MUELLER LITE

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I have received a number of emails asking my view of the Mueller hearing. I listened to it on the radio on my boat while fishing the flood tide in the rips off Montauk Point. Fishing stunk, so I got to listen to about 80% of the hearing. Here is my "neutral citizen" instant reaction report, jotted down that evening before I listened to the TV spinmeisters or read the papers.

Caveat: I may have missed something important. Gripping the head end of a slimed eel with gloved left hand, (with the rest of the eel wrapped around your bare left wrist), while trying, with the right hand, to push a bass hook into the underside of the eel's chin and out its eye on the top of its head, consumes the majority of an amateur's attention span. If anything of moment happened during those intervals, I probably missed it.

Highlights:

1. Mueller is over the hill. Sad.

2. For people who weren't paying attention earlier, Schiff et al established Trump clearly tried to fire Mueller, get McGahn to lie about it, influence other witnesses, etc. My impartial legal conclusion: Trump is obviously guilty of attempted obstruction and witness tampering but the corrupt OLC opinion re not indicting sitting Presidents, slavishly followed by an apparently sedated Mueller, saved Trump's ass.

3. Painful but true: Giuliani et. al., outfoxed Mueller into failing to subpoena Trump.

4. In the afternoon session, Mueller showed signs of life. (Pills wear off?) He said Trump was full of shit, this was not a witch hunt, not a hoax, the Russians did it, and most important, are doing it as we speak. Further, Trump and his team should have reported it. Their failure was borderline illegal, and certainly immoral and unpatriotic.

5. Astonishingly, the Republicans did NOTHING to explain, rationalize, or defend Trump's conduct. Not one word. Instead, they engaged in a ridiculous bicker about the word "exonerated," and focused on the Steele dossier. Pathetic. Basically, no defense of the President on the merits. Not one word. Just a "magicians" trick of trying to deflect the audience's attention from the on-stage deception. (They were nowhere as good at that as their boss, the President of the United States.)

If you were following this saga from day one, you learned nothing new, and there was hardly a dramatic retelling of the story. The Dems wanted the "movie" and all they got was a poorly read audiobook digest.

Two questions: I have not read a transcript, but I thought I caught a question or two about Don Jr., -- did he take the Fifth, and why was he not questioned by Mueller. I recall Mueller deflecting those questions, but I thought on one occasion his deflection included the words "pending investigation.'' I could be wrong. I would really like to know the answer to those questions because Jr. is near the top of my personal slime list, and it would make my day to learn he is not free and clear, though the notion that Barr would ever indict him is fanciful.

Second, apparently Washington D.C. insiders knew Mueller had lost his fast ball. I get why the Dems took a shot at this hearing anyway because they desperately wanted to emphasize the negative parts of the report, but here is my sinister speculation: If the beltway cognoscente knew Mueller had declined, and ultimately might be subject to manipulation, was that why the R's chose him? Nah, too conspiratorial. Y'think?

 

Bottom line, the hearing was marginally better for the Democrats than the enslaved Republicans. Did it change anyone's mind? Does a bear ... ?

A bientot.

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As my regular readers know, there is no fixed schedule for these posts. If you want a notice of each new posting, send me an email and I will add you to the notice list.  mlondon34@gmail.com