AI
Thursday, August 02, 2018 11:17:17 AM
If you recall, Trump interviewed Mueller for the D.A. job and there has to be a reason he passed. But Mueller is probably pissed he didn't get the job.
Why has Robert Mueller been shielded from questions about his role in some of the FBI’s most shameful scandals? Is it because his “Russia collusion” probe is the pointy tip of the Deep State spear aimed at President Trump?
What was Robert Mueller’s role in the infamous “partnership” between the FBI and the Boston Mafia that involved multiple murders, racketeering, extortion, witness tampering, and much more?
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has a media-crafted image as “Mr. Integrity,” a straight-shooting, non-partisan, nose-to-the-grindstone, publicity-shunning public servant.
The anti-Trump media projected the same kind of squeaky-clean image for former FBI Director James Comey.
However, it is now public knowledge that he is a lying, leaking, partisan, political hack who grossly abused his powerful office. He should be facing criminal prosecution instead of being rewarded with a secretive (and potentially illegal) multi-million dollar book deal.
Robert Mueller’s past appears to be even more checkered than Comey’s.
In her blog post for March 20, investigative reporter Sarah Carter brings up nagging questions about Robert Mueller’s troubled history that refuse to go away — because they have never been answered.
Entitled, “Questions Still Surround Robert Mueller’s Boston Past,” the article deals with Mueller's involvement in what is usually referred to as “The Whitey Bulger Case” or “The FBI-Boston Mob Case,” one of the most sensational black eyes the FBI has ever suffered.
Whitey Bulger, as The New American detailed back in 1998 (“FBI Covering for Criminals”), was the murderous boss of Boston’s notorious Winter Hill Gang, also known as the “Irish Mafia.” For two decades (1975-1994) Bulger led a charmed existence, as his brutal gang carried out their crime rampage under the FBI’s protection!
https://youtu.be/xQn5Ea5_kM4
Whitey Bulger story from October 2001
Time after time, Massachusetts state and local police had their elaborate, years-long investigations of Bulger foiled by FBI interference.
FBI Special Agent John Connolly and John Morris, who was in charge of the FBI’s Boston Organized Crime Squad, were Bulger’s protectors and would tip him off to investigations and wiretaps by other police agencies.
This corrupt FBI-Bulger relationship was dramatized in Martin Scorcese’s 2006 film, The Departed, starring Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Matt Damon.
https://www.netflix.com/title/70044689
In 1994, Bulger was tipped off by his FBI handler John Connolly that investigators were closing in on him. He went on the lam and eluded capture for 16 years.
He was arrested in California in 2011 and went on trial in 2013, charged with 32 counts of racketeering, including 19 murders. The jury convicted Bulger of 31 of the 32 counts, including 11 of the 19 murders. He was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences plus five years.
While Bulger was on the run, his FBI partners in crime, Connolly and Morris, were arrested and indicted.
In 2008 Connolly was convicted for his role in the murders of FBI informant John B. Callahan and Oklahoma businessman Roger Wheeler.
Connolly’s supervisor John Morris was allowed to get off by testifying against his underling and longtime co-conspirator.
Who gave Morris a “get out of jail free” card, and why?
Family members of the FBI-Bulger murder victims were outraged, as were police officials, who had had their painstaking investigations wrecked, their officers and investigators endangered, and their informants killed.
Why was Morris being protected, and who above him in the chain of command was being protected? To those who had been following the FBI-Winter Hill Gang activities for years, it was inconceivable that the corrupt relationship could have gone on for so long without the knowledge (and perhaps approval?) of higher-ups in the Bureau and the Department of Justice.
Why might FBI/DOJ higher-ups approve? Because while Bulger was using them for protection against prosecution, they were using him for information to arrest and prosecute other mobsters, which gave them media headlines and political kudos.
In short, Bulger gave the FBI/DOJ plenty of feathers for their caps, while they wiped out his competition.
In her March 20 blog post. Sarah Carter links to a noteworthy 2011 article by Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen entitled, “A lingering question for the FBI Director.”
The FBI Director Cullen was referring to was then-Director Robert Mueller, who had previously been one of the DOJ attorneys tasked with overseeing the FBI-Bulger criminal operation. The Cullen article introduces readers to objections raised against Mueller by Mike Albano, a former member of the Massachusetts parole board and the former mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts.
He was objecting at the time to the reappointment of Mueller as FBI chief.
