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GOP’s Anti-Mueller Campaign Designed to Discredit Findings & Save Trump

President Trump, officials from his administration and political operation, many Republicans in Congress, and conservative pundits and activists are criticizing special counsel Robert Mueller and his team and questioning the fairness of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Liberals see the anti-Mueller campaign — which has cast the investigation as akin to an attempted coup and in the last week escalated to calling for Mueller’s dismissal — as the obvious prelude to Trump firing Mueller. Fundamentally, this is a campaign to weaken and undermine Mueller, even if he remains in his post. The anti-Mueller campaign has at least five different elements. 1) Attacking Mueller’s team by highlighting text messages that were critical of the president from an FBI official who was on Mueller’s team and donations by some on Mueller’s team to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. 2) Casting Mueller as a bad manager by in effect suggesting he has hired a team of anti-Trump people and let them run wild. 3) Calling for a second special counsel to investigate various controversiesfrom Obama’s presidency and Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state — best understood as a kind of “whataboutism” that would weaken Mueller’s probe by normalizing it. 4) Investigating the investigation by disputing its methods, especially the FBI’s use of a “dossier” of information on Trump and his team’s connections to Russian officials that was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and 5) Dictating timelines Mueller has not agreed to by proclaiming that the investigation is winding down or that Mueller’s team has already interviewed everyone at the White House, potentially creating an expectation that Mueller’s probe will be done soon regardless of his actual timetable.