Sunday, September 09, 2018

Fishing expedition

Andrew McCarthy: "Mr. Rosenstein, What Is the Crime?"  "For precisely what federal crimes is the president of the United States under investigation by a special counsel appointed by the Justice Department?  It is intolerable that, after more than two years of digging — the 16-month Mueller probe having been preceded by the blatantly suspect labors of the Obama Justice Department and FBI — we still do not have an answer to that simple question."

7 comments:

Baruch Korff said...

Woodward & Bernstein's "The Final Days" book is filled with contemporary examples of 1973-74 criticism and attacks made against the Watergate investigation. It was a "fishing expedition." And it was "a partisan witch-hunt." It was taking much, much too long. The news was fake. Anonymous attacks were cowardly. The general public didn't care about the story. The investigation itself was the real crime. Why wasn't the DoJ going after someone else instead - like John Dean, or Ted Kennedy? Innocent people's lives were being ruined merely because of their association with the president. The real problem was the leaks. The entire scandal was just a phony pretext to destroy Nixon because he'd beaten them.

In November 1973, Nixon's Watergate counsel J. Fred Buzhardt recommended resignation, giving this frosty assessment of the remaining 3 years of his term as president: "Everything after this is a damage-limiting operation."

Robert Fisk said...

"I can't come up with a single thing I'd dare say that supports the idea that there is a specific crime the special counsel has been investigating the president for, but this post's attack on the Deep State must be countered! I know - I'll simply imply that there was also no specific crime that precipitated the Watergate investigation either, by pointing out that partisans complained about it. That should work."

Eric said...

Trump is just like Nixon. They both have 5 letters in their surname.

Anonymous said...

So does Putin. And Comey, and Yates. And Kelly, and Cohen, and Stone. And President Pence.

Eric said...

So does "crime" which is missing here.

Anonymous said...

So does "Vichy" which is all there's been since 2016.

Robert Fisk said...


"Dear Diary,

Today I dropped the hammer on an author at my blog. He tried to rub my nose in the one and only point made in his post - that there was no crime justifying the appointment of Mueller. I really dug my feet in and refused to comment on that lie. You would have been so proud of me. And then I wrote my final comment which must have left quite a welt."