If you want to make sense of the endless flood of media reports about Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation, it helps to recall the ancient parable of the blind men asked to describe an elephant.
One reaches out to the unknown creature, feels the trunk and says, “It’s like a snake.” The next touches an ear: “It’s like a fan.” A third grabs a leg: “It’s like a tree.” And so on through the critter’s side (“a wall”), tail (“a rope”) and tusk (“a spear”).
For months, reporters have dug up, or been fed, tidbits about what Mueller’s team is looking at and rushed into print with claims that he’s … going to nab President Trump for obstruction of justice, or show the Russians used the NRA to elect Trump, or expose Russian funding of Trump projects long ago — whatever.
And the supposed dirt inevitably comes from anonymous sources, making it impossible for readers to judge what spin has been introduced along the way.
No matter: Each report triggers days of MSNBC mouth-frothing over the pending end of Trump, and outrage on the right over the latest “smear” — complete with calls for Mueller’s head that (bizarrely) assume the Trump-hating liberal media have the story right.
And all of it misses the elephant in the room: Not one leak, ever, has suggested that Mueller has found an iota of evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians — which, recall, is what the investigation is supposed to be about.
Moreover, the Clinton-funded “dossier” that apparently launched the original FBI collusion probe now stands exposed as junk.
The coverage adds up to nothing more than Mueller is looking at every possible angle … which is his job.
That doesn’t absolutely rule out the chance that the prosecutor is on a witch hunt. After all, he did bring a lot of Hillary Clinton supporters onto his team. On the other hand, he was hiring from a pool of DC attorneys that strongly tilted that way.
But none of his actual actions so far show any such bias. Of course he was going to indict Paul Manafort and his partner over egregious (but Trump-unrelated) sleaze, and pin down Mike Flynn, George Papadapoulos and so on.
But the public record shows no reason to think any of them has anything on the president: e.g., the campaign rejected Papadapoulos’ push for a Trump-Putin sitdown.
This still leaves the theoretical possibility of obstruction-of-justice charges. But that seems beyond dubious when there’s no underlying crime to cover for — and Trump 1) had every legal right to fire Jim Comey and 2) never tried to shut down or impede the investigation.
It looks like Mueller is close to wrapping up, since he’s moving to interview the president — and talking to the central figure is pretty much always the final step in such investigations. (Whether Trump should talk is another matter: His lawyers surely worry that his sloppy way of talking could land him in trouble when he’s otherwise already in the clear.)
Don’t worry, media blind men: While Mueller’s closing down, other investigations — into the fixing of the Clinton email probe and the Justice Department “secret society” that may have gotten the collusion probe rolling — can ramp up.