In 2005, American scientists deliberately sent a rocket to collide with a comet.  After the collision, scientists were able to conduct a detailed analysis of the internal composition of the comet from the spectrum of debris ejected from the crater.  It was a considerable achievement.  But my friend working for NASA commented on this event differently: “You have no idea how many doctoral dissertations were thrown in the toilet yesterday.”

We have no idea how many heart attacks occurred in Washington yesterday due to Special Counsel Mueller’s indictment.  And how many political careers will be thrown into the toilet today.

The creatures of the Washington swamp for the past year have invested almost all of their political capital in fanning the story of Trump’s criminal conspiracy with Vladimir Putin.  They were helped by the echo chamber of well fed courtier journalists and the higher-ups of the American intelligence agencies.  They secured the appointment of a special prosecutor, Mueller, to hold Trump accountable.

In other words, Mueller’s investigation was the rocket that was to kick Trump out of the White House.

The rocket’s blow was stunning – Mueller’s investigation fully vindicated Trump.  But Russian internet trolls were selected as the scapegoats.

In fairness, it should be noted that there is still a dose of reality in the indictment published by the Department of Justice on Friday.  Some of the thirteen Russians who obtained a tourist visa to the United States provided false information about their employment and the purpose of their visit.  If this allegation is proven in court, they will be banned from entering the U.S. forever.

However, they lied not only to the American government.  They also lied to the Russian government when they promised to influence the formation of public opinion in America.  The budget of the disinformation activities of the Russian intelligence is merely ludicrous – several million dollars.  For comparison, to seriously affect the election of just one congressman in an uncharted rural district in New Jersey, you need to spend five to ten times more.

Also, Russian internet trolls illegally used the stolen Social Security numbers and the dates of birth of real American citizens to open bank accounts and PayPal accounts and organize political rallies in the United States (both pro and contra Trump).  Illegal banking operations are a federal crime.

That’s all, folks.  Neither Trump nor his staff, as expected, is tarnished.  On the election results, the activity of the trolls did not affect much of anything (and how could they affect with the laughable penetration of the entire U.S. political advertising market to the tune of 0.001%?).

The missile, launched by the Obama’s Deep State, fell into the Trump White House but did not penetrate.

The criminal consequences for thirteen Russian scapegoats are more or less understandable (although few in America are interested).  But politically, the implications for those American politicians who not only became anti-Trumpists, but also burned all the political bridges behind them will be severe.  The political opposition is legal in America, but the delegitimization of the legally elected president is not.

Mueller finishes his investigation victoriously, although not at all as he intended.  After all, the State Department issued a visa to these Russians under the leadership of Obama.  And the FBI under the direction of Obama did not move a finger in this matter, although the organized activity of Russians on the English-speaking internet was known since 2015.

What will Obama’s Deep State do if Israel and the United Kingdom officially file charges against one of Obama’s lieutenants, Jim Messina, for precisely the same interference (and with the same result) in the democratic elections as what the Russians did?

In term of prognosis, it looks as though the word “impeachment” will disappear from the lexicon of the inhabitants of the Washington swamp from now on.  And all of a sudden, they will be able to see through Christopher Steele’s “Russian dossier” on Trump.  As if nothing had happened, they will begin to speak as a matter of course of the “active measures” disinformation campaign of the KGB or FSB.  Nothing sensational – the Russians have been doing this in the West since the mid-1930s.

They have had some successes over the years.  But not at this time.

Just when you thought the Deep State swamp couldn’t get any murkier and the stench any more repugnant, we are reminded by Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton in a Feb. 13 tweet of how Robert Mueller’s FBI worked with Lois Lerner’s IRS to target Tea Party and other groups in the run-up to the Obama re-election campaign:

@JudicialWatch lawsuit uncovered how Mueller’s FBI worked with Lois Lerner’s IRS to try to prosecute the very groups Obama IRS was suppressing. Another reason I don’t trust Mr. Mueller – or the FBI!

The treasure trove of documents detailing the weaponizing of powerful government agencies, including Mueller’s FBI, by the Obama administration to target the Tea Party was obtained by Judicial Watch as a result of court orders stemming from Freedom of Information Act lawsuits after the political targeting of the Tea Party:

Judicial Watch today released new Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents that include an official “DOJ Recap” report detailing an October 2010 meeting between Lois Lerner, DOJ officials and the FBI to plan for the possible criminal prosecution of targeted nonprofit organizations for alleged illegal political activity.

