Why Robert Mueller Is The Clown Prince Of Federal Law Enforcement

That is how Mueller came to still be in charge on April 15, 2013, when two homemade bombs detonated near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three persons (one an eight-year old boy) were killed and hundreds were injured. More than a dozen runners lost limbs.

Once again, a subsequent congressional investigation uncovered that Mueller’s FBI had been notified but did not act in time. In March 2011, the Russian intelligence agency FSB cabled the FBI, warning that the man who would become the lead bomber, a Chechen immigrant named Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was known to have associated with militant Islamists. The FBI investigated but quickly cleared him.

The FSB in September 2011 sent a   second cable, this time to the CIA. Again, the FBI did not act. In 2012, Tsarnaev traveled to and spent six months in Dagestan, a terror-filled Russia region next to Chechnya. The FBI was alerted to his travels, but decided neither to detain nor question him.

Once again, Mueller did not apologize. Rather, he told Congress the agent who handled the matter “did an excellent job in investigating, utilizing the tools that are available to him in that kind of investigation. … As a result of this, I would say, thorough investigation, based on the leads we got from the Russians, we found no ties to terrorism.”

Robert Mueller Finally Decides to Talk Russia

Four years later, we now have a Mueller-Russians redux. Shortly after getting turned down for a second stint as FBI director under President Trump, Mueller accepted an appointment as special counsel, tasked with investigating the man who had just turned him down for a job. While the theory has never been completely sketched out, the nub of the Russia collusion case is that Russia or the Trump campaign had something to do with WikiLeaks’ release of emails pilfered from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s email servers.

One cannot legitimately accuse Mueller of botching the Russia collusion investigation, since he has never actually conducted one. Presumably, someone legitimately investigating the source of the WikiLeaks emails would ask WikiLeaks who gave it to them. WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, has been locked in Ecuador’s London embassy for years, so there would be no difficulty finding him. Yet last September, Assange tweeted out that “Robert Mueller’s team … has [never] bothered to contact WikiLeaks or me, in any manner, ever.”

Meanwhile, even the “Resistance” has grown frustrated with Mueller’s plodding. They want Trump out   yesterday . They may have a point. The president made his fortune in the rough-and-tumble world of New York real estate. Given the vast expanse of the U.S. criminal code, any capable litigator, with a handful of subpoenas, could find scores of technical “crimes” committed by any businessman. So why is Mueller taking so long?

Anyone familiar with the ways of our government will know. Vested with a basically unlimited budget, Mueller first set about spending the money. He assembled a staff that would make “Ben-Hur’s” casting director envious. His army of mini-Muellers then began investigating those near Trump for every crime imaginable, no matter how removed from Russia, then charging them with very broad indictments, before pleading those charges down in exchange for cooperation. All with lots of media leaks in between.

In some ways, this is a classic prosecutorial approach. If done competently, it can be quite effective. If not, however, prosecutors can find themselves crashing into a brick wall known as the federal judiciary. Of late, that has been Mueller’s fate. In just the last two weeks, Mueller minions have embarrassed themselves in three different cases across three separate federal courthouses.

Embarrassments One, Two, and Three

First up was Judge Kimba Wood in the Southern District of New York, where a Mueller-referred team of FBI agents raided and walked off with pretty much the entire office of President Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen. The U.S. Attorney’s Office proposed that it conduct its own privilege review on behalf of Cohen. Wood quickly pooh-poohed that idea, and instead ordered the prosecutors to turn over the seized materials to a special master, and to not look at any of the documents until that review is complete.

Next up was Judge T.S. Ellis III in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Paul Manafort, President Trump’s second of three campaign managers, is being prosecuted for alleged banking fraud dating back to 2005. Ellis berated the special counsel’s office for prosecutorial overreach, for its pursuit of crimes that “manifestly don’t have anything to do with the campaign or with Russian collusion.” Ellis observed: “I don’t see what relation this indictment has with anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate …. What we don’t want in this country is we don’t want anyone with unfettered power.”