While on the parole board, Albano had become convinced that the FBI and DOJ had framed four men with bogus evidence for the 1965 gangland murder of a Boston hoodlum named Teddy Deegan.
Albano decided to vote in favor of parole for Peter Limone, one of the four. “So in 1983, after Albano indicated he might vote to release Limone, he got a visit from a pair of FBI agents named John Connolly and John Morris,” Cullen reported.
“They told Albano that the men convicted of Deegan’s murder were bad guys, made guys. ‘They told me that if I wanted to stay in public life, I shouldn’t vote to release a guy like Limone,’ Albano said. ‘They intimidated me.’’’
The FBI and DOJ framed the four scapegoats, who were then sent to prison for the Deegan murder to protect Bulger, his henchman Steve “The Rifleman” Flemmi, and Flemmi’s brother, Vincent “Jimmy” Flemmi.
“After Albano was elected mayor of Springfield in 1995, he soon found the FBI hot on his tail, investigating his administration for corruption,” Cullen noted. “The FBI took down several people in his administration, and Albano is convinced that the FBI wasn’t interested in public integrity as much as in publicly humiliating him because he dared to defy them.”
In 2001, Albano was vindicated. The four men who had been wrongly convicted in the Deegan murder were exonerated.
Two of them had already died in prison.
As a result of this shocking government malfeasance, the two surviving victims and the families of the deceased were awarded compensation of $100 million — courtesy of the taxpayers.
“Albano was appalled that, later that same year, Mueller was appointed FBI director, because it was Mueller, first as an assistant U.S. attorney then as the acting U.S. attorney in Boston, who wrote letters to the parole and pardon boards throughout the 1980s opposing clemency for the four men framed by FBI lies,” writes the Boston Globe’s Cullen.
“Of course, Mueller was also in that position while Whitey Bulger was helping the FBI cart off his criminal competitors even as he buried bodies in shallow graves along the Neponset.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vxfNPrPnQk
https://youtu.be/QQFqkJBLlwE
Unfortunately, members of Congress from both sides of the aisle were too busy singing Mueller’s praises — from the sheet music provided by the FBI-DOJ scriptwriters and their Deep State media allies — to listen to Mayor Albano’s warnings.
Why have Mueller and the other top DOJ/FBI officials implicated in the long-running FBI-Winter Hill Mob conspiracy not been questioned or held to account?
Mueller’s Russia-Clinton Collusion
Incredibly, the ongoing Mueller-directed farce popularly referred to as the “Trump-Russia collusion” investigation is being directed by a man who should be officially considered a top “Russia collusion” suspect.
It was FBI Director Mueller, after all, who, along with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, failed to take any action to stop the sale of Uranium One to Russia (see here, here, and here). Giving Putin 20 percent of our uranium production capacity seems to be a bit more serious than anything Donald Trump or anyone in his retinue have been accused of.
And what was Director Mueller doing while President Obama and Secretary Clinton were helping Putin build Skolkovo, Russia’s hi-tech version of Silicon Valley?
Then there is the matter of Director Mueller himself flying to Moscow, per instructions of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to deliver a sample of highly enriched uranium to Russia, as Steve Byas reported here last August.
Mueller’s press corps (CNN, Vox, Snopes, the New York Times, Huffington Post, et al) have all closed ranks to assure the public that “there’s nothing to see here, move along.”
Mueller is the establishment’s golden boy who must be protected; his halo must remain untarnished if he is to carry out his Deep State assignment to unseat President Trump.
Who are the behind-the-scenes manipulators who are guiding, propping up, and protecting Mueller?
Some idea of the Deep State forces that are propelling his “investigation” can be seen in the strategic promotion he has received from quarters such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the premier brain trust pushing for world government. Not only has Mueller been an honored speaker (see embedded video below) at the CFR and many of its affiliated and allied institutions, but he is the recipient of constant accolades by the CFR-dominated, anti-Trump media combine.
Is it long past time to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate the Special Counsel, as some Republican members of Congress have proposed?
