Robert Mueller just found a new way to make himself bulletproof against Donald Trump
When the United States federal government arrested Maria Butina yesterday on charges of conspiring to act as a foreign agent of Russia, that arrest technically was not carried out under the jurisdiction of Robert Mueller. That doesn’t really matter, in the sense that the Feds would not have moved on a Russian agent unless Mueller signed off on it. But it does matter when it comes to how Mueller is making himself bulletproof against whatever scheme Trump might try next. Allow me to explain, because this is important.
The fear is that Donald Trump is going to try to fire Robert Mueller and somehow pull it off, thus bringing an end to Mueller’s investigation. But let’s say this happened tomorrow. It wouldn’t do anything to stop the legal proceedings against Maria Butina, as her case isn’t technically being handled by Mueller’s team. Butina was allegedly a conduit for the Trump campaign, Republican Party leaders, the NRA, and the Kremlin. She can take down a whole lot of people, including Donald Trump.
This comes after Robert Mueller farmed out the criminal case against Michael Cohen to another set of federal prosecutors who are not part of his team. If Trump managed to fire Mueller, it wouldn’t do anything to stop the case against Cohen, or the plea deal that he appears to be somewhere in the process of making.
In other words, if Donald Trump tried to fire Robert Mueller at this point, it wouldn’t help Trump much, even if he did pull it off. Trump’s lawyers and advisers have surely explained this to him by now, meaning that he knows there would be no point in firing Mueller; he’d be taking a big risk for no gain which could backfire on him. Mueller keeps finding ways to make himself bulletproof by spreading around the jurisdiction.
