A few more thoughts on Robert Mueller and all the speculation about him
I’m aware that there are people who say that Mueller’s befuddled performance on Wednesday was all an act. I maintain it was not. He would have to be a thespian of Academy Award-winning skills (and then some) to pull it off so convincingly, and nothing in Mueller’s resume suggests he has that ability.
Mueller would also have to have been willing to make himself look incompetent and feeble in the eyes of the world, and I doubt that his pride would allow that, unless he was the lifelong dedicated leftist that his resume also doesn’t seem to support.
So I think the simplest explanation is most likely, which is that his demeanor and answers reflected a mild but significant cognitive decline combined with the sort of lawyerly obfuscation demonstrated by his asking people to repeat questions that seemed challenging, as well as his repeated insistence that things that were clearly within his purview were not in his purview. His definition of “purview” was rather narrow, to say the least.
But I want to concentrate on something else, which is the oft-repeated (at least in the last few days) statement that Mueller is an old man.
Mueller is 74, about to turn 75 in a little over a week. Some of my best friends are—well, you know what I mean. In today’s world, and given good health, what 74 usually indicates in terms of cognitive decline is that you sometimes can’t remember the name of some minor celebrity, or an obscure word. You might walk into a room looking for something and forget exactly why you came. But 74 does not usually involve a decline of oft-learned skills that you’d expect from a lifelong lawyer at the highest level, such as answering questions about a report which that same lawyer has supposedly worked on for 2 years.
That doesn’t mean that significant cognitive decline can’t occur at that age or even prior to that age. It can, but it’s somewhat unusual and a diagnosis of some sort usually goes with it. There’s been no report of any such diagnosis with Mueller, which doesn’t mean he hasn’t received one.
We are left with the question of just how in charge Mueller was of the Mueller report. My guess here—and it’s just a guess—is “not very.” But in the usual course of things, the head of such an investigation would be delegating a great deal anyway. However, Mueller probably delegated even more than that. And by the time the task of writing the report rolled around, he may have delegated even more. But I doubt that, even with a fully functional director, a director would personally be writing the entirety of a 448-page legal document. So some delegation is quite normal.
I’m treading a sort of middle ground here. I don’t think that Mueller was initially perceived as all that far gone, but I do think that Mueller was appointed because he had a reputation for honesty and objectivity and yet was already shaky enough that he could be counted on to delegate a lot, and that his subordinates would be in a fair amount of control. And that’s exactly what happened.
In the ordinary course of things, this would not have become public knowledge. It was only Mueller’s public testimony that revealed the possible state of affairs.
Lastly, I’ll mention that Mueller looks much older than his 74 years. I’m not sure what that’s about—maybe he always did look old for his age—but it seems to me it may be a reflection of whatever else may have been going wrong with him in recent years. Trump is 73, and he looks a thousand years younger.
You can be sure that “old Nads” and “little Shif” knew in depth the mental state of Mueller, since the spent a week earlier attempting to program him to respond to their leading questions with narrative-feeding answers.
But he is too far gone to even do that.
So who ran the 2+year collusion hoax “investigation”. Prior performance of personnel is a good indicator. Who is known for hiding exculpatory evidence? Just take a guess.
I’m wondering how Nadler and Schiff weighed the pros and cons of Mueller testifying for six hours in his condition.
It seems they miscalculated.
Oh, I’d imagine that in Washington they know perfectly well that any reputation for honesty or objectivity Mueller might have is hilarious fabrication. His value was probably that, as a nominal Republican, his appointment as an absentee manager would give the witch hunt a facade of “bipartisanship” without any danger of him actually getting his fingers in there while the rabid Hillaryites ran the show. If so, he’s been “out of it” for at least the last few years, and his malaise is not a new development.
I agree with your ideas about Mueller’s condition, Neo. Some people lose their mental sharpness rather quickly. I have seen it in action on one neighbor. Three years from normal, witty Boeing engineer to near inability to put a sentence together. Two years from there to passing away. And he was in his early 70s. It happens. Mueller, would not be immune.
Think about this. Any normal law firm, and the DOJ is a big law firm, has a test to try to eliminate bias among any lawyers assigned to a case. It’s obvious that this test was not performed by the person/persons who assembled the Mueller team. To a large extent I blame Rod Rosenstein for this. He was the supervisor in charge of the Special Counsel’s team. I also blame Rosenstein for keeping Mueller’s purview very narrow – concentrating only on Trump and his campaign. All that said, was Weissmann the actual person in charge? Was he convincing Rosenstein that he needed only Democrat lawyers and to keep the focus narrowed to only Trump and his campaign? This brings up many questions about this whole affair that probably will never be answered unless Bill Barr decides to expand the investigation of the investigators to Mueller’s team as well.
