More Mueller madness

The hits keep on coming from the New York Times and their deep state adjunct within the government. Today’s page-one story comes courtesy of Adam Goldman, Michael Schmidt, and Nicholas Fandos under the headline “F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia” (accessible here on Outline). Last night Paul Mirengoff treated the Times story with care and penetration in the nearby post “Report: FBI opened inquiry into whether Trump was working for the Russians.”

Paul exposes the absurdity of the substance of the story (i.e., the leaks aimed at Trump). As Paul says, the story reveals the FBI’s shocking bad faith. In a rational world, this story would be understood as an exploding cigar. It reveals a scandal, but the scandal is located inside the FBI. What we have here is a graphic illustration of the forces against which President Trump has contended for the past two years (including the Times). They mean to remove him from office.

Addressing the substance of the story, Paul overlooked this classic chestnut buried inside it: “Other factors fueled the F.B.I.’s concerns, according to the people familiar with the inquiry. Christopher Steele, a former British spy who worked as an F.B.I. informant, had compiled memos in mid-2016 containing unsubstantiated claims that Russian officials tried to obtain influence over Mr. Trump by preparing to blackmail and bribe him.”

The Steele Dossier is the lurid icing on this fetid cake. The Times story somehow omits to mention that the Steele Dossier derived from the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee via cutouts including the Perkins Coie law firm and Fusion GPS.

The Times story exposes more than one scandal. It exposes the overlapping scandals of which Trump is the victim, not the perpetrator. They are the biggest scandals in American political history.

One does not need to be a clinician to get a handle on the madness that permeates the Times story. There is an utter lack of self-awareness. The actors here — the Times and their sources — share the understanding that the story reflects poorly on Trump. As Paul puts it, however: “If it’s true that the FBI undertook the investigation described by the Times, this tells us plenty about the FBI. It tells us nothing about Trump.”

Quotable quote: “The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, took over the inquiry into Mr. Trump when he was appointed, days after F.B.I. officials opened it.”

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