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Home » The curious case of Robert Mueller

The curious case of Robert Mueller

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: For the purposes of this post, I’m going to assume that Robert Mueller was not acting when he seemed vague yesterday. I think this is a correct assumption, although I’m aware of theories to the contrary. I believe that, although Mueller has a history of certain strengths, Oscar-worthy acting is not among them. It wasn’t just his denials and vagueness, it was the relative consistency of those qualities during his testimony. His performance, if indeed it was a performance, was just too pitch-perfect and of-a-piece to be a job of acting.]

So what can we conclude about Robert Mueller and the Mueller Report from yesterday’s congressional testimony by Mueller?

The great majority of onlookers on the right have concluded that it’s highly unlikely that he had much to do with the report that bears his name, or even the investigation it purports to describe. That is troubling, and another troubling aspect of it is that somehow this didn’t get reported previously by our fabulously thorough and brilliant (not to mention objective) MSM.

Funny thing, though, we have an article yesterday in the NY Times explaining what they euphemistically call Mueller’s “hands off” approach:

Soon after the special counsel’s office opened in 2017, some aides noticed that Robert S. Mueller III kept noticeably shorter hours than he had as F.B.I. director, when he showed up at the bureau daily at 6 a.m. and often worked nights.

He seemed to cede substantial responsibility to his top deputies, including Aaron Zebley, who managed day-to-day operations and often reported on the investigation’s progress up the chain in the Justice Department. As negotiations with President Trump’s lawyers about interviewing him dragged on, for example, Mr. Mueller took part less and less, according to people familiar with how the office worked.

That hands-off style was on display Wednesday when Mr. Mueller testified for about seven hours before two House committees.

And the Times knew nothing of this till now? So either they are incompetent as reporters, or they were covering it up. But Now It Can Be Told, because the cat is out of the bag, due to the dogged persistence of Jerry Nadler.

The Times tries to explain it this way:

The team’s loyalty to Mr. Mueller, who insisted on a leakproof operation, remains deep. Little has emerged about the inner workings of the special counsel’s office even in the weeks since the team disbanded in May.

But what has dribbled out suggests that Mr. Mueller’s wobbly performance might not have come as a surprise to his subordinates.

But somehow the Times manages to get leaks when it thinks it will benefit the left. A report on Mueller’s lack of involvement in his own investigation, however, wouldn’t have benefited anyone but Trump had it gotten out earlier. So funny thing, we’ve had no news on it till now. Now, however, it can act as an explanation for Mueller’s poor performance and reassure the troops that the Mueller Report [sic] was written by people other than Mueller, who did know what they were doing.

Questions abound, of course. One is: who actually supervised instead of Mueller, and who actually wrote the report? The Times is suggesting that the answer to the former question is “Aaron Zebley,” and the answer to the latter question is “the group of [Democrat-partisan] lawyers who worked on it under the figurehead Mueller and the real Zebley.”

In that article I just quoted, the Times only identifies Zebley as “a long-time aide of Mueller’s.” But the paper also wrote still another article focusing on Zebley’s lengthy career, some of it in the same law firm as Mueller, and some of it as a federal prosecutor as well as for the FBI, and much of it in association with Mueller.

However, the author of that Times piece entitled “Who Is Aaron Zebley” somehow neglected to mention—of this newly-important figure—that in 2015-2016 Zebley had been (as reported in the Washington Examiner) the counsel to Justin Cooper, who was:

…the controversial IT aide to Hillary Clinton who set up her private email server and smashed some of her mobile devices with a hammer.

Now, a lawyer’s defense of someone doesn’t mean that a person is in league with his client in any political way. But it certainly is a salient fact for the public to know, and the crackerjack reporters on those two Times pieces somehow manage to leave it out.

My questions are as follows: if Mueller was just a figurehead, why didn’t this fact become known, and how bad was the situation? Was he originally more functional, or did people know right from the start that he couldn’t do the job, and was the plan always to have the others set the tone and control the all-important “narrative”?

Perhaps we’ll find some of these things out some day. But if we ever do, I doubt it will be because the Times does its own investigative reporting on it.