The staffing was the huge tell in this whole operation. That was truly outrageous and as J.J. mentioned that falls on Rosenstein. He could have blocked Weissman and that other guy Zelby or whatever that I had never heard of until the other day from being involved.
If the truth were ever known (which it won’t be) I would bet that Mueller had virtually no involvement in the writing of the report. So you combine lack of actual involvement and knowledge with maybe a little cognitive loss and you get what we saw.
This is also lesson #4,758 why we should never listen to the ‘smart’ people when they go on and on about some long time Washington insider. The vast majority of them know nothing of which they talk. And that includes lots of people like Andy McCarthy who have been right about lots of things during this saga but never did I see him question Mueller’s fitness or competence in any way.
My best friend is suffering from dementia.
The onset was 6 years ago in his late 60’s.
I was probably the last to know.
He was an electronics genius and I had asked him to construct a circuit board for me. He didn’t understand what I was describing.
I mentioned it to my wife and she told me that his wife had confided in her a week earlier. Outsiders wouldn’t know.
His standard reply when unable to answer was to laugh.
Mueller’s is to say it is in the report, or out of his purview.
You are right about losing names of people and some confusion finding the right word at 74 years old which I am right now. I have to pause telling a story at times but I never forget the punch line or the story line. Mueller appears to old and worn out and there was no excuse for him pretending he did not know the origins of the information used to start this fiasco unless they sent him home to watch daytime TV, drinking white wine out of a box and petting his old dog while yelling at the weatherman.
From the beginning of this whole mess when it appeared Trump was making headway against the competition four years ago the Washington establishment and media still don’t know what happened, it was not the Russians, it was them treating us, we the people, like crap and we took a chance that Trump might make a little difference even if it was on more conservative judge on the Supreme Court and he was not Hillary.
Unbelievable, Mueller was a hatchet man heading a crew of Hillary attorneys and 30 or 50 million dollars later they still can’t get the Russia story to work so they want obstruction charges against Trump for telling them he was innocent and to finish their work so he could move on. Mueller knew exactly what was going on but this gives him the chance to slip out sideways and say “who knew?” I don’t think he woke up one morning a confused old man, he’s an old fox who knows exactly which way the wind is blowing.
Griffin:
At the outset McCarthy didn’t question Mueller’s fitness in the cognitive sense, because there was no reason to do so.
But right away McCarthy noticed something was very wrong in terms of Mueller. He expressed this viewpoint in an article right at the outset: this one written on June 21, 2017. That’s over two years ago. Here’s an excerpt:
More at the link.
Last April he wrote this about Mueller:
McCarthy also wrote this piece over a year ago, which is McCarthy’s mea culpa about the FBI and the DOJ:
“Trump is 73, and he looks a thousand years younger.”
Well, that’s obviously because he is colluding with the devil and got a deal to make him look young.
Neo,
Yes. But as I said McCarthy has been right about a lot of things. But the first sentence in his excerpt includes ‘Mueller, whose integrity is well established’ just leads me to ask ‘established by who?’
I also said competence. Which I think this all goes to. Whether he is suffering from some mental deterioration or was just not up to the job I think it’s fair to question his competence and I don’t ever remember anybody that extolled his virtues ever hint at that.
I only picked McCarthy because he was the first that came to mind as someone who wrote about this a ton and also seems to have personally known some of the players. He was far better than most but even he never seemed to consider that Mueller was actually not really in charge as it now appears.
The Weissmann Report is a shambles.
I agree. At his age he looks very ill to me. I was reminded of some of the last photos of Scalia, he looked too florid and ill. Muelller’s sunken, blackened eyes, the way he held his mouth, the shaking of his hand on a paper as he was thinking, that is what I see in the far more elderly.
I live in a community with many retirees, Rockport, Texas. We have many retired military of rank, many wealthy retirees, the not wealthy can barely afford to live here, especially after Harvey. That, however is not my point. My point is I am 82, I often see people my age and older who are very competent and hale and hearty. I also see people in their 60’s who look my age or at least the age of Mueller. I was reminded of the look of my brother who has been diabetic since he was 21, he is 78 now. He had that very ill look about him 2 years ago after surviving meningitis. He is much better now.
