Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler is huffing and puffing away about his committee's subpoena-in-waiting lest Attorney General William Barr not be sufficiently forthcoming about the details of the Mueller Report.
“But if we cannot reach an accommodation, then we will have no choice but to issue subpoenas for these materials,” Nadler warned. "And if the department still refuses, then it should be up to a judge — not the president or his political appointee — to decide whether or not it is appropriate for the committee to review the complete record.”
Methinks the chairman doth protest too much. In other words, it's all a charade for the faithful. He doesn't really want to do anything. Likely Nadler is secretly praying Barr redacts the whole damn thing or ties things up in the courts for long enough for the investigation to disappear at least somewhat down the memory hole.
The full text of the Mueller report is a booby-trap for the Democrats. And many of them not named Schiff must know or suspect it.
Sure there will be one or two tidbits to keep the heavy breathers at CNN distracted as their ratings continue to fall through the basement, but largely the report will be four hundred pages demonstrating what we all now know did not happen — i. e. collusion between Trump or anyone on his campaign and the Russians (not that we didn't know that over a year ago).
The natural question will then be — what was all this for? Cui bono? A full airing of the report, what Nadler claims he wants, will instead "open the door," as they say in court, more than ever for an investigation of why this probe was launched in the first place, by whom and for what reason. The results of that investigation will be quite scary, if not humiliating, for Democrats because they will lead close to, if not over, their highest doorstep — the portals of the Oval Office during the previous administration.
Over the next few months we will be seeing the fight of our political lives to keep that threshold from being crossed. The skirmish over the report is but a relatively tame preamble. Nadler has to be very careful not to anger Barr too much because the attorney general has within his control the ability to appoint a special counsel and make life miserable for the Democratic Party straight to the election of 2020 and beyond.
Meanwhile, besides whatever Barr decides to do, several other vectors are pointing at the Democrats and their DOJ/FBI/media allies. One is obviously hearings from the Senate Judiciary Committee under chairman Lindsey Graham. The second is the investigation into the provenance of the Russia probe and the attendant FISA court decisions (Steele dossier, etc.) to spy on U.S. citizens by inspector general Michael Horowitz. He is supposed to be working in concert with John Huber, a U.S. attorney appointed by Jeff Sessions ages ago with the power to carry out in the courts the results of Horowitz's discoveries and who has since been silent.
Many are skeptical of both of these men, whether they have the backbone to follow through. That may have been true in the past, but I would caution, however, that times change, situations change. The misfire of the Muller investigation creates a different world. So many unanswered questions are sitting there crying out for answers. Even the most reluctant investigator or prosecutor may be constrained to deal with them or face historical disdain. And remember, Mueller was a hero to the Democrats for two years until just a couple of days ago. The same thing can happen with Huber in reverse. We just don't know.
But we do know there are all those unanswered questions, most of which only point in one direction. Ex-CIA director John Brennan, who assured us on myriad occasions that Trump was virtually Putin's lackey, now tells us he may have been misinformed by his "sources." Were I a reporter anxious to make my reputation, I might ask Mr. Brennan who those sources were and what they said.
He is unlikely to answer, but, yes, we do have some media on our side who can find out and they are more powerful than conventionally thought. (John Solomon and Sara Carter to name two, Catherine Herridge for another). In fact, they are very powerful because, in concert with events, they are changing public opinion.
And there is proof that is happening, if we are to believe Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, who reported -- talk about game-changers -- that an astounding 34 percent of those attending the massive Trump rally in Michigan on March 31 were Democrats. Parscale smartly used cellphone numbers to get an accurate read on how people voted.
No, the Republicans have little to fear. As Chairman Mao would put it, let a hundred Mueller reports bloom.
UPDATE: I see the NYTimes has made its latest salvo against Trump in re: Mueller. As almost always with the paper, the article relies on anonymous sources, just as did in its now discredited Pulitzer Prize reporting on the subject. At question of course is whether Trump "obstructed" justice in a crime it is now admitted never happened. The Kafkaesque nature of this accusation is obvious. It's hard to imagine Donald Trump, of all people, as Joseph K., but those are times in which we live. Remember Trump complaining loudly a couple of years ago that he was "wiretapped" and the media uniformly dismissing him as paranoid? Kafka indeed.
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