Who will investigate the investigator? We have been told the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are looking into these and other troubling questions about Mueller’s past. It is vitally important that these matters be thoroughly investigated and exposed — before “Smoke-and-Mirrors” Mueller and his Fake News allies gin up enough support to transform the current media-driven impeachment campaign against President Trump into an official impeachment proceeding.
https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/28555-probing-mueller-what-were-his-roles-in-boston-mafia-murders-uranium-one-and-other-fbi-scandals
When Mueller was on the hockey team at St. Paul’s prep school in New Hampshire, one of his teammates was future Secretary of State John Kerry.
https://rebrn.com/re/robert-mueller-and-john-kerry-are-old-classmates-the-swamp-is-de-4000577/
The bureau also had faced severe criticism for its handling of various other events, such as the 1993 Waco siege that resulted in more than 70 people dying. Mueller declared at his confirmation hearings that he would “restore the public’s confidence in the FBI."
In 2004, Mueller told President Bush he would resign if the controversial NSA domestic surveillance program continued. James Comey, then the U.S. deputy attorney general, remembered the mood as he and Mueller stood outside the Oval Office, with both of them prepared to quit their posts in protest. Mueller "wasn't rattled, but I could tell he was just very sad," Comey said. In response to Mueller and Comey’s united front, Bush decided against continuing the surveillance program.
Comey, Mueller bungled big anthrax case together
FBI Director Robert Mueller, left, confers with Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, head of the Justice Department’s corporate fraud task force, as they announce charges against Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling, in Washington at the Department of Justice, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2004.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, the Justice Department named Robert S. Mueller III as a special prosecutor to investigate possible Russian interference in the 2016 election. It was a decision greeted with a chorus of supportive croaking from inside official Washington, aka The Swamp.
“If anyone can stay on course and not be deterred by the whims of politics, it’s Bob Mueller,” said former Missouri senator and U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft. “A great choice,” added John McCain. “Somebody we all trust,” echoed California Congressman Darrell Issa.
“Impeccable credentials,” chimed in Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah. “Should be widely accepted.”
Democrats were even more extravagant. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said that “no better person” could have been named. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin tweeted, “I have the highest regard for his integrity and intelligence.”
All this was dutifully reported in the press, which gushed over Mueller just as effusively. “Robert Mueller: The Special Counsel America Needs,” intoned the New York Times editorial board. Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, revealing a lack of self-awareness worthy of Trump himself, gleefully predicted disaster for the president.
“Mueller is a Trump nightmare: a pro, who ran the FBI for 12 years and is broadly respected in both parties in Washington for his competence and integrity,” Kristof wrote. “If Trump thought he was removing a thorn by firing Comey, he now faces a grove of thistles.”
Kristof never mentioned why he had as much reason to recuse himself from this subject as Attorney General Jeff Sessions did. I’ll explain later. First, I’ll say that when I heard Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had appointed Bob Mueller as a special prosecutor, I didn’t experience the same rhapsody as my capital compatriots. Why? Three reasons.
First, Jim Comey and Bob Mueller have a long history as professional allies. For Mueller to be brought in to investigate the behavior of the guy who sacked Comey seems a conflict of interest. Perhaps this is the wrong way to look at it, and Mueller’s professionalism will supersede any personal loyalty. OK, but here’s a second reason: These two guys, working in tandem, have a track record of bureaucratic infighting — with another Republican White House as their shared adversary — that belies their reputations for being above political intrigue. This is not news. Some of the positive coverage in the last few days highlighted that episode. It’s a long and convoluted story, but the story line that took hold in Washington went like this:
In March 2004, Comey, then deputy attorney general, sped with sirens blazing to the hospital bedside of his boss, John Ashcroft, who was recovering from gallbladder surgery. At the time, the Justice Department was being pressured by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card to sign papers reauthorizing a secret anti-terrorism domestic surveillance program initiated after 9/11. The clock was running out and the papers had to be signed or the program would lapse. But Comey, who had a dim view of the program’s constitutionality, wouldn’t do it. When he heard Gonzales and Card were on their way to the hospital, Comey rushed there, too, to stop them.
Comey had enlisted Bob Mueller, then FBI director, as an ally. Both men apparently told George W. Bush privately they’d quit rather than extend the program. “Here I stand, I can do no other,” Comey told Bush. That’s Martin Luther’s iconic line, and although in 2016 Hillary Clinton would come to see Comey as more akin to Judas than Luther, one thing is apparent: Jim Comey is a government appointee who thinks of himself in a manner many people find grandiose. Bush backed down in the face of the Comey-Mueller insurrection, but three years later Comey told his dramatic Ashcroft hospital bed story in a congressional hearing that eviscerated Gonzales, who was attorney general by then.
The third and most important factor tempering my enthusiasm for the new special prosecutor is that Comey and Mueller badly bungled the biggest case they ever handled.