In my opinion Muller is very ill. I know when the elderly have an illness they are often confused and disoriented. If they overcome the illness, that confusion can go away. Whatever the cause I hate to see people suffer, even though they have caused much suffering.
For many (maybe most?) Psalm 90 still holds true:
The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labor and sorrow;
for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Specifically re Mueller — I found a video of him speaking at a conference at Georgetown in 2014, and he comes across as vigorous and sharp. Very unlike the tired-looking and -acting man we just saw. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk23KMosN_Q&t=1360s
One last thought, this is an incredibly wonderful time to be alive and be part of a nation going through a lot of turmoil. We do live in interesting times and our nation is a continuation of those times, buy some popcorn, sit back (if your are 74 years old) and watch.
From what I read on the web Democrats recognize Mueller’s testimony was at least a setback and some like Lawrence Tribe saw it as a disaster. However, those who favor impeachment have not given up. Meanwhile Pelosi won’t say no, but won’t say yes either.
It is clear that Mueller’s big day in front of the cameras did no good for the impeachment cause nor for himself. The Democratic leadership must have realized they were taking a risk. Not only did they fail to get a “there’s a cancer growing on the presidency” soundbite, they exposed a terrible secret — Mueller was only a figurehead and a highly partisan team ran the investigation, contrary to all the harrumphing about a reputable Republican was in charge and would keep the investigation honest.
They even gave Mueller an extra week to prepare and got what they got. What were they thinking? Are they trapped in a bubble? Did they underestimate Republican questioning? Was it a Hail Mary pass?
I’m glad they failed, of course, but I try to understand when people act against their best interests.
______________________
Hello, Edit!
I also was bothered by the “old man” description. He does seem old, but that is because of some medical issues, I surmise. If the left knew it, and used his decline to cover their machinations, it’s even more disgusting than I previously thought — and that’s quite a bit.
Ann: That Youtube video is a remarkable display of Mueller in good form. Night and day from the sad fellow we saw last week.
“Remarks from Robert Mueller III”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk23KMosN_Q&t=1360s
Speaking of coming across old, Pelosi speaks with a typical denture wearing slurring of speech. she is immensely wealthy , and can afford implants. what gives?
Here’s another theory: Mueller is worn down by having to carry this dog-and-pony show of an investigation far beyond any reasonable limit because failure to do so would heavily damage the community of which he is a part and destroy him personally.
Imagine if Mueller figured out early on there was no collusion and no credible case for obstruction shortly after that. If he’d made that announcement six months into Trump’s term, it would have been the end of the world for the Beltway elite. Think of the pressure, day after day and week after week, of knowing the entire Washington DC leadership class was counting on you to be a savior and you KNEW no salvation was forthcoming.
What we saw may have been a man crushed by the burden of that failure and the self-loathing of knowing that he compromised his own ethics farther than he ever thought he could and still came up empty.
Mike
Few weeks ago Mueller was clear enough and knew exactly what he was talking about.
Few months ago he was clear enough to write the Mueller report.
But last week he couldn’t remember anything?
Very suspicious. Fastest onset of dementia ever.
Either he was faking it or he’s been poisoned.
“…but I try to understand …”
If I understand Occam more or less correctly, the reason for such “[acting] against their best interests” is that they have been driven stark raving insane by their extraordinary hatred for Trump. Theirs is a fiery, intense self-righteous, no-bars hatred that brooks no criticism and no alternative; it is an absolutist, all-consuming, systemic hatred that their very own echo chamber—the MSM supported by an egregious social media—has stoked ceaselessly to deafening pitch.
It is a hatred that has become a moral crusade, a hatred buttressed by the unbending arrogance of “the righteous”: that since they are such good, fine, moral, caring, upstanding—and intelligent!—people they must be right.
They cannot possibly be wrong.
(Of course, it is possible that I have misunderstood Occam….)
The Democratic Party’s politics of personal destruction—and terror?—is ramping up.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14605/open-letter-to-the-new-yorker-exposes-false
(“Thou shalt not stray off the reservation”: the Eleventh Commandment—or maybe, actually, the First!)
The Democratic Party’s politics of personal destruction, Chapter xyz:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-26/ag-barrs-russiagate-origin-probe-pivots-smoking-gun-tapes-exculpatory-evidence
Might Mueller ask: “George who?”?
