As Robert Mueller moves in, Mitch McConnell panics and telegraphs his own Trump-Russia guilt

| 5:49 pm EDT October 31, 2017
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Now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has arrested three Donald Trump campaign advisers and already gotten a guilty plea from one of them, the Republicans in Congress who were propping Trump up last week are suddenly showing no desire to help him out. Instead they seem content to let Trump sink or swim as the criminal charges play out. Then there’s Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose panic move today seemed to telegraph his own complicity in the Trump-Russia scandal.

Various Republican and Democratic Senators are looking to protect Robert Mueller. The Republican view seems to be that it’s better to let Mueller try to take Trump down, than to be seen as complicit themselves by allowing Trump to fire Mueller. However, despite the bipartisan desire to pass legislation to shield Mueller, McConnell signaled today that he has no desire to let it happen.

Manu Raju of CNN tweeted today that “McConnell does not commit to making floor time for bills to protect special counsel.” There’s only one reason why McConnell would even consider trying to interfere with his own party’s legislation to protect Mueller: he’s hoping Trump fires Mueller. That rather transparently telegraphs that McConnell is afraid of what the Trump-Russia investigation is about to turn up. This takes us back to the millions that McConnell is confirmed to have indirectly received from the Kremlin.

During the 2016 election cycle, when Mitch McConnell was not even up for reelection, a Kremlin-connected oligarch from Ukraine donated $2.5 million to a McConnell SuperPAC. The oligarch has dual U.S. citizenship, making it technically legal. But it raised the question of why Vladimir Putin was trying to buy off McConnell, even as Putin was trying to rig the election for Donald Trump. Robert Mueller may soon uncover that answer. No wonder McConnell is hoping Mueller gets fired.