Mueller’s investigation has gone off the rails [Video]
It’s been over a year now and special counsel Robert Mueller still hasn’t found any evidence of Russian collusion, or malfeasance from the Trump campaign, or of any crime linking Trumpworld to the Russians.
At this point it’s beginning to become clear that Mueller’s investigation has gone off the rails, and as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani pointed out in a recent CNN interview, Mueller’s original mandate has been completed so there is no reason for his team to still be operating.
Rudy Giuliani: there are two different investigations, right? The counterintelligence investigation is now over for over a year.
And they weren’t disclosing it to anybody. Immediately, that raises questions in my mind, why not? I think why not because it clears the president.
Then you get the Comey thing, which is a leak of a confidential memo, which is illegal for an FBI official to do, and that becomes the basis for appointing Mueller.
I’m not saying Mueller is illegitimate. I’m saying the basis on which he was appointed is illegitimate. Now let’s look at the indictments.
Advertisement - story continues belowDana Bash: But you think — I just want to separate — so you think that the Mueller probe is legitimate?
Rudy Giuliani: I — not anymore. I don’t.
I did when I came in. But now I see — I see spy gate. I see the judge, Judge Ellis, in Manafort saying…
Dana Bash: But — but what you call spy gate, you admit, happened before Robert Mueller was — was brought on to the scene.
Rudy Giuliani: But it has to — but it has to inform the decision to appoint Mueller. Either it is evidence or not.
Advertisement - story continues belowAnd if it’s not, it goes along with what they found already, which is no collusion with the Russians.
Dana Bash: It might have informed it, but it wasn’t the beginning…
Rudy Giuliani: So, we end up with…
Dana Bash: I just want to point one other thing out, because I know that you and the president have talked about that as well, that even the Republicans in the House, when they did their report, they said that the reason that this — the main reason that this probe was launched was because of George Papadopoulos, who was on the president’s foreign policy council, an — an encounter he had with somebody in Australia, not because of this confidential informant.
Advertisement - story continues belowThis is from the Republicans in the House.
Rudy Giuliani: I think — I think, actually, the explanation for — for — for Mueller is mainly Comey.
Comey said he wanted an independent counsel. Comey said he was going to orchestrate one. Comey wrote a memo and leaked it illegally through a professor.
Hence, we have Mueller. Illegal. No basis.
Advertisement - story continues belowNow, whatever the spy gate thing is, we are just learning about that now. I wouldn’t come to any definitive conclusions on that. And Papadopoulos was part of that whole spy gate thing as well, so it kind of gets all intertwined.
But the two indictments that you point are really pretty questionable. Manafort, before Judge Ellis, maybe no authority for that indictment. That would be extraordinary. That would ruin the whole investigation.
Second, the Russians…
That’s a pretty phony indictment. They are not showing up for anything.
You think they are coming here to be — to be tried? That is like a paper indictment on which the press can fawn all over it, and it will be nowhere.
Dana Bash: How are you so sure that there was no collusion with anybody in the campaign? We don’t know exactly what Robert Mueller and his team has right now. Do you know something we don’t?
Rudy Giuliani: Well, yes. I know 50 years of investigatory experience tells me they don’t have a darn thing, because they would have used it already, and they wouldn’t be off on collusion, they wouldn’t be off on Manafort, they wouldn’t be off on Cohen.
You got a good case, man, you go right to it, against — and against the president of the United States, you got something, and you don’t start charging it? Come on. It would be out there immediately.
Dana Bash: Well, maybe not necessarily against the president himself, but people in his orbit. You are confident that there was no collusion?
Rudy Giuliani: I — I can’t — I can’t be confident my client.
I mean, am I — am I confident because I was in that campaign at a very intimate level? Nobody talked about Russians. Nobody knew about Russians. This came as a surprise to me, to the president, and to the top four or five people around him.
Now, you go out to the outer orbit, how do I know what is going on? But I don’t think that would matter. You can’t — if there is collusion with a guy 50 rungs down on the campaign — not that I’m saying it happened, but, if it did, I don’t know — I don’t know what that means.
White House advisor Kellyanne Conway made a similar argument on Tuesday, calling the investigaiton “phony baloney” because, “collusion” isn’t actually a crime!
“So much is happening that has nothing to do with this phony baloney talking about the 2016 election. Every time people talk about this phony Russia collusion — collusion doesn’t even have legal significance — every time it’s written by responsible people, every time they talk, they are talking about the 2016 election. And so we don’t want to talk about the 2016 election.
The other thing I wanted to mention to you while we’re still on the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton — or that person who lost the election and never should have — she had said I’m going to put the coal mining out of business… [with] that usual scowl. Guess what? President Trump has presided over 84,000 new jobs for loggers and miners.”
I think that both Giuliani and Conway have good points, and that there should be more folks in the media questioning the legitimacy of the Mueller investigation.