Comments

The curious case of Robert Mueller — 28 Comments

  1. “…highly unlikely that he had much to do with the report that bears his name…”

    To boot, it looks pretty clear that he never even read the damn thing.

    But if Mueller did in fact act as a figurehead, as “cover”, as “beard”, then it was truly a brilliant stroke. (At least until it wasn’t—Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff et al., take a bow!?)

    In any event, Mueller was certainly able to do tremendous damage to the country (and may still be able to do more)—but alas not as much as the beautiful (and intelligent) people expected him to do, clamored for him to do, begged him to do, prayed (each in their own way) for him to do.

    Dark disappointment palpable.

    So what now?…now that we know that Mueller was/is NOT the [person] behind the curtain at whom we should never have been looking, the question is (as posed in the post), who is that person? Or persons.

    No, the NYT nor the WAPO will not tell us; but neither will they be able to protect him, or her, or them.

    It is merely a matter of time.

  3. Just because a person is somewhat feeble, doesn’t mean they are incapable of telling a lie.

    Mueller says he has no idea who or what Fusion GPS is. Assuming the feeble man is telling the truth, well … that must mean he is suffering severe dementia. (No, no, and no.) And we feel sorry for the man. (Very convenient, but I don’t.)

    But the above statement from Mueller is exactly the same type of statements we have gotten from the IRS’s John Koskinen. We are still searching for the hard disks (for months). We found the disks, but they were damaged. (They weren’t, until they were smashed.) Obama said he knows nothing about (fill in the blank) except for the report he saw on CNN. And a hundred other examples. Please.

    The people on the right love the refutation of the media hagiography of Mueller.

    There is a word for much of the response to this recent political theater. Credulous.

    Mueller didn’t run the daily operations? Did Ken Starr? Of course the NYTimes will peddle this now.

    Sorry to be so negative, but I really think the right-wing punditocracy has fallen for the dodge.

  4. That NYT article on Zebley is behind a paywall.

    I’m curious to know whether Andrew Weissmann appears anywhere in the article.

  5. Barry, to answer “so what now” with the evident natural course of events: now we will see DoJ IG Horowitz’s investigation concluded, to be fol!owed by AG Barr’s charge to DA Durham fulfilled. Both competently, I think it is safe to assume.

  6. It is appalling how incompetent and out of it Mueller appeared to be in the hearing yesterday. Gee, before he had to speak to the public in length or answer slightly more complex and a bit challenging questions about the report he supposedly wrote he used to hold an image of an larger than life international man of mystery with few words who was so ultra intelligent and competent that he could single handedly taking down Trump with his out of worldly skills in judicial maneuvering, that image went up in flames after his disastrous hearing.

    remind me of how much I believed David Beckham was the coolest man in the world when i was a teen, until i heard him speak.

  7. Mueller says he has no idea who or what Fusion GPS is. Assuming the feeble man is telling the truth, well … that must mean he is suffering severe dementia.

    TommyJay: That troubles me too. I can believe Mueller is not as sharp as he once was. He may even have some serious deficits. But not know Fusion GPS? I have trouble believing that. That’s almost like Ken Starr not knowing Monica Lewinsky.

    So how about Mueller has lost more than a few steps and he knows it, but he used his condition to avoid questions which could get him into real trouble and to garner sympathy against Republican questioners.

    My question is what did Nadler et al. think they were doing putting Mueller into this position? Had they thought it through? Was hope their plan?

  8. TommyJay:

    I never for a moment suggested that Mueller is incapable of telling a lie.

    I think my NOTE explains it—I’m talking about a raft of behaviors that would be hard to fake unless a person was a very skillful actor.

  10. “Just because a person is somewhat feeble, doesn’t mean they are incapable of telling a lie.”

    Neo, you didn’t address feebleness or lies. I did. It is interesting that you note vagueness and denials, which Obama did copiously. It’s just that he did it in a cool and collected manner. It seems completely different but its not.

    Part of my point is that the frail and enfeebled manner of delivery automatically nudges the listener into a chain of assumptions that I don’t believe are sensible.

