Robert Mueller is back
Despite the stakes involved in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process, there was nothing that Special Counsel Robert Mueller could have done to magically stop Kavanaugh from being confirmed. As Palmer Report has tried to point out from the start, Mueller can’t simply wave a magic wand on these things. Mueller’s toolbox consists of a collection of methodical legal tools, which he’s been using to destroy Donald Trump one step at a time. The good news is that, after a period of silence, Mueller is back.
To be more precise about it, Robert Mueller never went away. He and his team are always plugging away in the background, moving one incremental step at a time, which is how this has always worked. To date, Mueller has not only taken down Trump’s top henchmen including Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and Michael Flynn, he’s gotten all of them to provide evidence and testimony of Trump’s guilt. Now Mueller has begun taking down one of Vladimir Putin’s top henchmen.
As Palmer Report has long explained, the ouster of a president – even an illegitimate and criminal one – is a long and complex process. It’s not nearly as simple as Robert Mueller filing a report. Nor, for that matter, is it as simple as whether or not there are enough votes for impeachment. If you want to destroy a corrupt presidency, you chip away at it until it collapses (see Richard Nixon), which is what Mueller has been doing.
Yesterday, Mueller – indirectly through the Feds – began seizing the U.S. assets of key Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. You can’t get much closer to Putin than this guy. Mueller is making a point of wounding Putin just before the midterms, presumably as a way of reminding him that there will be consequences if Putin tries to interfere.
Whatever Robert Mueller’s endgame is, it’ll be much more effective if it’s done after the midterms, assuming the Democrats take control of at least one house of Congress. That would allow them to use committee hearings to quickly and decisively expose Donald Trump’s criminal culpability across the board, thus driving down his approval rating, and softening him up for Mueller’s big move. Trump’s approval was in the forties when he took office. It’s in the thirties now. So yes, it’s clearly capable of being swayed by scandal.
The GOP Congress has been doing everything it can to cover for Donald Trump, and yet he’s still historically unpopular. If the Democrats claim victory in November, it’ll be an entirely different ballgame. For now, the good news is that Robert Mueller is back, making key moves, trying to protect the midterm elections from Russian interference, giving the Democrats a chance to win fair and square, and setting the stage for whatever he plans to do when the time comes.
