McCabe & Mr. Mueller: Where Are We Now?

With apologies to the memory of Robert Altman.

1. FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe wouldn't know a conflict of interest if it jumped up and bit him in the butt. He had no business supervising the Clinton Email investigation or the Clinton Foundation investigation in any capacity whatsoever. Supervising those investigations after his wife's political campaign accepted a $600K plus donation from close Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe was a gross and obvious conflict of interest. Yet he persisted.
2. McCabe did not recuse himself until after publication of a Wall Street Journal article detailing the McAuliffe donation. By that time, both investigations were closed. FBI Special Agents involved in the Clinton Foundation investigation were reportedly kept from pursuing certain avenues of investigation with McCabe's knowledge and/or participation.
3. The Clinton email investigation and the Clinton Foundation investigation were both mishandled. Anybody even remotely familiar with how federal investigations work will tell you as much. You don't give limited use immunity to gain access to a witness's computer when you can get the same information through a search warrant. This is particularly true when the immunity grant impacts  a related investigation--which it almost certainly did in this instance. You don't let a small army of the subject's cronies attend her formal law enforcement interview. You don't allow a witness in the investigation to attend the subject's interview under the guise that said witness is also the subject's attorney.
4. The FBI's Peter Strzok should never have been assigned to the Russian/Trump Collusion investigation by Comey and McCabe in August 2016. By this time, the Clinton Email investigation was being harshly criticized by GOP front-runner Trump and other Republican hopefuls. You don't assign the FBI agent whose work is being attacked to investigate the very person who is leading the attack. Accordingly, Mueller should have removed Strzok as one of his first official acts.  We now know that Strzok had a vitriolic hatred of all things Trump, which he freely exhibited during the course of the Russian/Trump Collusion investigation. It's not about Strzok's political views. Agents and prosecutors cannot be hired, passed over, or fired based on their political affiliation. It's about Strzok's ability to operate in an unbiased manner during the course of an investigation. To his credit, Mueller immediately fired Strzok upon learning ab0ut Strzok's incriminating texts. It now appears that McCabe almost certainly knew of Strzok's intemperate hatred of Trump before, or shortly after, Strzok was assigned to the Russian/Trump Collusion investigation. What a wonderful little stink bomb he left for Mueller.
5. DAG Rod Rosenstein should order the DOJ to release the full contents of Bob Mueller's Conflicts Waiver, except for portions that must remain confidential to protect attorney-client confidences. The public has a right to know of any friendships that could potentially impact Mueller's work.
6. Bob Mueller is an honorable man. He is also tone deaf and politically naïve. Mueller should have recognized that he and his team would be attacked by Trump World and put under a microscope. He should have taken greater care to assure himself that the team he assembled would not be subject to credible accusations of political bias. Special Counsels are hired in the first place to avoid conflicts of interest and the appearance of conflicts.
7. Bob Mueller should not resign or be fired, because he has done nothing that would warrant resignation or firing. The calls for Mueller to quit or be sacked are coming for the most part from partisan ideological hacks. These are some of the same people falsely stating that Rosenstein is a liberal Democrat and a Mueller protégé. Rosenstein (my old friend and former colleague) is a mainstream conservative Republican and long-time play-it-by-the book professional. I guess that's not good enough for some people, who apparently want him to have a pin-up of Roy Moore in his bedroom.
8. Bob Mueller should not demand the resignation of any staff members, based on our current state of knowledge. True, he should not have hired Andrew Weissman, who has more baggage than a Carnival Cruise ship, or Jeannie Rhee in the first place, due to the appearance of potential bias. But there is no evidence that they have let any biases affect their work.
9. We don't need a Special Counsel to investigate Mueller or his people. A Special Counsel is for criminal investigations. Any credible claims of impropriety directed to Mueller or his team can and should be handled by DOJ's Office of Inspector General ("OIG").
10. It is not enough to say that OIG is investigating the handling of the Clinton email investigation. We need to know more. Will OIG also look at the interplay between the Clinton Email Investigation and the Clinton Foundation investigation? Is OIG using its subpoena power? If not, why not? 

(wisenberg)