They botched the investigation of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks that took five lives and infected 17 other people, shut down the U.S. Capitol and Washington’s mail system, solidified the Bush administration’s antipathy for Iraq, and eventually, when the facts finally came out, made the FBI look feckless, incompetent, and easily manipulated by outside political pressure.
This, too, was an enormously complex case.
But here are some facts: Despite the jihadist slogans accompanying the mailed anthrax, it had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein or any foreign element; the FBI ignored a 2002 tip from a scientific colleague of the actual anthrax killer, who turned out to be a Fort Detrick scientist named Bruce Edwards Ivins; the reason is that they had quickly obsessed on an innocent man named Steven Hatfill; the bureau was bullied into focusing on the government scientist by Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy (whose office, along with that of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, was targeted by an anthrax-laced letter) and was duped into focusing on Hatfill by two sources — a conspiracy-minded college professor with a political agenda who’d never met Hatfill and by Nicholas Kristof, who put her conspiracy theories in the paper while mocking the FBI for not arresting Hatfill.
In truth, Hatfill was an implausible suspect from the outset.
He was a virologist who never handled anthrax, which is a bacterium. (Ivins, by contrast, shared ownership of anthrax patents, was diagnosed as having paranoid personality disorder, and had a habit of stalking and threatening people with anonymous letters — including the woman who provided the long-ignored tip to the FBI).
So what evidence did the FBI have against Hatfill? There was none, so the agency did a Hail Mary, importing two bloodhounds from California whose handlers claimed could sniff the scent of the killer on the anthrax-tainted letters.
These dogs were shown to Hatfill, who promptly petted them. When the dogs responded favorably, their handlers told the FBI that they’d “alerted” on Hatfill and that he must be the killer.
You’d think that any good FBI agent would have kicked these quacks in the fanny and found their dogs a good home. Or at least checked news accounts of criminal cases in California where these same dogs had been used against defendants who’d been convicted — and later exonerated. As Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times investigative reporter David Willman detailed in his authoritative book on the case, a California judge who’d tossed out a murder conviction based on these sketchy canines called the prosecution’s dog handler “as biased as any witness that this court has ever seen.”
Instead, Mueller, who micromanaged the anthrax case and fell in love with the dubious dog evidence, personally assured Ashcroft and presumably George W. Bush that in Steven Hatfill the bureau had its man.
Comey, in turn, was asked by a skeptical Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz if Hatfill was another Richard Jewell — the security guard wrongly accused of the Atlanta Olympics bombing. Comey replied that he was “absolutely certain” they weren’t making a mistake.
Such certitude seems to be Comey’s default position in his professional life. Mueller didn’t exactly distinguish himself with contrition, either.
In 2008, after Ivins committed suicide as he was about to be apprehended for his crimes, and the Justice Department had formally exonerated Hatfill — and paid him $5.82 million in a legal settlement — Mueller could not be bothered to walk across the street to attend the press conference announcing the case’s resolution.
When reporters did ask him about it, Mueller was graceless. “I do not apologize for any aspect of the investigation,” he said, adding that it would be erroneous “to say there were mistakes.”
Does this mean Comey and Mueller are bad guys?
I’m not saying that. Mueller, for one, answered his country’s call and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps when many others of his generation were avoiding combat service in Vietnam. Both men have forsaken millions of dollars in salary at private law firms for public service. Neither has ever had a hint of personal scandal.
I know Steven Hatfill’s attorney, Thomas Connolly, well, and David Willman, a former newsroom colleague, even better — and I spoke to them last week about these events. Connolly said he thought Comey was a “decent guy” who was legitimately fooled by that business with the dogs. And while Willman and I were discussing whether Mueller’s reputation for competence was deserved, the reporter volunteered that he did not question the man’s integrity. Fair enough. I would, however, pose this query to the keepers of official Washington’s agreed-upon narrative.
While running for president, Donald Trump promised to “drain the swamp.” He won enough votes, in the right states, to make him president. So here’s the question:
How does official Washington, which clearly does not want to be drained, think the 63 million people who voted for Trump will feel about an investigation run by D.C. insiders with a history of grandstanding — an investigation that some Democrats and commentators are saying aloud they hope will end in impeachment?