    “Mueller says he has no idea who or what Fusion GPS is. Assuming the feeble man is telling the truth, well … that must mean he is suffering severe dementia.” — TommyJay

    “The great majority of onlookers on the right have concluded that it’s highly unlikely that he had much to do with the report that bears his name, or even the investigation it purports to describe.” — Neo

    But why? Because he said he didn’t know the backgrounds of his staff, etc.? Because a feeble old man must be telling us the truth about these things? More likely he just doesn’t want to explain or justify himself.

    Mueller could be not acting, and not honest and not experiencing dementia. It’s really the implied dementia that must imply that he was a useless figurehead of the investigation. The evidence is weak.

    He knows full well what Fusion GPS is and their involvement and he chose not to talk about it. And he likely knows what is in his report reasonably well, but isn’t going to try and defend the indefensible portions of it. It’s the same old song, except his voice wavered while he sang it.

  12. Adam Mill, The Federalist: How Long Has Robert Mueller Been Like This?

    https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/25/long-robert-mueller-like/

    Did Mueller’s mental acuity recently fail or was it evident at the point then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed him? Former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a man who was instrumental in getting a Special Counsel appointed, declared on CNN that “Director Mueller delivered exactly the performance that I think I and many people expected.” Rosenstein might have noticed something with regular and intense oversight of the probe. But Rosenstein, who landed his first job out of law school with Mueller and considered Mueller his role model, appeared to have taken a hands-off approach. According to USAtoday, “Rosenstein said oversight of the inquiry requires only ‘a fraction’ of his daily work. He estimated that less than 5% of his week is related to briefings or other matters involving Mueller’s investigation.” Rosenstein may have delegated oversight to his principle assistant Ed O’Callaghan and the Associate deputy Scott Schools. CNN reported that these two men met on a bi-weekly basis “with the special counsel team.” Was Mr. Mueller present in these meetings? Did Schools and O’Callaghan ensure that Mueller made his Special Counsel work, “first precedence,” in his professional life, that Mueller was ensuring “impartial decision making,” and that the investigation was conducted “expeditiously” in compliance with “Department of Justice policies?”

  13. Republican questioners noticed that it was primarily their questions that Mueller kept asking them to repeat, thus some saw this as Mueller deliberately “running out the clock.”

    So, is Mueller a daft old man, or an extremely sly and cagey one or, perhaps, something of both?

    Moreover, if Mueller is not the doddering, senile, out of it old man he portrayed himself to be throughout his testimony, what prize could be worth so thoroughly wrecking the public’s perception of him; his image and reputation?

  14. The person behind the curtain, from the DNC, from DT becoming the Republican candidate and having the media in their back pocket is HRC. It is pretty obvious, not conspiracy.
    Didn’t want to make the same mistakes when they ran against Obama. Not as clever as they think.

  15. A new WSJ piece by Kimberly Strassel, “What Mueller Was Trying to Hide; His investigation was about protecting the actual miscreants in the collusion hoax.”

    The most notable aspect of the Mueller report was always what it omitted: the origins of this mess.
    —
    The report ignored Mr. Steele’s paymaster, Fusion GPS, and its own ties to Russians. It also ignored Fusion’s paymaster, the Clinton campaign, and the ugly politics behind the dossier hit job.
    Mr. Mueller’s testimony this week put to rest any doubt that this sheltering was deliberate.
    —
    Mr. Mueller claimed he couldn’t answer questions about the dossier because it “predated” his tenure and is the subject of a Justice Department investigation. These excuses are disingenuous. Nearly everything Mr. Mueller investigated predated his tenure, and there’s no reason the Justice Department probe bars Mr. Mueller from providing a straightforward, factual account of his team’s handling of the dossier.
    —
    The special counsel’s often befuddled testimony has predictably raised questions about how in control he was of the 22-month investigation or the writing of the report. Yet in some ways it matters little whether it was Mr. Mueller calling the shots, or “pit bull” Andrew Weissmann, or Mr. Mueller’s congressional minder, Aaron Zebley. All three spent years in the Justice Department-FBI hierarchy, as did many of the other prosecutors and agents on the probe. That institutional crew early on made the calculated decision to shelter the FBI, the Justice Department, outside private actors, and leading Democrats from any scrutiny of their own potential involvement with 2016 Russian election interference.

