Yes, Shut Down Mueller

Donald Trump is right about the special prosecutor, but for the wrong reason.

The Mueller investigation should be shut down before all of official Washington descends into total systemic madness. We may be there already.

The madness has two sources.

.. The other source of the madness is Donald Trump’s constantly repeated admiration for Vladimir Putin. To the point of obtuseness, Mr. Trump has never provided a rationale for his attitude toward Mr. Putin.

Coincident with this praise, the Putin record includes

  • Ukraine,
  • the slaughter of the Assad regime’s opposition in Syria,
  • the deployment of a cyber-spy team in the U.S.,
  • nuclear threats,
  • the London nerve-weapon assassination attempt,
  • continuous internal anti-Western propaganda, and
  • Sunday’s presidential-election landslide enabled by the suppression of his political opposition.

What Mr. Trump has gotten from Mr. Putin is absolutely nothing. It doesn’t compute.

Mr. Trump’s insistence on praising the Russian—including a gratuitous congratulatory phone call this week—sits before the public as an unexplained mystery.
.. Watching Washington’s hyperbolic reaction to Jeff Sessions’s firing of Andrew McCabe last weekend makes clear that the Russian collusion narrative has become a wildfire, a self-fueling force indiscriminately consuming everyone near it, including the president.

With his tweet-storms against the special counsel and other enemies, Donald Trump is starting to sound like Lear raging on the heath. O! ’tis foul!

.. King Lear had real enemies, and so does President Trump.
..  No greater crocodile-tear phrase exists in our time than that the Trump presidency is a threat to “our democracy.”
The only element of the American political system to which Donald Trump poses an existential threat is his own presidency.

.. Threatened with impeachment over Watergate, Richard Nixon had the support of his electoral base to the end. But he knew the game was up when his fellow Republicans in Washington drew the blinds and left him alone in the street with his enemies. Donald Trump’s tragedy is that he doesn’t see the political abandonment ahead.

.. It is not beyond imagining that the Mueller team may “have something” on Mr. Trump. If so, it had better be big enough to command majority condemnation from a bewildered country.

But if, as looks likely, the prosecution will have to produce a de minimis charge—and maybe not even against Mr. Trump—then Mr. Muller should shut down the investigation and get this mess behind us.

.. Too many people are looking for the justice of a Wild West hanging judge.

.. The press would survive withdrawal from the collusion drug. It could even take on the substance of the actual Trump presidency, including the costs to America’s interests of his Putin admiration. No matter the subject, Donald Trump will always be the bull’s-eye. Which is the way he wants it.

Trump’s lawyer calls on Justice Department to immediately end Russia probe

President Trump’s lawyer called on the Justice Department to immediately shut down the special counsel probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, in the wake of the firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Attorney John Dowd said in a statement that the investigation, now led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, was fatally flawed early on and “corrupted” by political bias. He called on Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees that probe, to shut it down.

“I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier,” Dowd said in an emailed statement.

Dowd told The Washington Post on Saturday he was speaking for himself and not on Trump’s behalf. Earlier Saturday, Dowd told the Daily Beast that he was speaking on behalf of the president and in his capacity as the president’s attorney.

Sessions late Friday night fired Mc­Cabe, a little more than 24 hours before McCabe was set to retire — a move that McCabe alleged was an attempt to “slander” him and undermine the ongoing special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign.

Sessions announced the decision in a statement just before 10 p.m., noting that both the Justice Department inspector general and the FBI office that handles discipline had found “that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions.”

.. If Dowd’s statement reflected Trump’s legal strategy, it would represent a significant shift in the president’s approach to the Mueller investigation.

.. McCabe’s firing touched off a firestorm late Friday. The now-former No. 2 at the FBI, who is a witness in the Russia case, shot back immediately.

“This attack on my credibility is one part of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally,” McCabe said. “It is part of this Administration’s ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation, which continue to this day. Their persistence in this campaign only highlights the importance of the Special Counsel’s work.”

.. His firing — which was recommended by the FBI office that handles discipline — stems from a Justice Department inspector general investigation that found McCabe authorized the disclosure of sensitive information to the media about a Clinton-related case, then misled investigators about his actions in the matter, people familiar with the matter have said