[Ohio]

Time to Shut Mueller Down

When then independent counsel Ken Starr was investigating Bill Clinton’s various scandals from Whitewater to Filegate and Travelgate, Starr was routinely compared to Inspector Javert, the relentless villain in Les Misérables, who pursued Jean Valjean for stealing a loaf of bread. Mueller is no Javert, who pursued his man for an identified — though minor — crime. He is more comparable to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s secret police chief, Lavrenty Beria. Beria is remembered for inventing charges against Stalin’s enemies. Beria once said, “Show me the man and I’ll find the crime.” Mueller has identified Trump as his target and is working like a Stakhanovite to find Trump’s crime.

Mueller’s threat to national security is accomplished, as Judge Ellis alluded to, by lying to the courts, misleading the public, and interfering with the execution of the president’s duties. He is doing far more to damage our national security than the Russians did in their unsuccessful effort to interfere in 2016.

A few examples suffice.

The president is preoccupied with what he characterizes as Mueller’s “witch hunt,” a topic that dominates Trump’s Tweets. He has to deal with juggling his defense team. Former U.S. attorney Joe diGenova was brought on and then departed almost immediately. Ty Cobb, the lawyer trusted with his defense against Mueller’s investigation, was apparently fired because he was cooperating with Mueller to no avail and replaced with Emmett Flood, who reportedly will take a much tougher approach. (Flood, a former Clinton impeachment defense counsel, is known in “Godfather” terms as a “wartime consigliere.”)

Now, Trump and the defense team are trying to deal with Mueller’s threat to subpoena Trump to testify before a grand jury if Trump doesn’t consent to a less formal — but no less dangerous — interrogation. The president is trying to come up with a policy to deal with Russian and Iranian aggression in Syria and with Turkey’s partnership with both to preserve the Assad regime. He apparently isn’t even thinking about the almost seventeen-year war we’re fighting in Afghanistan or the fact that — as our top general in Europe warned Congress in March — that Russia could outmatch and outgun U.S. and NATO forces if war broke out in Europe.

All of that is taking place at the same time Trump is working with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and their respective teams to arrange the coming summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and the release of the American hostages held in North Korea.

Mueller’s investigation is also absorbing Trump’s time he could otherwise spend in renegotiating trade agreements such as NAFTA, dealing personally with allies who are trying to get him to cancel Obama’s nuclear weapons agreement with Iran (Israel’s Netanyahu) or to not cancel it (France’s Macron, Germany’s Merkel, and Britain’s May), and other not-so-minor matters such as talking to China’s Xi Jinping about avoiding a mutual trade war and China’s interference with U.S. flights in Africa near China’s first overseas military base there.

The Mueller problem began as a legal problem with Rosenstein’s too-broad grant of powers to the special counsel. By his Beria-like methods, Mueller has made it into a political problem that no one, especially Rosenstein, seems willing to solve. As Judge Ellis said on Friday, “We don’t want anyone with unfettered power.” But that’s just what we have in Robert Mueller.

Rosenstein needs to mandate that Mueller’s investigation be ended before the November election. If Rosenstein won’t do that, Trump should fire him and hire someone who will.