My very cynical question re: Mueller.

[Grasswire2]

Is it possible that Republicans appointed him as a sort of "poison pill" -- knowing that he would 1/not want to speak, and 2/was past his best days?

Remember how Rove taught Republicans to use an adversary's strength AGAINST him/her?

And so Mueller's strengths turned out to work against an open airing of the evidence against Trump et al.

That eventuality could have been gamed out and predicted by Rosenstein (who turned out to be a punk cooperator) and the Trump team.

That's a scheme so fruitful that I think it must be the way it happened. They picked him because....his voice quavers, and he has a small tremor, and he's sometimes a little confused and...............his television appearances would not impart strength.

I told you it was cynical.

[dweller]

1. nah

they aren't that smart...

✌🏼️

[mopinko]

2. well, steve bannon said about his pick-

never send a marine to do a hit man's job.
so...

[arthritisR_US]

3. It was cynical but he did put out important

points. Your elections are in jeopardy from adversaries and your « president « committed the crime of obstructing justice. He is supposed to be the highest officer of justice in your country, what does it say for the old USA?

[applegrove]

4. He is an investigator. He is not allowed to indite a sitting president.

Up to congress. Not Mueller's falt to make or break congressional investigations. Up to democrats to interview actual witnesses to make their case for impeechment.

[Sucha NastyWoman]

7. How come when it's our guy

We get a sleazeball prosecutor with variable moral values, but when their guy is totally out of control, the get a prosecutor woth hyper-principles.

[Nuggets]

5. Is it possible the Republicans hired him as a poison pill and he

willingly accepted also as a cooperator?

It sure is.

Always the scenarios on DU try to make Mueller some unsuspecting “victim”.
Supposedly Mueller is a victim of Barr, of Rosenstein now the Republicans. It makes him sound like a total idiot.

I thought he was a by the book , Vietnam bad-ass with decades of service to justice and the American way!

How could he not see what’s right in front of his face?
How is not interviewing the main targets of your investigation going “by the book”? 😂

[RockRaven]

6. That decision was 100% Rosenstein. He got burned by writing that "fire Comey" letter,

which he did like a good little careerist suck-up stooge, knowing the decision had been made already and was a done deal but needed a polite-fiction veneer... and then had the blame for the firing shifted off onto him by Trump when the polite fiction was ignored by the media in favor of a scandal/corruption narrative. He wasn't going to take the fall for that! So he decided to appoint a special prosecutor -- which he could do all on his own because Sessions had recused himself. The special prosecutor solved his ego/reputation problem in 2 ways, by lending an appearance of independence/objectivity and by providing a different person to shift blame on to.

But who to pick? Decisions, decisions... Why did Rosenstein pick Mueller? That's a good question. In the context of the Trump admin, he was obscenely qualified and beyond any possible MSM criticism. He had a whiff of bipartisanship because although appointed by Bush as FBI director, Obama got his term extended by 2 years beyond the normal 10. He is not a charismatic camera hound likely to enrage Dolt45, proactively anyway, by appearing on cable news on a daily basis. He was an absolute by-the-book kind of person. That last one is what really sealed the deal, most likely.

Rosenstein saw a way to shift all the blame away from himself without risking too much that the thing would explode on him, by choosing a plodding/deliberate, obsessive rule-follower to do the job -- because a) Trump's go-to tactic is stall/delay and DAGs rarely last more than a few years anyway so a slow investigation would allow Rosenstein to stay long enough to look like he'd held the position as long as he had wanted to, and b) the relevant rules were written by the executive branch (the Nixon and Clinton admins, in particular) specifically and intentionally to protect the executive from their own DOJ.

[anarch]

8. I don't know; I suspect it was more just that he's a lifelong Republican

and they knew that at the end of the day he would keep very strictly within his lane, so to speak.

[uponit7771]

9. Mueller went far beyond expectations for impeachment purposes. If you wanted a show you didn't

... get it but if you wanted important and legal information to bolster impeachment that was given in buckets.

[FBaggins]

10. I'm not seeing it

I don’t see how he even met expectations. We got none of what we were told the hearings would give us. Did he tell us that Barr shut down the investigation? Or that he lied about their conversation? Or that he would have indicted were it not for the OLC? Or that his scope was secretly constrained?

Did he act as a private citizen unencumbered by claims of privilege or DOJ policy or what someone else thought should be redacted?

Tribe had it right:

“Much as I hate to say it, this morning’s hearing was a disaster," Tribe tweeted. "Far from breathing life into his damning report, the tired Robert Mueller sucked the life out of it. The effort to save democracy and the rule of law from this lawless president has been set back, not advanced

[uponit7771]

11. The expectations was a contradiction of Barr narrative from Mueller himself... THAT'S IT !!

[FBaggins]

12. You must not have been on DU for the last few weeks

That certainly doesn’t match the expectations I kept seeing.

Nor do I see how he exceeded even that limited expectation. Can you point to a sound bite where he explicitly said that the AG was wrong or lied? That’s what we needed in that vein.

[StarfishSaver]

13. DU expectations are hardly reflective of the real world

[uponit7771]

14. I don't think there was an empirical consensus of DU members Mueller expectations but I

... never expected Robert Mueller to be Robert DeNiro.

Can you point to a sound bite where he explicitly said that the AG was wrong or lied?

Mueller sent a letter to Barr that was leaked saying this very thing and was played for weeks ...

You remember Mueller's letter to Barr saying he lied about his report right?

That’s what we needed in that vein.

I 100% disagree, not his style and he's already said Barr lied about his report in a "leaked" letter to Barr.

The rest of it was to intimate Red Don lied and he did such in buckets.

The important was giving in droves the show was held back at best

[FBaggins]

15. Short answer is that you just gave away your point

Obviously, the hearing didn't add anything to the "Barr lied" line of attack if your evidence for that is to refer back to the letter.

Barr had a facially plausible response for why the letter did not disagree with his summary. Expectations were that Mueller would clear that up in his testimony. That he would say something that explicitly contradicted the AG.

We needed something along the lines of "Barr said this in his summary... was that true?" followed by a clear "No". Instead... anything having to do with that letter was just referred back to the letter.

There was an explicit question - "Was anything in Attorney General Barr’s letter, referred to as the principal conclusions letter dated March 24th, inaccurate?"... and his answer was "Well, I am not going to get into that." That's not exceeding expectations.