The third and most humiliating episode came in the District of Columbia, where Judge Dabney Friedrich is overseeing the indictments relating to the “Russian troll farm.” By way of reminder, those are the Russians who allegedly tried to sow dissension among these otherwise United States of America through Facebook click-bait ads.

Former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has called the indictments a “publicity stunt,” pointing out that Mueller knows the individual troll farmers will stay in Russia, so the allegations will never be tested in court. Internet users also instantly noted that most of the indictment had been plagiarized from a 2015 Radio Free Europe article. Still, as publicity stunts go, this was a good one, as the media gave the indictments unquestioning coverage.

This Would Be Funny If It Weren’t Serious

There was really   only one way   Mueller could have screwed it up: indict a company. For some reason, Mueller indicted three. Unlike individual defendants, who get put in jail if they return to America for their arraignments, corporate defendants appear through counsel, who after court go out for single-malt Scotch.

Lo and behold, a few days ago one of the indicted Russian companies appeared in court, represented by a team of hard-nosed defense attorneys who proceeded to demand all manner of burdensome evidentiary discovery from Mueller. The special counsel responded by requesting a lengthy adjournment. Judge Friedrich gave that a quick no, basically telling the Mueller team to go try its case. I would not hold my breath.

At this point, every day seems to bring more bad news for Mueller. Last August,   Vanity Fair   breathlessly reported that: “Robert Mueller Just Formed An Alliance That Should Terrify Trump.” To circumvent the president’s pardon power, Mueller formed an alliance with New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who could charge unpardonable state crimes. Great idea in theory; in practice, not so much.

For years, it has apparently been an open secret in certain circles that Mr. Schneiderman enjoys abusing women (“role-playing,” in his parlance). Yet a number of friends told one of his victims that she should “keep the story to herself, [because] Schneiderman was too valuable a politician for the Democrats to lose.” The only person willing to blow the whistle on the record was a certain then-TV host, who in 2013 tweeted that Schneiderman was “worse than Spitzer or Weiner” (two other local pols taken down in sex scandals). No one followed up.

Had Mueller, for 12 years the nation’s number one law enforcement officer, ever heard those rumors? Someone ought to ask him.

If Mueller did know, it may not have made any difference. To date, in his massive investigation, Mueller has only publicly granted immunity to one person, George Nader. Who is he? The Associated Press has reported that in 2002, Nader was convicted in the Czech Republic of ten cases of sexually abusing minors.

According to other media reports, in 1991 Nader pled guilty to a federal child pornography charge, and in 1985 he faced a similar charge in federal court involving allegations of importing from the Netherlands magazines depicting nude boys. A judge dismissed the 1985 charges based on an invalid search warrant. This is Mueller’s star witness.

It’s Not Special Counsels, It’s Mueller

Special counsel have not always been this bad. In the early years of the Reagan administration, a panel of federal judges appointed the late Leon Silverman as special prosecutor to investigate Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan, who was facing mob-related allegations.

Silverman had an earlier stint as an AUSA, but made his name in the private sector, as the most sought-after corporate litigator in America. He was considered to be a giant of the New York bar, with unquestioned integrity and skill. His reputation was forged in the courtroom, not in the DC cocktail circuit. He plainly did not need the gig. [Full disclosure: I started my legal career at Silverman’s firm, a few years after his retirement.]

Silverman proceeded to quickly and effectively investigate the allegations. In his report, Silverman identified “disturbing” evidence, but ultimately concluded that “there was insufficient credible evidence to support a prosecution of Secretary Donovan for any of the alleged wrongdoing or for his statements concerning such allegations.” Donovan bristled at the findings, but even he acknowledged that Silverman had treated him with “courtesy and professionalism.” No one questioned Silverman’s nonpartisanship.

What a difference a generation makes. If future presidential administrations are to be subjected to special/independent counsel/prosecutors, a return to that original standard would be warranted. Appointments should be placed in the hands of Article III judges, not bureaucratic hacks. Supervision should be as well. Appointees should be accomplished attorneys who have proven their skills through courtroom skills, not political appointments. Until then, we should all buckle our seatbelts, as this is going to be a long and bumpy ride.