Don’t distort a life of service to the United States.
Just to be clear, since some of the comments by Trump myrmidons straining to rationalize the president’s disgusting remarks about the death of Robert Mueller are similarly atrocious, I would note the following.
Mueller did not start the Russiagate investigation. It was ongoing for months when he was appointed special counsel.
It was the Trump Justice Department — Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, appointed by President Trump — who made Mueller special counsel. He was not sicced on Trump by Democrats.
I was as harsh as anyone about the way Mueller staffed and conducted the Russiagate investigation. However, regardless of how his partisan Democratic staffers would have come out if they’d been in charge, Mueller concluded based on the evidence that Trump did not collude with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.
For eight years, Trump has mocked “Russia, Russia, Russia,” relying on the fact that Mueller, an aggressive prosecutor, spent two years investigating him and found insufficient evidence to indict.
Mueller should similarly have concluded there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Trump for obstruction. Instead, he wrongly declined to make the decision, leaving it to Trump’s DOJ (AG Bill Barr and DAG Rosenstein). Still, although his Democratic staffers — which, to be fair, he hired — would have recommended indicting Trump if it had been their call, Mueller declined to recommend an obstruction indictment (although he maddeningly refused to say there was insufficient evidence).
In 1966, when his generation had begun agitating against the Vietnam War and he could have gone from graduating from Princeton to a big-bucks job, Mueller volunteered to fight for his country. He was awarded the Bronze Star for bravery and the Purple Heart upon being seriously wounded in combat.
Mueller was an exceptional prosecutor who was a top official in the Bush-41 Justice Department, a U.S. attorney in the Clinton administration, and the FBI director who took the helm just a week before the 9/11 attacks.
I have my disagreements with this or that decision that Mueller made along the way. His patriotic devotion to the United States, however, is beyond question or reproach. We are at a very low point in American history if we decline to honor our patriots because a demagogue smears them.