Liberals and NeverTrump Neocons (But I Repeat Myself) Rally to Defend Mueller Against Completely True Charges That His Staff is Filled With Hyperpartisans

Do these people not want transparency? They are desperately interested in what corrupt "contacts" Trump's team may have had; why do they take the position that any corrupt contacts Mueller's team might have had are None of Your Business?

Byron York sure wants to know what "insurance policy" Peter Strzok had in mind as way of guaranteeing Trump would not become president.

Interestingly, he spoke of that around the same time the first claims against Manafort were leaked to the press.

But NeverTrump Neocons and liberals (again, I repeat myself) are doubling down on the claim that the FBI and DOJ bureaucrats who paid Russian agents for Hillary's campaign oppo operation should not be molested with pesky questions.

James Comey's Mouthpiece Ben Wittes cries about the privacy rights of conspiring FBI agents.

The release of private correspondence between two Justice Department employees whose correspondence is the subject of an active inspector general investigation is not just wrong. It is cruel. It is not the practice of the Justice Department to turn over to Congress--let alone to give to reporters--active investigative material related to the private communications of its own employees. Justice Department and FBI employees have the right to their political opinions. To the extent their private political expressions for some reason make it impossible for them to work on a certain matter, they certainly have the right to have that determined without having their careers ruined and their names dragged publicly through the mud by politicians who know nothing about the circumstances in question.

I don’t know whether agent Peter Strzok and attorney Lisa Page did anything improper, or merely engaged in ill-advised and foolish communications that did not impact their work.

Dude, if you don't know, why are you so insistent there should be no public revelation about the facts in contention?

I have no quarrel with Mueller for removing Strzok from the investigation, whether for substantive or appearance reasons. But I do know this: these questions deserve to be adjudicated within the confines of a serious internal investigation, not a partisan circus.

Funny, but somehow derogatory information about Trump's aides and family members' communications -- including false information -- keeps getting leaked to the press.

By the way, Wittes, your pal Comey leaked a confidential FBI-work-product memo to the press for publication precisely to get an investigation started. If that's permitted, what's wrong with Rosenstein releasing this information not through a leak but through open, transparent means?

Liberal adulterers Joe and Mika are shrieking about "undermining the rule of law" by attempting to actually enforce the rule of law.

On Thursday's Morning Joe, the show’s liberal panel once again rallied to the defense of Robert Mueller in response to recent calls by Republican House representatives for the former FBI director's special counsel division to be officially investigated for serious political conflicts of interest that have been revealed within it by the reporting of a variety of different news outlets.

Co-host Joe Scarborough was especially annoyed by Republican Representatives Bob Goodlatte, Louie Gohmert, Steve Chabot, John Ratcliffe, Matt Gaetz, and Jim Jordan for questioning Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about Mueller’s impartiality during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday.

Scarborough collectively referred to these congressmen, and presumably anyone else who agrees with them, as "jackasses" who are "trying to undermine the rule of law." Joe prophesied that this would ultimately lead to their political "demise."

Video and transcript of these darkly muttered threats at the link.

The New York Times, which has been peddling unevidenced claims of RUSSIAN collusion like drunken conspiracists for a year, calls people seizing on actual proof of an "insurance policy" to keep Trump out of office the work of "drunken... conspiracists."

How did the New York Times deal with the "insurance policy" text? The simplest way possible -- they ommitted it entirely, and shielded their bebubbled idiot liberal readers from an alarming fact that might cause them mental upset.

Butthurt neocon NeverTrumper Max Boot Just Can't Even With All This:

Neocons Eli Lake and David Frum also Just Can't Even:

Again, not a peep from these guys about James Clapper & Co. leaking the cooked-up "briefing" about the dossier to the Fusion GPS squad at CNN.

Only their allies, sources, and drinking pals, apparently, are due privacy rights in an official government investigation.

As usual, there's next to zero coverage of this in the alleged conservative magazine (transitioning to a liberal one) Weekly Standard. They occasionally mention the matter, but in the "Republicans pounce" and "Trump seized" way their liberal media friends favor.

As special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators continue to bore into President Trump's inner circle, Republicans have intensified their attempts to discredit the investigators as partisan hacks. As news began to break last weekend that former national security advisor Michael Flynn had struck a deal with Mueller, the president's supporters latched onto another story: that one of Mueller's top investigators had been reassigned to a supervisory job after it was discovered he had been critical of Trump in text messages a year before.

President Trump immediately seized on the story...

Warren then argues that having anti-Trump views doesn't mean that Peter Strzok shouldn't be investigating Trump (or clearing Hillary, I suppose):

There's reason to think Strzok could hold and express anti-Trump views while remaining a professional in his law enforcement work.

Although that writer, Michael Warren, confessed to being "puzzled" by the mention of the "insurance policy" against Trump, apparently he was not puzzled enough to mention his puzzlement in his latest article about the probe, in which he speculates breathlessly that Rosenstein's answers at the hearing may indicate that Mueller might be expanding his probe -- oh joy! -- and presumably is so out of energy that he can't mention the "insurance policy" he finds puzzling.

Which, by the way, was discussed at those hearings a whole heck of a lot.

He seems to have learned this from Jake Tapper: Make a meaningless brief mention of news you don't like on Twitter that you can point to later to say "I covered that," then omit it entirely from your actual alleged news product.

The Weekly Standard does not seem to have mentioned any of these revelations, except for Michael Warren's pouncing-and-seizing dismissal, and one op-ed in which they confessed they found some of this slightly troubling (but not so troubling to do any follow-up on the major revelations that followed).

posted by Ace at 02:36 PM

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