Or might Mueller say: “Not within my purview”?
Future book title?”: ‘The Righteous “Know-Nothings” Who Tried to Bring Down Trump…and the USA’
Sean Davis with the “liberating” conclusion:
https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1154380008732995584
(But only, of course, if “the Truth will set you free”….)
Even my 92 year old Father doesn’t look that old.
In their zeal to destroy Trump, those on the Left/Congressional Democrats, are now pushing the idea that Trump can be prosecuted after he leaves office.
This, of course, also opens up the door to Obama and his crew being prosecuted as well.
In their zealotry, they never seem to realize that their weapon can turn in their hand.
“Few weeks ago Mueller was clear enough and knew exactly what he was talking about.
Few months ago he was clear enough to write the Mueller report.”
A few weeks ago he was showing signs of senility and was reading someone else’s statement that had to be subsequently corrected
A few months ago someone wrote the reply that he did bother reading.
Likely he was busy watching his collection of Leni Reifenstahl films an ilsa she-wolf of the SS flicks
Can Herr Müller be prosecuted
For ignoring the law and not having background checks on his Uber biased COI storm troopers?
The FIB agents who conducted the non Mirandized interrogation of Flynn said he told the truth.
For two years we were under the impression that Herr decided otherwise and bankrupted Flynn and threatened Flynn’s son to get Flynn to plead guilty for something he wasn’t,
Legally if we can find the paper trail that it was Veissmann who made the call would that be permissible? Or do decisions like that have to be made by Herr Müller?
Eyes firmly on the prize, good people.
The orders to violate regulation, practice, custom and law came from the top of the heap.
Is Robert Mueller the top of the heap? No he is not. He’s a now retired glorified flunky. A sad looking flunky at that. A coverup flunky. Covering up for what, for who? For the top of the heap, of course!
And who would that be, pray, tell?
Why none other than former President Pseudonym himself, Barack Hussein Obama. He gave the orders, he set the tasks, he determined to undermine the rule of law in America. He knows it, Robert Mueller knows it, James Comey knows it, all the rest of the Obama administration cavalcade of clowns know it.
We know it. Focus.
Now the DoJ has to go out and gather the proof to make it perfectly plain to everyone. In a court of law.
Eyes on the prize! Robert Mueller ain’t the prize. Hell, he can’t even lead you to the prize.
If I understand Occam more or less correctly, the reason for such “[acting] against their best interests” is that they have been driven stark raving insane by their extraordinary hatred for Trump.
Barry Meislin: That’s all I got and it seems true. This isn’t the only case in which Democrats have over-reached for an own goal.
Trump isn’t my idea of an ideal President, but as along as he is running against today’s Democrats, he will do and he will win.
Barry Meislin: Here’s Michael Goodwin saying much the same.
Indeed, as I wrote last week, the Mueller hearing was the latest example of how hatred of Trump leads his enemies to do really stupid stuff. Fixated on showing they are morally superior, they swing so far to make their case that they seem to be on another planet.
Why the Democratic obsession with racism won’t win them minority votes
https://nypost.com/2019/07/27/why-the-democratic-obsession-with-racism-wont-win-them-minority-votes/
“…stupid stuff…”
Well, OK; but if it were only “stupid stuff” they were doing, it might be bearable.
But they have turned into destructive, violent, vindictive zealots—practically psychopathic in their single-minded goal (at the expense of almost everything else), who believe their destructiveness to be the epitome of morality and view their zeal as righteousness.
Commentators have already been making comparisons to Robespierre and the Jacobins, whose “excesses” were not exactly “stupid stuff”.
I hope such commentary is over the top. But I’m not sure it is.
And here’s a guy from the Guardian making similar points:
The Russia scandal was the fruit of a badly flawed political ideology. It is a kind of West Wing view of political power that believes change happens behind closed doors in Washington, rather than as the result of mass mobilization. You don’t need to go out and convince new voters to join your party, or offer them a clear policy agenda. Instead, smart, highly credentialed lawyers will save the day. And Donald Trump didn’t win because he tapped in to an authentic popular anger that needs to be addressed, but because dastardly foreign agents rigged the game.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/27/mueller-investigation-impeachment-fantasy
Of course the majority of the Guardian commenters savaged the article because dammit, Trump did collude and he is a traitor.
