Robert Mueller’s real power play reveals itself

| 8:26 pm EDT April 11, 2018
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Monday’s raid of Donald Trump’s attorney’s office and residence was legally so many degrees removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, despite being a crucial step in his investigation, it left him in a position where he could technically claim he wasn’t responsible. After all, he merely referred it to someone else, who recused himself and referred it to someone else, who signed off on it. But that’s the whole point: this was Mueller’s power play.

I’ll admit, it took me an extra day to spot it. Initially, I suspected – along with everyone else – that Mueller had distanced himself from the FBI raid in the hope of keeping Donald Trump off his back about it. But in hindsight, Mueller is too smart to think something like that would work. It’s like Trump having John Kelly fire someone, and then thinking the person isn’t going to figure out that Trump was behind the firing. Mueller’s real plan here didn’t click for me until a followup story surfaced today about the raid.

Today we learned that the FBI raid wasn’t simply about Michael Cohen’s payout to Stormy Daniels, as had initially been widely reported. The raid was also about the Access Hollywood tape and the near identical timing of its release with the U.S. government’s release of a report exposing Russia’s election meddling on Trump’s behalf, and WikiLeaks’ release of emails that Russia had stolen from the Hillary Clinton campaign. In other words, this raid was indeed very much about the Trump-Russia scandal.

So why on earth would Robert Mueller hand off authority over the raid to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York? Look at how the investigation is now playing out. Suddenly, a U.S. Attorney’s office in Donald Trump’s backyard, run by one of Trump’s own appointees, is playing a commanding role in the Trump-Russia investigation. This is in addition to the moves that Mueller’s own team has been making. It significantly broadens the number of people and entities who are now actively ripping into Trump’s crimes.

Even if Donald Trump tries to fire Robert Mueller, the Trump-Russia investigation is now much broader than just Mueller and his team. Firing Mueller, even if Trump figured out how to pull it off, wouldn’t stop things from moving forward against Trump. If it wasn’t clear immediately after the raid, it’s becoming clear now. It’ll keep becoming more clear as Mueller continues to spread authority over the investigation beyond the walls of his own office. Even if Trump can’t figure it out, someone around him will explain it to him soon enough. Mueller’s real power play here is that he’s now granting power to others who are also becoming responsible for carrying the Trump-Russia investigation forward.