Imagine that a 40-year-old agrees to a colonoscopy. His doctor detects no evidence of disease, and it’s a decade early for a preventive procedure. But the physician insists on checking anyway. He knocks the patient out and finds...nothing. But, since he’s strapped to a gurney and paralyzed by Propofol, the doctor keeps looking. He opens the patient’s abdomen, inspects the internal organs, and finds no hint of cancer. But he removes the appendix because…why not? Then he peers down the man’s throat. Still no cancer. But — great idea! — he snatches the tonsils. Next, the doctor orders an endodontist to perform 12 root canals. The man’s molars are perfectly fine, so all that drilling proves pointless.
“Penile catheter!” the doctor tells the nurse, as she hands him a long, thin, clear tube. “Let’s see what we can find.”
President Donald J. Trump has every reason to feel as violated as this fictional victim of medical abuse. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquisition began as a collusionoscopy. The initial question was vital: Did Team Trump collude with Russia to secure the White House?
In his best-selling book, The Russia Hoax, my Fox News colleague Gregg Jarett explains in graphic detail how Mueller’s probe was born illegitimate. The special-counsel statute requires that investigations begin with enough evidence of specific lawbreaking to establish reasonable suspicion of criminality. Only then may a special counsel proceed and determine if federal statutes were violated.
Like an ambulance driver speeding in reverse, Mueller got this totally backward and still has his pedal to the metal.
Mueller’s inquisition did not start with any “specific factual statement” that any particular law had been broken. As it happens, there is no federal “anti-collusion” law. Had Donald Trump, Jr. accepted a non-classified, dirt-clogged dossier on Hillary Clinton from Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, that would not have been illegal. Poor judgment? Maybe. Reckless? Perhaps. A violation of federal law? No. If you disagree, please cite the relevant statute.
Rather, without pointing to any particular crime, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein sent Dr. Mueller to root around the body politic with neither a preliminary diagnosis nor the legal equivalent of x-rays or blood tests. This is the Justice Department equivalent of “Slice away. Call me if you find anything.”
Even with its bastard background, Dr. Mueller’s malpractice might have been worthwhile had he found evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. Even if no laws were broken, the historical record would be clear. However, between Dr. Mueller’s endless exercise in pathology and the FBI inquiry that began on July 31, 2016, Washington’s sleuths have had nearly two years and a month to find such evidence. None has surfaced.
And yet Dr. Mueller and his 17-member, 82 percent Democrat, pro-Hillary, Trump-hating clinical team keep prodding the president’s every orifice and many who once served him.
Trump advisors Mike Flynn, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos have pleaded guilty to various offenses, none of which indicate that Russia helped Trump get elected. Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s convictions on pre-Trump tax- and bank-fraud violations also have zippo to do with Russia.
Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen — after having his office, home, and hotel room raided by the FBI, in an emergency-room-grade trauma of the ancient doctrine of attorney-client privilege — pleaded guilty to tax evasion and bank-loan fraud. Cohen should have paid his taxes and not misstated his taxi-medallion finances. But, again, this has nada to do with so-called Trump-Russia collusion.
Also disturbing: After DOJ official Bruce Ohr was questioned Tuesday on Capitol Hill, reports emerged that Mueller has interviewed neither Ohr nor his wife, Nellie, about their involvement with Fusion GPS, the unverified and sexed-up Christopher Steele dossier, or its Russian sources. This omission is like performing surgery without taking the patient’s blood pressure.
And now, Dr. Mueller is wielding a surgical saw and chasing Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselbergand National Enquirer chairman David Pecker. (As The Daily Caller headlined this news: “Mueller Picks Pecker to Put Trump in Pickle.”) Even if dodgy dollars erected a Trump hotel somewhere, this still would not constitute Trump-Russia collusion.
And the just-immunized Pecker supposedly has a safe full of secrets on Trump, presumably involving the overexposed, washed-up porn star Stormy Daniels. Even if Trump paid Daniels to keep her beak shut about their alleged relationship, specifically so he would win the election, how is this a crime? (Cohen pled guilty to paying Daniels “hush money,” although legal experts argue that Cohen’s attorney, Clinton consigliere Lanny Davis, bamboozled him into confessing to a non-crime.)
If Trump used his own money, not campaign funds, how could this be a campaign-finance violation? If Trump personally told Daniels: “Stormy, I will pay you $130,000. I want you to help me with my diet and exercise. I want to look great, so I can defeat Hillary Clinton and become the 45th president of the United States.” This would be a candidate paying private money to an individual to achieve a political objective. This would be no more illegal than if Trump used his own money to pay Daniels to write speeches or draft a Canadian free-trade agreement, so that he could win the Oval Office. If those payments would not violate campaign-finance laws, why would it do so to tell Daniels to button up and lay low — especially in response to her extortive threats to blab if she did not get paid?
Dr. Mueller’s hunt for reds in October 2016 has failed. Never mind! Next, he promises to open Pecker’s vault and see what it yields on Trump’s colorful personal life. Swell. Just what America needs.
Dr. Mueller’s non-stop surgical procedure has devolved from Kremlin collusion to tabloid trash. His patient-in-chief suffers from one ailment: He defeated Hillary Clinton. Dr. Mueller is laboring to make this disease terminal.