I agree, although I don’t think Mueller is all that innocent. He was a patsy for the Left’s scheme of putting an end to the Trump presidency.
Related:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/07/17/the_lefts_broad_bigoted_politics_of_vilification_140798.html
H/T Instapundit.
I agree that Mueller’s performance was no act. On the off-chance that it was then he certainly missed his calling. Though acting has to be part of advocating so there’s that.
Mueller, like Trump, has been at his craft for too many years to be without error and sin.
It’s hard for me to believe that Mueller doesn’t have a conscience that tries to poke through the interior layers of his long life. And that may be why he seems so umbrageous.
The Dan Coats-John Ratcliffe news this weekend has John Brennan putting out the appearance of a public freakout this morning.
Well, that and the other news yesterday that contrary to Brennan’s sworn testimony that he briefed each of the members of the gang of eight individually with the same information when he briefed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the Steele dossier, we learn that Devin Nunez, who was a member of the gang of eight at that time, along with Paul Ryan, says neither he nor Ryan were briefed by Brennan.
Oh.
So Brennan seems somewhat cornered, does he not?
But then, he has in his back pocket another card to play: he can always resort to bargaining for leniency by giving up his superior, President Pseudonym, eh what?
The director’s job is not to write the report. It’s his job to supervise the person (really, people) who write the report. I would never expect to a director to manually write a major report like this.
400+ pages is really a book, and more of a novel.
Mueller certainly is old, and it’s possible he’s going down hill. It’s also possible he’s not really running the show. Still, he should at least be familiar with the report he’s supervising. Probably he should have read it himself and didn’t. Certainly with the political climate the way it is, he should have sat down with his senior staff and everyone who actually wrote the report (both individually and as a group) and asked “What is Congress going to grill me on?” before he went before Congress.
It’s also possible he’s just being a lawyer, but he’s doing a really terrible job to come off so confused. Maybe he was trying to “act” and miserably failed?
It’s also possible Mueller has an ulterior motive. He’s past retirement and this is the last major thing he’s liable to do in his life. Looking at the Republican action, the failure to rule on obstruction, and the side-stepping of collusion (“Here’s a 2 year investigation on whether the President colluded, but we don’t bother concluding if he did or didn’t”) The whole situation almost looks engineered to edge on the Democrats and Republicans. Honestly, if Russia is trying to disrupt the American system (and, yes, of course they are), little would do it better than Mueller’s exact behavior.
I can’t imagine how much money Mueller would make if he wrote a book after all of this. The report itself is selling as a New York Times bestseller in paperback. It’s safe to say he could afford a very comfortable retirement on the speaking circuit.
Another possibility: it may have just been an off day for him. Maybe he stayed up too late drinking the night before and his trick knee was ailing him and his team lost the game.
Personally, I’m not a fan of Mueller. I also very much don’t like this business of hanging people on a charge of “Obstruction of Justice” when the “crime” with which Jthey were charged was the result of misstatements of a common sort. (Scooter Libby, if not Martha Stewart; but I’d give her a pass too.)
But as I understand it, there are plenty of times when an investigator is sure in his own mind that X is guilty of Y, but also believes there’s insufficient evidence to build a case, at which point the evidence is turned over to the prosecutor, who decides whether he can build a case that will prevail at trial. (Mueller was named Special Counsel and given the assignment to oversee the investigation. He wasn’t a Prosecutor, so if I understand correctly, it wasn’t his call as to whether to prosecute on either the case of Collusion or the charge of “obstruction of justice.”)
It is true that one would hope that, for instance, a police department official would not publicly name a possible suspect in a case where it’s not even reasonably certain a crime was committed. But it seems to me that we often see news statements to the effect that “the police are currently questioning Mr. Joe Blow for the alleged crime of the rape of a woman behind DD’s Bar on the night of February 30 last.”
If anybody even reads this comment at this late date and knows what the law actually is, or can otherwise correct me, I’d be grateful.
Thanks.
Julie: ” He wasn’t a Prosecutor, so if I understand correctly, it wasn’t his call as to whether to prosecute on either the case of Collusion or the charge of “obstruction of justice.”)”
This is wholly incorrect, I think. He had all the normal prosecutorial powers any Federal District Attorney General has. Any prosecution he chose to make was his call, only subject to the normal oversight any DA expects from headquarters above.
I derived this opinion from reading the charging memo written by DAG Rosenstein.
Hm. Thanks, sdferr. I’ll have to go read that memo. :>)