Steve Hilton: Mueller showed himself for what he is; a partisan
Mueller press conference shows he is no longer interested in being a neutral arbiter and has placed himself in the partisan arena.
Populism is about fighting a corrupt establishment. And boy did we see them in action last week. This was the week that Robert Mueller put himself in the arena
With his bizarre new doctrine of "not not guilty," he overturned the presumption of innocence. Then, with his unsubtly coded call for the impeachment of President Trump, he revealed his real aim: Overturning the 2016 election.
Mueller was hired to be a neutral arbiter, to bring a clear conclusion that the country could unite behind. But on Wednesday, he ripped off the mask of neutrality and showed himself for what he is: A partisan in the fight between the populists and the establishment.
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We shouldn't be surprised -- Mueller is the establishment. He's a swamp lawyer, as we told you months ago in our "Swamp Watch" episiode on the special counsel and his best buddy, James Comey last August.
Remember, Robert Mueller was previously director of the FBI. And James Comey was previously deputy attorney general. By an incredible coincidence, once Comey left that job to become the multi-million-dollar general counsel of defense giant Lockheed Martin, Lockheed Martin was awarded contract after contract, over a billion dollars' worth, by Robert Mueller's FBI.
And there's more, as we told you, last August:. I said the following:
"Robert Mueller's swampiness goes beyond awarding billion dollar contracts to his best friend's employer.. After leaving his post as FBI director, what did this modern-day saint, this paragon of ethics and integrity do? He cashed in, of course. Mueller went back to work for his old law and lobbying firm, now called Wilmer-Hale. And surprise surprise, his clients were directly related to his previous government work. One of them was Booz-Allen-Hamilton -- like Lockheed Martin, a giant surveillance contractor. Bloomberg has called them 'the world's most profitable spy agency.'"
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That's the establishment code: You protect each other. Always. And you take down any and every threat to your power. That's how to understand last week's extraordinary intervention by Mueller. It was the establishment's final stand against their mortal enemy - Trump, and the peasant's revolt he led in 2016.
What Mueller did at his press conference wasn't justice. It wasn't the rule of law. It was a smear -- false statement designed to cause material harm to President Trump, delivered with malice ... President Trump should sue Robert Mueller for libel.
They tried to stop him getting elected by clearing Hillary Clinton. They tried to bring him down by manufacturing a Russia collusion scandal. And when all that failed, last week Robert Mueller played the obstruction card.
Strip away all the tortured legalese and intellectual incoherence, it all boiled down to one thing - Mueller saying, "I can't prove he did it, but [wink] he did it." He talked about "another process," and with that weak, pathetic attempt to hide the explosive nature of what he was really saying, Mueller called on Congress to impeach the president.
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Impeach him for what? He didn't plot with Putin to steal the election. Mueller found no evidence for that crazed establishment fantasy, despite two years of trying
The president didn't obstruct justice. Mueller found no evidence of that, either, as he himself admitted in a clarification put out later that same day. Mueller's claim that it was the regulation about not indicting a sitting president that stopped him recommending charges was a lie.
Let's be really clear about that: Robert Mueller -- yes, the straight-shooting man of integrity, Robert Mueller -- lied from the podium last Wednesday. He lied to cover up the fact that he didn't find evidence of obstruction to justify a criminal charge.
What did he he find? Stories about the president losing his temper. Of course he lost his temper! If a totally manufactured conspiracy theory about you being a traitor to your country and colluding with an enemy power derails your presidency for years, wouldn't you be annoyed about it? This was eruption, not obstruction.
What, we're going to impeach a president for venting, now? By that standard we should impeach Amy Klobuchar for that business with the salad and the comb. As the Wall Street Journal put it, Robert Mueller wants "an impeachment inquiry to charge Donald Trump with obstructing an investigation that wasn't obstructed into a conspiracy that didn't exist."
Mueller the straight shooter? With that bumbling, malicious press conference, he shot himself straight in the foot. His reputation is destroyed, and he has no-one to blame but himself.
Now it's time to fight back against the establishment. It's good that the origins of the plot against President Trump are now being investigated. But let's not leave it there.
What Mueller did at his press conference wasn't justice. It wasn't the rule of law. It was a smear -- false statement designed to cause material harm to President Trump, delivered with malice. You know what that is? The legal standard for defamation. President Trump should sue Robert Mueller for libel.
Next: Let's open a corruption investigation into the business dealings of Mueller and Comey in their swampy trips around the revolving door. Let's investigate those Lockheed Martin contracts. Let's investigate those client relationships at Mueller's swamp law firm where he had a conflict of interest.
Was there personal financial corruption? Let's investigate. After all, what's that phrase we've been hearing these last couple of years, "we need to get to the bottom of it." If Mueller and Comey have done nothing wrong, they've got nothing to fear from a corruption investigation. Right?
And let's take the fight to the ridiculous Never-Trumpers, too. Led by Bill Kristol, they're now joining the impeachment bandwagon with new ads under the banner of "Republicans for the Rule of Law." They say they're defending democracy.
Excuse me? They are literally attacking democracy, trying to overturn the democratic election of a president they despise. They talk about decency and honor and morality. What morality do they bring to the table, by the way?
Their demented ideology sent millons to their deaths in Middle East wars and cost our country trillions of dollars. Their dinner party decadence brought the authoritarian despots of China to the brink of world domination. And their craven genuflection to big business destroyed the American Dream for middle class families.
These Never -Trumpers, this corrupt establishment ... it is rotten. It has failed. But it's not dead yet.
They think they can kick out Trump and take back power. Do not let them. It's time to fight them. It's time to defeat them.
Adapted from Steve Hilton's monologue on "The Next Revolution" on June 2, 2019.
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