The newly obtained records also reveal that the Obama DOJ wanted IRS employees who were going to testify to Congress to turn over documents to the DOJ before giving them to Congress. Records also detail how the Obama IRS gave the FBI 21 computer disks, containing 1.25 million pages of confidential IRS returns from 113,000 nonprofit social 501(c)(4) welfare groups – or nearly every 501(c)(4) in the United States – as part of its prosecution effort. According to a letter from then-House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, “This revelation likely means that the IRS – including possibly Lois Lerner – violated federal tax law by transmitting this information to the Justice Department.”

The documents were produced subsequent to court orders in two Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits: Judicial Watch v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:14-cv-01956) and Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice https://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/jw-v-doj-01239-public-integrity-irs/ (No. 1:14-cv-01239).

The new IRS documents include a October 11, 2010 “DOJ Recap” memo sent by IRS Exempt Organizations Tax Law Specialist Siri Buller to Lerner and other top IRS officials explaining an October 8 meeting with representatives from the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section and “one representative from the FBI” to discuss the possible criminal prosecution of nonprofit organizations for alleged political activity:

On October 8, 2010, Lois Lerner, Joe Urban [IRS Technical Advisor, TEGE], Judy Kindell [top aide to Lerner], Justin Lowe [Technical Advisor to the Commissioner of Tax-Exempt and Government Entities], and Siri Buller met with the section chief and other attorneys from the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, and one representative from the FBI, to discuss recent attention to the political activity of exempt organizations.

That attention involved harassment and intimidation of conservative groups opposed to Obamacare in particular and big government in general.  The irony is that the same Robert Mueller now investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election cooperated with Lois Lerner and the IRS to intervene on President Obama’s behalf in the lead-up to the 2012 presidential election.  As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized, Tea Party activist Catherine Engelbrecht was a prime target of this effort at political suppression:

Shortly after Engelbrecht founded True the Vote, which trains election volunteers to help root out voter fraud, and King Street Patriots, a group with ideals similar to the Tea Party, and sought tax-exempt status from the IRS in July 2010 for both groups, she was hit by an onslaught of federal harassment.

After seeing nary a government official in two decades of operation, Engelbrecht and her equipment manufacturing company suddenly had the pleasure of six FBI domestic terrorism inquiries, an IRS visit, two IRS business audits, two IRS personal audits and inspections by both the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Engelbrecht’s persecution by the IRS and FBI was also detailed by Breitbart.com:

Engelbrecht’s troubling saga was originally reported by Breitbart News’ Brandon Darby. 

Engelbrecht’s application with the IRS for non-profit status allegedly triggered aggressive audits of one of her family’s personal businesses as well.  The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) began a series of inquiries about her and her group; the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms) began demanding to see her family’s firearms in surprise audits of her and her husband’s small gun dealership – which had done less than $200 in sales; OSHA (Occupational Safety Hazards Administration) began a surprise audit of their small family manufacturing business; and the EPA-affiliated TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environment Quality) did a surprise visit and audit due to “a complaint being called in.” 

The Democratic Party of Texas filed a lawsuit against her, as did an ACORN affiliated group.  Both the FBI and the BATF continued to poke around her life, the lives of people in her Tea Party group, and her businesses.

This latest reminder or Mueller’s long history of supporting or protecting Democrats and their agenda comes just as it is revealed that another member of the Democratic elite was recently added to his star chamber staff of Democratic donors and Hillary sycophants:

An attorney on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team was a writer for HuffPost, The Daily Caller News Foundation has found.

Aaron Zelinsky, a self-described Democrat, wrote nearly 50 articles as a contributor for the liberal news outlet from 2009 to 2014.

“I’m a Democrat,” he wrote in November 2012.

A review of his articles shows that he supported President Barack Obama’s efforts to close Guantanamo Bay, opposed President George W. Bush’s policy on torture [sic], wrote in defense of gun control and argued for government-imposed limits on how much corporate executives can earn.

“Now is the time to begin enacting a progressive political agenda through the ballot box,” he wrote in a 2009 article on gay marriage [sic].

Zelinsky, who joined the Russia probe in June 2017, is not among the nine attorneys to have made federal donations.  But state records reveal a $100 donation he made to a Democratic committee in his home state of Connecticut in 2014, a couple months before he joined the Justice Department as a prosecutor.

Maybe Mueller can explain his efforts to interfere in the 2012 presidential election in cooperation with Lois Lerner and the IRS.  Or maybe he agrees with former IRS chief John Koskinen, who once famously said he and the IRS obeyed the law whenever they could. Maybe that should include Mueller and his FBI.  Maybe we need a special counsel to investigate the special counsel.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.