And what will those Trump voters think of uncritical media coverage of this effort by a self-righteous press corps that has suddenly rediscovered its investigative-reporting impulses, and which behaves as if little of this relevant context is even worth mentioning? .
https://www.ocregister.com/2017/05/21/comey-mueller-bungled-big-anthrax-case-together/
Why has Robert Mueller been shielded from questions about his role in some of the FBI’s most shameful scandals? Is it because his “Russia collusion” probe is the pointy tip of the Deep State spear aimed at President Trump?
What was Robert Mueller’s role in the infamous “partnership” between the FBI and the Boston Mafia that involved multiple murders, racketeering, extortion, witness tampering, and much more?
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has a media-crafted image as “Mr. Integrity,” a straight-shooting, non-partisan, nose-to-the-grindstone, publicity-shunning public servant.
The anti-Trump media projected the same kind of squeaky-clean image for former FBI Director James Comey.
However, it is now public knowledge that he is a lying, leaking, partisan, political hack who grossly abused his powerful office. He should be facing criminal prosecution instead of being rewarded with a secretive (and potentially illegal) multi-million dollar book deal.
Robert Mueller’s past appears to be even more checkered than Comey’s.
In her blog post for March 20, investigative reporter Sarah Carter brings up nagging questions about Robert Mueller’s troubled history that refuse to go away — because they have never been answered.
Entitled, “Questions Still Surround Robert Mueller’s Boston Past,” the article deals with Mueller's involvement in what is usually referred to as “The Whitey Bulger Case” or “The FBI-Boston Mob Case,” one of the most sensational black eyes the FBI has ever suffered.
Whitey Bulger, as The New American detailed back in 1998 (“FBI Covering for Criminals”), was the murderous boss of Boston’s notorious Winter Hill Gang, also known as the “Irish Mafia.” For two decades (1975-1994) Bulger led a charmed existence, as his brutal gang carried out their crime rampage under the FBI’s protection!
https://youtu.be/xQn5Ea5_kM4
Whitey Bulger story from October 2001
Time after time, Massachusetts state and local police had their elaborate, years-long investigations of Bulger foiled by FBI interference.
FBI Special Agent John Connolly and John Morris, who was in charge of the FBI’s Boston Organized Crime Squad, were Bulger’s protectors and would tip him off to investigations and wiretaps by other police agencies.
This corrupt FBI-Bulger relationship was dramatized in Martin Scorcese’s 2006 film, The Departed, starring Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Matt Damon.
https://www.netflix.com/title/70044689
In 1994, Bulger was tipped off by his FBI handler John Connolly that investigators were closing in on him. He went on the lam and eluded capture for 16 years.
He was arrested in California in 2011 and went on trial in 2013, charged with 32 counts of racketeering, including 19 murders. The jury convicted Bulger of 31 of the 32 counts, including 11 of the 19 murders. He was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences plus five years.
While Bulger was on the run, his FBI partners in crime, Connolly and Morris, were arrested and indicted.
In 2008 Connolly was convicted for his role in the murders of FBI informant John B. Callahan and Oklahoma businessman Roger Wheeler.
Connolly’s supervisor John Morris was allowed to get off by testifying against his underling and longtime co-conspirator.
Who gave Morris a “get out of jail free” card, and why?
Family members of the FBI-Bulger murder victims were outraged, as were police officials, who had had their painstaking investigations wrecked, their officers and investigators endangered, and their informants killed.
Why was Morris being protected, and who above him in the chain of command was being protected? To those who had been following the FBI-Winter Hill Gang activities for years, it was inconceivable that the corrupt relationship could have gone on for so long without the knowledge (and perhaps approval?) of higher-ups in the Bureau and the Department of Justice.
Why might FBI/DOJ higher-ups approve? Because while Bulger was using them for protection against prosecution, they were using him for information to arrest and prosecute other mobsters, which gave them media headlines and political kudos.
In short, Bulger gave the FBI/DOJ plenty of feathers for their caps, while they wiped out his competition.
In her March 20 blog post. Sarah Carter links to a noteworthy 2011 article by Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen entitled, “A lingering question for the FBI Director.”
The FBI Director Cullen was referring to was then-Director Robert Mueller, who had previously been one of the DOJ attorneys tasked with overseeing the FBI-Bulger criminal operation. The Cullen article introduces readers to objections raised against Mueller by Mike Albano, a former member of the Massachusetts parole board and the former mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts.
He was objecting at the time to the reappointment of Mueller as FBI chief.
While on the parole board, Albano had become convinced that the FBI and DOJ had framed four men with bogus evidence for the 1965 gangland murder of a Boston hoodlum named Teddy Deegan.