    Excuse after excuse as to why Mueller can’t or won’t talk about the things that would be damning to the legitimacy of the investigation and the motives of the collusion hoax.

  17. You don’t need a lawyer sitting next to you at a Congressional hearing unless you’re afraid that you might say something that would incriminate you, like back in the old Kefauver days. Since that obviously wasn’t going to be the case here, I’m guessing that Mueller really has lost it (and that can happen very fast, like in the two-year period of the Special Counsel), and Zebley was literally there as his caretaker.

  18. “Now, a lawyer’s defense of someone doesn’t mean that a person is in league with his client in any political way.”

    please. in this case, yes, it does. this guy’s lawyer was chosen for him by the Clintons, and they don’t employ lawyers, they employ political operatives (see Cheryl whatshername, HRClinton’s factotum who was granted immunity in this whole disaster)

    I still have the forlorn hope Bob Barr is everything people say and will bring the malefactors to the public, if not to the dock.

  21. Where’s Jimminy? Nah, that’s not the question.

    The question is: where’s John BigMouth Brennan?

    Where’s John FlapGums Clapper?

    Where’s Ben WeGotThis Rhodes?

    Where’s Sally I-DefyOrangeMan Yates?

    Where’s Mr. Can’tTireOfHearingMyVoice Obama?

    Where is he? Where are they? Why so quiet allasudden?

  22. So the NYT’s focusing on Zebley in an effort to obfuscate Weissmann’s mercurial, malevolent and likely illegal role?

    Airbrush ‘R Us?

    Head-on collusion?

  23. Manju is probably still awaiting from the top the narrative and rhetoric that he needs to help disseminate. You know trolls don’t speak what they think, they just repeat whatever rhetoric handed to them that was originated from the top of the leftist propaganda agency

  24. docweasel on July 26, 2019 at 2:29 am said:
    “Now, a lawyer’s defense of someone doesn’t mean that a person is in league with his client in any political way.”

    please. in this case, yes, it does. this guy’s lawyer was chosen for him by the Clintons, and they don’t employ lawyers, they employ political operatives (see Cheryl whatshername, HRClinton’s factotum who was granted immunity in this whole disaster)
    * * *
    It is necessary to maintain decorum and a belief in the high standards of justice.
    Sadly, the Democrats over the last few years (decades?) are doing their best to make that impossible.
    But remember, there are no Obama judges or Trump judges.

  25. So, the explanation that is floating around now is that it was all an act.

    That Mueller had to pretend that he was so out of it and befuddled that he didn’t even know the name “Fusion GPS” because, by pulling this crap, he closed out that line of questioning.

    Similarly, he closed out many other lines of questioning by acting befuddled and/or just saying that looking into this or that matter was “beyond his purview”; using this or some other formulation to avoid answering some 200 questions.

    Then, there was his asking his Republican questioners to “repeat the question”– often multiple times–this tactic served to cut down on the number of hostile questions he could be asked, and ran out the clock.

    If this theory is correct, then, Mueller actually turned in a masterful performance, one that stonewalled attempts to gather any new and incriminating information concerning the attempted coup, and possibly kept a lot of people–himself included–from potentially being indicted.

  27. Snow on Pine:

    I covered that in my “NOTE” that begins the post.

    Simply put, for it to be true, Mueller would have to have had Academy Award skills as a thespian.

    He doesn’t.

    However, as I said in some other comment, the combination of lawyerly obfuscation (asking to repeat the question and saying it’s not in his purview, both of which are pretty easy to remember and perform) with a cognitive decline of some sort is probably the best explanation of his behavior.

  28. Democrats apparently just can’t help themselves, and they just keep presenting Trump/Republicans with tailor made anti-Democrat TV commercials.

    This time it’s the report that Elijah Cummings is tweeting his reaction to Trump’s slams about Baltimore, but doing so from a five star restaurant in Venice.

    Pelosi reportedly there at the Venetian restaurant as well. (Congress on a 46 or so day “recess.)

    If true, what a delicious Louis XVI–Marie Antoinette “let them eat cake” moment!

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