Will he or won’t he? Rumors continue to swirl and
speculation abounds about whether President Trump will order the firing
of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian meddling
in our 2016 presidential election and alleged misconduct by the Trump
campaign and the president.
President Trump is a high-risk, high-reward player and
he often wins. He’s a man of action who is impatient with delays. But in
this case, he needs patience. He needs to let the Mueller probe finish
on its own time, politically and legally, because that’s the only way
for the president to shut down all the speculation and be cleared of
doing anything wrong.
So firing Mueller should be off the table – something
President Trump doesn’t even consider. The president needs to focus on
his job, do his best to serve the American people, and just hit pause
and stop being preoccupied by the Mueller probe. Talking about it and
tweeting about it again and again, day after day, simply creates more
news coverage and more public concern about the investigation.
President Trump needs vindication from Mueller to push
legislation through Congress, manage international affairs with proper
authority, protect America’s national security without distraction, and
guide America through these complex times. He also needs vindication to
win a second term. So waiting for Mueller to wind up his investigation,
even if it goes on for several more months, is in the president’s best
interest.
For obvious reasons, the president is frustrated. Who
wouldn’t be? The “Russia collusion” story is at a dead end. In terms of
what is on the public record, the claims of collusion don’t add up.
Indeed, the facts known to the public point toward illegal collusion
among top Obama administration officials who apparently aimed to stop
Donald Trump from becoming president, or hobble him if he won.
Still, the Mueller probe continues on and on and on.
On the public record, we know that senior FBI and
intelligence officials were apoplectic – texting with adolescent
anxiety, fear and fury – in their determination to assure that Trump was
defeated by Hillary Clinton.
The devotion of these federal employees to Clinton
remains peculiar, almost religious. Perhaps it was fed by fear of the
inexperienced, conservative, and irreverently tweeting candidate Trump.
While federal employees have First Amendment rights to
an opinion, what is now obvious is that some abused their positions and
power and engaged in a conspiracy to bend the law to serve their
opinions. That is not acceptable or excusable, regardless of whether it
is directed against a Democratic or Republican candidate.
What is also obvious is that the conspiracy to
undermine President Trump both before and after he took office was
undertaken without compunction, with gloves-off zeal and continued into
2017.
Andrew McCabe, former No. 2 official at the FBI, was
recently fired for substantive, non-political reasons. His self-defense
was breathtaking. He wrapped himself in the American flag and in the
FBI’s reputation for integrity. But he failed to rebut nonpartisan
infractions detailed by the Justice Department Inspector General’s
Office, the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility and
Justice Department leadership.
Distilled from an array of 2016 election-focused investigations – some already completed, some ongoing—here are some key facts:
· The largest cache of Hillary Clinton recovered emails
– a topic we are all sick of talking about – cast the Democratic
presidential candidate in a very negative light. McCabe and others chose
not to release the emails when they were found in September 2016. That
is unforgivable.
· The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (ACT) court,
meant to protect all Americans from abuse by a politically twisted
Justice Department, was tricked. The FBI’s McCabe, Director James Comey
and others knowingly sought and gained an invasive warrant to surveil
members of the Trump campaign by using information paid for by the
Clinton campaign. Without that information, the surveillance warrant –
by their own admission – would not have been granted. That is
unforgivable.
· Increasingly, it looks like the zealous effort to
first stop candidate Trump and then undermine President Trump had
appendages. One reason McCabe was summarily let go, without his full
pension, is that he was allegedly untruthful under oath multiple times
about leaking anti-Trump material to the media.
· Curiously, Comey, who knowingly reverted to calling
the Clinton “investigation” a “matter” during the election campaign when
directed by Obama’s attorney general, reportedly leaked sensitive law
enforcement information to the media.
· Likewise, one reason former British spy Christopher
Steele of dossier fame was let go by the FBI, which had mysteriously
contracted with him to provide information about Trump, was that Steele
had also been briefing the media on anti-Trump material.
These are just some of the holes in the anti-Trump
narrative alleging misconduct by the candidate and his campaign. Put it
all together and so far – as far as we know from what’s public – and the
accusations just don’t add up.
The biggest take-away is this: If collusion is a bad
thing – and for undermining the integrity of any federal election it is –
the white-hot spotlight belongs elsewhere, and seems to be moving that
way.
Why, then, should the Mueller probe continue?
The reason is simple, legal and is why our impatient
president and his supporters – including all those unfairly accused,
unjustifiably hobbled, and frustratingly made to wait – should take a
deep breath, stop being preoccupied by the probe and simply let it
finish.
The reports that special counsels and prosecutors
typically issue at the end of their inquiries – on average after 22
months of investigation – are usually thorough. Sometimes a prosecutor
“colors outside the lines,” nabbing side players for singular acts of
obstruction, perjury without a predicate act, or for unrelated
misconduct discovered in the course of an investigation. But generally
they focus on the mission and don’t go too far afield.
In this case, reams of exculpatory information have
found their way into the media, chiefly by way of congressional
investigators and private sources, validating President Trump’s
contention of innocence.
Additionally, this information shows that Russian
President Vladimir Putin’s government is a bad actor – no surprise – and
that all Americans, regardless of political party, have a right to be
unsettled, indignant, and on guard against Russian meddling in our
elections.
But none of this implicates President Trump in any
wrongdoing. In fact, Mueller’s probe is helping protect America by
ferreting out how pervasive, invasive and invidious the Russian
intentions are.
So, in the end, the president and his team have a right
to that clean bill of health, whether he answers more questions or lets
the record speak for itself. He needs a timely conclusion to the
Mueller probe, in order to best serve America’s domestic, international
and national interests – to do his job unencumbered by this pasty,
perfidious fiction, propagated by misguided former federal officials.
Let Mueller reach that conclusion without interference, and the president and our country will be better off.
Robert Charles is a former assistant secretary of state for
President George W. Bush, former naval intelligence officer and
litigator. He served in the Reagan and Bush 41 White Houses.
