters were “out of my purview,” when they should have been central to it.
Unwilling, or unable, to give up, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., announced he will try to gain access to grand jury testimony, which would be illegal.
Yogi Berra famously said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over. In the case of the Democrats’ hatred of President Trump, it’ll never be over. Let them run on that next year, along with promises to reverse the current economic and jobs boom, and they will deservedly lose again.
This year marks Cal Thomas’ 35th year as a syndicated columnist. Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.
