{"id":11620,"date":"2019-01-23T15:34:59","date_gmt":"2019-01-23T23:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=11620"},"modified":"2019-01-23T15:35:09","modified_gmt":"2019-01-23T23:35:09","slug":"the-mueller-squirrel-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-mueller-squirrel-case\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mueller Squirrel Case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Special Counsel Robert Mueller recently indicted yet another peripheral character in his Trump probe, Russian attorney Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, for alleged money laundering in a matter quite separate from Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like almost all of Mueller\u2019s indictments of the past 20 months, the charges against Veselnitskaya had&nbsp;<em>nothing<\/em>&nbsp;to do with his original mandate of finding any possible Trump\u2013Russia collusion. No matter; within minutes, Veselnitskaya\u2019s name was injected into the media cycle as if the fact that she was Russian and connected to the name Mueller were de facto proof that Trump was guilty of something \u2014 if not collusion, something worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If Mueller was not a special counsel, and if he was not looking for anyone deemed useful to flip to find dirt on Donald Trump, then Veselnitskaya would have been just another daily Washington foreign influence-peddler being courted with impunity by her American influence-peddling and often equally suspect counterparts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To date, in almost every one of his indictments of Americans, Mueller has gone after Trump staffers, often quite minor, for alleged crimes that either were committed well before Mueller began his investigations, or came as a result of plea bargaining in exchange for providing expected dirt on Trump, or were the result of government surveillance or the use of government informants, or all of that and more. And all that sensationalism, through leaks and insinuations, was packaged by the media as \u201cbombshells\u201d and \u201cwatersheds\u201d and \u201cturning points\u201d ad nauseam for 20 months.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2019\/01\/mueller-investigation-turns-law-upside-down\/\">Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Special Counsel Robert Mueller recently indicted yet another peripheral character in his Trump probe, Russian attorney Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, for alleged money laundering in a matter quite separate from Trump. Like almost all of Mueller\u2019s indictments of the past 20 months, the charges against Veselnitskaya had&nbsp;nothing&nbsp;to do with his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1161,1139,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-31q","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10399,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/putins-playthings\/","url_meta":{"origin":11620,"position":0},"title":"Putin\u2019s Playthings","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 20, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 Putin will do anything to advance Russia\u2019s interests because his country is in terrible shape. \u00a0 About a year ago, Donald Trump Jr. met with a mysterious Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. Trump Jr. was purportedly eager to receive information that could damage Hillary\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Comey&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Comey","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/comey\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11817,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/progressives-face-a-bleak-post-mueller-landscape\/","url_meta":{"origin":11620,"position":1},"title":"Progressives Face a Bleak Post-Mueller Landscape","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 9, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Democrats have grown infuriated by Attorney General William Barr\u2019s indifference to their hysteria over the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. Barr recently released a brief summary of special counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s conclusions that Donald Trump did not collude with the Russians to warp the 2016 election.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Donald Trump&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12082,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/are-thought-crimes-impeachable\/","url_meta":{"origin":11620,"position":2},"title":"Are Thought Crimes Impeachable?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 3, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review During special counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s investigation, his legal \u201cdream team\u201d tried to make a secondary case that Donald Trump also obstructed efforts to prove Trump-Russian \u201ccollusion.\u201d Trump was said to have advised his lawyers and other subordinates, past and present, not to cooperate fully\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11139,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/mueller-at-the-crossroads\/","url_meta":{"origin":11620,"position":3},"title":"Mueller at the Crossroads","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 12, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel in May 2017 in reaction to a media still gripped by near hysteria over the inexplicable defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. For nearly a year before Mueller\u2019s appointment, leaks had spread about collusion between\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Donald Trump&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10817,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/one-mueller-investigation-coincidence-too-many\/","url_meta":{"origin":11620,"position":4},"title":"One Mueller-Investigation Coincidence Too Many","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 12, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/National Review \u00a0 Stacking the deck with anti-Trump staffers is proving to be a really bad idea. \u00a0 Special prosecutors, investigators, and counsels are usually a bad idea. They are admissions that constitutionally mandated institutions don\u2019t work \u2014 and can be rescued only by supposed superhuman moralists,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Mueller&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Mueller","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/mueller\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11798,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/mueller-investigation-was-driven-by-pious-hypocrisy\/","url_meta":{"origin":11620,"position":5},"title":"Mueller Investigation Was Driven by Pious Hypocrisy","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 25, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Special counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s two-year, $30 million, 448-page report did not find collusion between Donald Trump and Russia. Despite compiling private allegations of loud and obnoxious Trump behavior, Mueller also concluded that there was not any actionable case of obstruction of justice by the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Mueller&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Mueller","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/mueller\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11620"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11623,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11620\/revisions\/11623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}