The more Mueller searches for hypothetical lawbreaking, the more he ignores the actual lawbreakers.
The country is about to witness an
investigatory train wreck.
In one direction, Special Counsel Robert
Mueller’s investigation train is looking for any conceivable thing that
President Donald Trump’s campaign team might have done wrong in 2016.
The oncoming train is slower but
also larger. It involves congressional investigations, Department of Justice
referrals, and inspector general’s reports
— mostly focused on improper or illegal FBI and DOJ behavior during the
2016 election.
Why are the two now about to
collide?
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.
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.
Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma
Abedin probably lied when they told FBI investigators they had no idea that their then-boss, Hillary Clinton, was
using an illegal private email server. Both had communicated with Clinton about
it.
Mueller is said to be investigating
whether Trump obstructed justice by requesting that Comey go easy on Flynn.
If so, then the DOJ will have to
look at Comey himself and DOJ officials who obstructed a federal court. On at least four occasions, they were not honest about
the deeply flawed Christopher Steele dossier being the source of
information used in applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court.
Comey also has said that he
predicated the nature of the Clinton email investigation on his assumptions
about her chances of winning the presidency —
another investigatory abuse.
The Mueller team is reportedly still
looking into the possibility of election-cycle collusion with Russia by Trump
officials.
That track will require Mueller’s
DOJ counterparts to look carefully at the Clinton campaign, which paid
opposition researcher 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.
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.
High-ranking Obama administration
officials may also be subject to indictments, 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.
Mueller’s team apparently has
assumed that Michael Cohen’s status as Trump’s attorney offers no protections
under normal attorney-client privilege protocols.
If that is true, the DOJ will
have to investigate why the FBI allowed Clinton aide Cheryl Mills to pose as
Clinton’s attorney and thereby be shielded from providing testimony on what
she knew about the email scandal involving her “client.”
Investigators have swarmed Cohen’s
offices and residence, supposedly in fear that he might destroy pertinent
records.
The FBI should probably then reopen
the investigation into the Clinton email scandal, given that Clinton
destroyed more than 30,000 emails as well as computer hard drives that had been
requested by federal investigators.
What is going on?
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.
Flynn, Cohen, and other Trump aides
are considered small enough fry to go after. Clinton, Comey, McCabe, and
others seem big enough fry to leave alone.
No one thought Hillary Clinton would
blow the election. Top Obama officials at the FBI,
DOJ, intelligence agencies, and National Security Council believed in 2015
and 2016 that they could ignore laws with impunity because a protective Clinton
administration would soon be in power.
Politics have infected these
investigations. Trump was seen as a threat to the status quo, and FBI and
DOJ lawbreakers were seen as custodians of it.
The more Mueller searches for
hypothetical lawbreaking, the more he is inadvertently underscoring that
actual lawbreakers must be subject to the same standard of justice.
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.
For over a year, we have had two
standards of legality when there can only be one.
A reckoning is near.
Victor
Davis Hanson — NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior
fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Second
World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won. @vdhanson
