Now That He’s Tackled the ORGANIZATION, When Will Mueller Indict Grandfather Frost?

Today Mueller indicted 13 Russians for “interfering” in the US election.  The indictment would be hilarious, if it weren’t so tragic: for nigh on a year the country has been transfixed and the government convulsed by an investigation that is descending into farce.

So this is the best that a “dream team” (nightmare would be more like it, given the presence of people like Andrew Weissman) of prosecutors can come up with:

August 18, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators sent money via interstate wire to another real U.S. person recruited by the ORGANIZATION, using one of their false U.S. personas, to build a cage large enough to hold an actress depicting Clinton in a prison uniform.

No, really.

The ORGANIZATION. Yeah. Just like the cosa nostra or the Cali Cartel or something. You cannot make up this stuff.

As yet there is no evidence of collusion (which is not a crime, actually), let alone a conspiracy, between anyone in the Trump campaign or administration and any Russian individual or organization. Indeed, the fact that Mueller apparently feels that he can waste his time on such trivialities suggests strongly that there is no evidence of anything untoward, let alone criminal.

Amidst all the harrumphing, all I can say is that if the republic can’t survive such Mickey Mouse efforts as described in the Mueller indictment, it doesn’t deserve to survive.

Deep thinkers like Ben Sasse say that Putin is attempting to raise doubts about American institutions.  That is unnecessary: the institutions are doing a bang up job at that without any foreign assistance.

Further, as I noted in a talk on the forthcoming Russian election at Rice University last week, there is nothing new here. Nothing. The Russians have been doing this (and far worse) continuously since, oh, around November 8, 1917.  They almost certainly did it 99 years later out of habit, rather than conviction, or a sincere belief that it would have any effect.

But it has had an effect, because by obsessing about it the American political class is actually ensuring that Putin and his creatures are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams.  This obsession, moreover, is not driven by the real threat posed by the Russian effort, but by the need of the political losers to excuse their failure, and to destroy the usurper who deprived them of what should have been theirs by divine right.

The indictment is all for show, because the Russians are in, well, Russia, and hence out of reach of US law enforcement. Mueller might as well have indicted Putin–or Grandfather Frost, for that matter–for all the real effect it will have.

But Mueller desperately needs to show that he is actually doing something.  In this he has succeeded. He has shown that he is chasing phantoms, and wreaking havoc in the process.  But since he is accountable to no one, and politically sacrosanct, he will go on and on, to serve the political class and to justify his existence. A perfect illustration of the a-constitutional monstrosity that is a special counsel.

Shut. It. Down.