Albano decided to vote in favor of parole for Peter Limone, one of the four. “So in 1983, after Albano indicated he might vote to release Limone, he got a visit from a pair of FBI agents named John Connolly and John Morris,” Cullen reported.
“They told Albano that the men convicted of Deegan’s murder were bad guys, made guys. ‘They told me that if I wanted to stay in public life, I shouldn’t vote to release a guy like Limone,’ Albano said. ‘They intimidated me.’’’
The FBI and DOJ framed the four scapegoats, who were then sent to prison for the Deegan murder to protect Bulger, his henchman Steve “The Rifleman” Flemmi, and Flemmi’s brother, Vincent “Jimmy” Flemmi.
“After Albano was elected mayor of Springfield in 1995, he soon found the FBI hot on his tail, investigating his administration for corruption,” Cullen noted. “The FBI took down several people in his administration, and Albano is convinced that the FBI wasn’t interested in public integrity as much as in publicly humiliating him because he dared to defy them.”
In 2001, Albano was vindicated. The four men who had been wrongly convicted in the Deegan murder were exonerated.
Two of them had already died in prison.
As a result of this shocking government malfeasance, the two surviving victims and the families of the deceased were awarded compensation of $100 million — courtesy of the taxpayers.
“Albano was appalled that, later that same year, Mueller was appointed FBI director, because it was Mueller, first as an assistant U.S. attorney then as the acting U.S. attorney in Boston, who wrote letters to the parole and pardon boards throughout the 1980s opposing clemency for the four men framed by FBI lies,” writes the Boston Globe’s Cullen.
“Of course, Mueller was also in that position while Whitey Bulger was helping the FBI cart off his criminal competitors even as he buried bodies in shallow graves along the Neponset.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vxfNPrPnQk
https://youtu.be/QQFqkJBLlwE
Unfortunately, members of Congress from both sides of the aisle were too busy singing Mueller’s praises — from the sheet music provided by the FBI-DOJ scriptwriters and their Deep State media allies — to listen to Mayor Albano’s warnings.
Why have Mueller and the other top DOJ/FBI officials implicated in the long-running FBI-Winter Hill Mob conspiracy not been questioned or held to account?
Mueller’s Russia-Clinton Collusion
Incredibly, the ongoing Mueller-directed farce popularly referred to as the “Trump-Russia collusion” investigation is being directed by a man who should be officially considered a top “Russia collusion” suspect.
It was FBI Director Mueller, after all, who, along with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, failed to take any action to stop the sale of Uranium One to Russia (see here, here, and here). Giving Putin 20 percent of our uranium production capacity seems to be a bit more serious than anything Donald Trump or anyone in his retinue have been accused of.
And what was Director Mueller doing while President Obama and Secretary Clinton were helping Putin build Skolkovo, Russia’s hi-tech version of Silicon Valley?
Then there is the matter of Director Mueller himself flying to Moscow, per instructions of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to deliver a sample of highly enriched uranium to Russia, as Steve Byas reported here last August.
Mueller’s press corps (CNN, Vox, Snopes, the New York Times, Huffington Post, et al) have all closed ranks to assure the public that “there’s nothing to see here, move along.”
Mueller is the establishment’s golden boy who must be protected; his halo must remain untarnished if he is to carry out his Deep State assignment to unseat President Trump.
Who are the behind-the-scenes manipulators who are guiding, propping up, and protecting Mueller?
Some idea of the Deep State forces that are propelling his “investigation” can be seen in the strategic promotion he has received from quarters such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the premier brain trust pushing for world government. Not only has Mueller been an honored speaker (see embedded video below) at the CFR and many of its affiliated and allied institutions, but he is the recipient of constant accolades by the CFR-dominated, anti-Trump media combine.
Is it long past time to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate the Special Counsel, as some Republican members of Congress have proposed?
Who will investigate the investigator? We have been told the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are looking into these and other troubling questions about Mueller’s past. It is vitally important that these matters be thoroughly investigated and exposed — before “Smoke-and-Mirrors” Mueller and his Fake News allies gin up enough support to transform the current media-driven impeachment campaign against President Trump into an official impeachment proceeding.
https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/28555-probing-mueller-what-were-his-roles-in-boston-mafia-murders-uranium-one-and-other-fbi-scandals
When Mueller was on the hockey team at St. Paul’s prep school in New Hampshire, one of his teammates was future Secretary of State John Kerry.
https://rebrn.com/re/robert-mueller-and-john-kerry-are-old-classmates-the-swamp-is-de-4000577/
The bureau also had faced severe criticism for its handling of various other events, such as the 1993 Waco siege that resulted in more than 70 people dying. Mueller declared at his confirmation hearings that he would “restore the public’s confidence in the FBI."
