Democrats on Capitol Hill have said that they expect to be disappointed by the Trump-Russia collusion report from Mr. Mueller. The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that there was no evidence of collusion. Chairman Schiff has said that he plans to call the Special Counsel to testify and answer questions. He may think better of that when he considers some of the questions Republicans might ask Mr. Mueller. With a series of well structured questions, much of the entire investigation (witch hunt) can be laid bare.
Here are some examples:
Mr. Mueller, you have spent over two years and almost $25 million, ostensibly investigating the possibility of Russian collusion in the 2016 election. When did you finally conclude that there really was no evidence of that? Didn’t you feel you had a moral responsibility to share that with the Attorney General and wrap it up at that time?
How did you come to have so many Democrats on your team? When you learned this, did you consider replacing the Democrat donors with investigators who had no partisan bias? How did Mr. Struyk and Ms. Paige come to be on your team? When you learned of their bias and misdeeds at the FBI, you fired them. Why did you wait several weeks to make their terminations public? Did you make any attempt to keep them from simply returning to their high ranking jobs at the FBI?
The greater question is this, how could you ever expect average Americans to see your investigation as fair when you overloaded your team with people that had so much personal or partisan animus for the President?
Mr. Mueller, your office authorized early morning raids on several individuals. Wouldn’t you agree that these raids with agents in full commando gear were unnecessary, especially considering that the individuals had already agreed to cooperate and surrender voluntarily? Was this just for show or was it about intimidation? Does this kind of thing square with your view of good police work? Or does it look more like something you’d expect from a Police State?
Now let’s return to the original purpose of your investigation; foreign influence in our elections. You are certainly aware that the Clinton campaign and the DNC hired Marc Elias with the law firm Perkins, Cole. They, in turn, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to do opposition research on the Trump campaign. Fusion GPS then hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence. He worked with foreign agents including Russians to create the dossier which (although uncorroborated and largely refuted) was used to obtain a FISA Court Warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. You would certainly agree that this was all done in a naked attempt to affect the outcome of the election and it definitely involved foreign actors. So, my next question for you Mr. Mueller is this, how many of your investigators did you have assigned to look at this aspect of nefarious foreign influence?
High ranking members of the FBI and DOJ, including two who were originally on your team had discussions concerning an “insurance policy” in the odd chance that Mr. Trump actually won that election. Can you share with us any of your findings concerning this insurance policy and other illegal attempts that may have been made by government officials to affect the outcome of that election? Will you please share with us the names of the investigators assigned to that aspect of the probe? They weren’t people whose partisan views might taint their investigation, were they?
Now let’s explore another aspect of potential Russian influence in our political process. Mr. Mueller, you’re very familiar with the details surrounding the Uranium One deal, aren’t you? Let me read to you from an article in the Washington Post:
“The New York Times reported in 2015 that shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, [former President Bill] Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock. In total, $145 million went to the Clinton Foundation from interests linked to Uranium One, which was acquired by the Russian government nuclear agency Rosatum.”
Didn’t you find it curious that Uranium One principals contributed over $145 million to the Clinton Foundation. Did you assign anyone to investigate this? Who were they and what were their findings?
We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of questions that Mr. Mueller should be asked. Perhaps Chairman Graham in the Senate needs to make certain that he gets asked. If the Republicans can simply stay on script, Mr. Mueller’s Question Time could be very interesting indeed.
Gil Gutknecht served six terms each in the Minnesota and the U.S. House of Representatives. He writes about healthcare and political issues of the day.
Gil Gutknecht
Gil Gutknecht is a former Republican congressman from Minnesota.