In 2004, Mueller told President Bush he would resign if the controversial NSA domestic surveillance program continued. James Comey, then the U.S. deputy attorney general, remembered the mood as he and Mueller stood outside the Oval Office, with both of them prepared to quit their posts in protest. Mueller "wasn't rattled, but I could tell he was just very sad," Comey said. In response to Mueller and Comey’s united front, Bush decided against continuing the surveillance program.
Comey, Mueller bungled big anthrax case together
FBI Director Robert Mueller, left, confers with Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, head of the Justice Department’s corporate fraud task force, as they announce charges against Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling, in Washington at the Department of Justice, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2004.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, the Justice Department named Robert S. Mueller III as a special prosecutor to investigate possible Russian interference in the 2016 election. It was a decision greeted with a chorus of supportive croaking from inside official Washington, aka The Swamp.
“If anyone can stay on course and not be deterred by the whims of politics, it’s Bob Mueller,” said former Missouri senator and U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft. “A great choice,” added John McCain. “Somebody we all trust,” echoed California Congressman Darrell Issa.
“Impeccable credentials,” chimed in Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah. “Should be widely accepted.”
Democrats were even more extravagant. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said that “no better person” could have been named. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin tweeted, “I have the highest regard for his integrity and intelligence.”
All this was dutifully reported in the press, which gushed over Mueller just as effusively. “Robert Mueller: The Special Counsel America Needs,” intoned the New York Times editorial board. Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, revealing a lack of self-awareness worthy of Trump himself, gleefully predicted disaster for the president.
“Mueller is a Trump nightmare: a pro, who ran the FBI for 12 years and is broadly respected in both parties in Washington for his competence and integrity,” Kristof wrote. “If Trump thought he was removing a thorn by firing Comey, he now faces a grove of thistles.”
Kristof never mentioned why he had as much reason to recuse himself from this subject as Attorney General Jeff Sessions did. I’ll explain later. First, I’ll say that when I heard Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had appointed Bob Mueller as a special prosecutor, I didn’t experience the same rhapsody as my capital compatriots. Why? Three reasons.
First, Jim Comey and Bob Mueller have a long history as professional allies. For Mueller to be brought in to investigate the behavior of the guy who sacked Comey seems a conflict of interest. Perhaps this is the wrong way to look at it, and Mueller’s professionalism will supersede any personal loyalty. OK, but here’s a second reason: These two guys, working in tandem, have a track record of bureaucratic infighting — with another Republican White House as their shared adversary — that belies their reputations for being above political intrigue. This is not news. Some of the positive coverage in the last few days highlighted that episode. It’s a long and convoluted story, but the story line that took hold in Washington went like this:
In March 2004, Comey, then deputy attorney general, sped with sirens blazing to the hospital bedside of his boss, John Ashcroft, who was recovering from gallbladder surgery. At the time, the Justice Department was being pressured by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card to sign papers reauthorizing a secret anti-terrorism domestic surveillance program initiated after 9/11. The clock was running out and the papers had to be signed or the program would lapse. But Comey, who had a dim view of the program’s constitutionality, wouldn’t do it. When he heard Gonzales and Card were on their way to the hospital, Comey rushed there, too, to stop them.
Comey had enlisted Bob Mueller, then FBI director, as an ally. Both men apparently told George W. Bush privately they’d quit rather than extend the program. “Here I stand, I can do no other,” Comey told Bush. That’s Martin Luther’s iconic line, and although in 2016 Hillary Clinton would come to see Comey as more akin to Judas than Luther, one thing is apparent: Jim Comey is a government appointee who thinks of himself in a manner many people find grandiose. Bush backed down in the face of the Comey-Mueller insurrection, but three years later Comey told his dramatic Ashcroft hospital bed story in a congressional hearing that eviscerated Gonzales, who was attorney general by then.
The third and most important factor tempering my enthusiasm for the new special prosecutor is that Comey and Mueller badly bungled the biggest case they ever handled.
They botched the investigation of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks that took five lives and infected 17 other people, shut down the U.S. Capitol and Washington’s mail system, solidified the Bush administration’s antipathy for Iraq, and eventually, when the facts finally came out, made the FBI look feckless, incompetent, and easily manipulated by outside political pressure.
This, too, was an enormously complex case.
But here are some facts: Despite the jihadist slogans accompanying the mailed anthrax, it had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein or any foreign element; the FBI ignored a 2002 tip from a scientific colleague of the actual anthrax killer, who turned out to be a Fort Detrick scientist named Bruce Edwards Ivins; the reason is that they had quickly obsessed on an innocent man named Steven Hatfill; the bureau was bullied into focusing on the government scientist by Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy (whose office, along with that of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, was targeted by an anthrax-laced letter) and was duped into focusing on Hatfill by two sources — a conspiracy-minded college professor with a political agenda who’d never met Hatfill and by Nicholas Kristof, who put her conspiracy theories in the paper while mocking the FBI for not arresting Hatfill.
In truth, Hatfill was an implausible suspect from the outset.
He was a virologist who never handled anthrax, which is a bacterium. (Ivins, by contrast, shared ownership of anthrax patents, was diagnosed as having paranoid personality disorder, and had a habit of stalking and threatening people with anonymous letters — including the woman who provided the long-ignored tip to the FBI).
So what evidence did the FBI have against Hatfill? There was none, so the agency did a Hail Mary, importing two bloodhounds from California whose handlers claimed could sniff the scent of the killer on the anthrax-tainted letters.
These dogs were shown to Hatfill, who promptly petted them. When the dogs responded favorably, their handlers told the FBI that they’d “alerted” on Hatfill and that he must be the killer.
You’d think that any good FBI agent would have kicked these quacks in the fanny and found their dogs a good home. Or at least checked news accounts of criminal cases in California where these same dogs had been used against defendants who’d been convicted — and later exonerated. As Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times investigative reporter David Willman detailed in his authoritative book on the case, a California judge who’d tossed out a murder conviction based on these sketchy canines called the prosecution’s dog handler “as biased as any witness that this court has ever seen.”
Instead, Mueller, who micromanaged the anthrax case and fell in love with the dubious dog evidence, personally assured Ashcroft and presumably George W. Bush that in Steven Hatfill the bureau had its man.
Comey, in turn, was asked by a skeptical Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz if Hatfill was another Richard Jewell — the security guard wrongly accused of the Atlanta Olympics bombing. Comey replied that he was “absolutely certain” they weren’t making a mistake.
Such certitude seems to be Comey’s default position in his professional life. Mueller didn’t exactly distinguish himself with contrition, either.
In 2008, after Ivins committed suicide as he was about to be apprehended for his crimes, and the Justice Department had formally exonerated Hatfill — and paid him $5.82 million in a legal settlement — Mueller could not be bothered to walk across the street to attend the press conference announcing the case’s resolution.
When reporters did ask him about it, Mueller was graceless. “I do not apologize for any aspect of the investigation,” he said, adding that it would be erroneous “to say there were mistakes.”
Does this mean Comey and Mueller are bad guys?
I’m not saying that. Mueller, for one, answered his country’s call and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps when many others of his generation were avoiding combat service in Vietnam. Both men have forsaken millions of dollars in salary at private law firms for public service. Neither has ever had a hint of personal scandal.
I know Steven Hatfill’s attorney, Thomas Connolly, well, and David Willman, a former newsroom colleague, even better — and I spoke to them last week about these events. Connolly said he thought Comey was a “decent guy” who was legitimately fooled by that business with the dogs. And while Willman and I were discussing whether Mueller’s reputation for competence was deserved, the reporter volunteered that he did not question the man’s integrity. Fair enough. I would, however, pose this query to the keepers of official Washington’s agreed-upon narrative.
While running for president, Donald Trump promised to “drain the swamp.” He won enough votes, in the right states, to make him president. So here’s the question:
How does official Washington, which clearly does not want to be drained, think the 63 million people who voted for Trump will feel about an investigation run by D.C. insiders with a history of grandstanding — an investigation that some Democrats and commentators are saying aloud they hope will end in impeachment?
And what will those Trump voters think of uncritical media coverage of this effort by a self-righteous press corps that has suddenly rediscovered its investigative-reporting impulses, and which behaves as if little of this relevant context is even worth mentioning? .
https://www.ocregister.com/2017/05/21/comey-mueller-bungled-big-anthrax-case-together/
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