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The New York Times is reporting that the Mueller report “exceeds 300 pages” in length. That information is attributed to unidentified “American officials with knowledge of” the matter. If “exceeds 300 pages” means something close to 300 pages, it is less than I would have bet on. Of course, “exceeds 300 pages” could mean lots more than 300 pages. The Times notes that Fox’s Andrew Napolitano has claimed the report is 700 pages long (his basis for saying so is not clear). The paper also reminds us that Ken Starr’s Clinton-Lewinsky report was 445 pages long, last year’s inspector-general report...

Almost from the start, Democrats and their media echo chamber have moved the goal posts on collusion. The original allegation – the political narrative that the Clinton campaign, through Obama administration alchemy, honed into a counterintelligence investigation – was that that the Trump campaign was complicit in Russia’s “cyberespionage” attacks on the 2016 election. But there was no evidence that candidate Trump and his surrogates had anything to do with the Kremlin’s hacking and propaganda schemes. And no supporting logic. The Russians are very good at espionage. They neither needed nor wanted American help, their operations predated Trump’s entry into...

It has been conclusively proven several hundred billion times that dozens if not hundreds of democrats attempted the first-ever political coup in this nation's history. The evidence is staggering, overwhelming, absolutely conclusive. Yet, NOTHING WILL EVER!!!! BE DONE ABOUT IT. Period.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has indicted Paul Manafort for mortgage fraud and more than a dozen other state felonies. This is a nakedly political prosecution. Democrats, who run the Empire State, are apoplectic that President Trump could pardon his former campaign manager, who has been sentenced to 90 months in prison in the Mueller probe. Well, as the New York Times notes, the New York state charges filed Wednesday are based on bank loans that were part of the fraud charges brought by Robert Mueller in the Virginia case. The Times says that “the Manhattan prosecutors deferred their inquiry...

Ever wonder why people hate lawyers? Consider Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s non-denial denial of his participation in discussions of an attempted coup against the duly elected president of the United States. The story is being given a second life thanks to the hype surrounding the rollout of a new book by Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI. McCabe, of course, was fired after an inspector general investigation found that he leaked investigative information and then lied about it. He has been referred to the Justice Department for consideration of a false-statements prosecution. There is no doubt...

Unlike my colleagues, I’ve been a bemused spectator during this week’s Syria follies. As readers of these columns know (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, and here), I believe the United States has less interest in Syria than in the persistence of drought in Burkina Faso. That is why I was a steadfast naysayer on American intervention in a conflict among rivals whose common ground consists of hatred for America and affinity for sharia supremacism (and the abetting thereof — I’m looking at you, Vladimir). The current frenzy was ignited by the president’s abrupt decision to pull U.S. forces (all...

The major takeaway from the 40-page sentencing memorandum filed by federal prosecutors Friday for Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal attorney, is this: The president is very likely to be indicted on a charge of violating federal campaign finance laws. It has been obvious for some time that President Trump is the principal subject of the investigation still being conducted by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Cohen earlier pleaded guilty to multiple counts of business and tax fraud, violating campaign finance law, and making false statements to Congress regarding unsuccessful efforts to build a Trump...

Special Counsel Mueller is building a report, not a case. Right after Special Counsel Robert Mueller racked up yet another guilty plea to a false-statements charge on Thursday, a friend asked me, “Doesn’t this destroy Michael Cohen’s credibility as a witness?” Easier to destroy Satan’s conscience, I thought. Cohen would have to have some credibility before it could be destroyed, and how much could reside in a self-described “fixer” who openly compared himself to Tom Hagen, the lawyer-gangster in The Godfather? (I’ll stipulate that he has a law degree, but Cohen has always struck me as the Fredo of Trump...

It’s a kangaroo court. Understand, this is not about Christine Blasey Ford. She’s a tool — a quite willing tool, but a tool all the same. This is not even about the eminently qualified federal circuit-court judge Brett Kavanaugh — it would be no different regardless of which nominee President Trump selected in consultation with White House counsel Don McGahn, the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and the rest of the originalist, conservative legal community come of age. Democrats do not want a model of constitutional fidelity and judicial restraint elevated to the Supreme Court. End of story. And who...

In my column yesterday, I contended that the unverifiable sexual-assault allegation against Judge Brett Kavanaugh bore “all the hallmarks of a set-up.” I based that assessment on the patently flimsy evidence, coupled with Senate Democrats’ duplicitous abuse of the confirmation-hearing process. To repeat myself: If the Democrats had raised the allegation in a timely manner, its weakness would have been palpable, it would have been used for what little it’s worth in examining Kavanagh during his days of testimony, it would be put to rest as unverifiable, and we’d be on to a confirmation vote. Instead, we’re on to a...

Judge Robert Bork used to tell a prescient and darkly humorous story about watching Clarence Thomas’s Senate confirmation hearings - etched in pre-hashtag history as the “Thomas–Hill hearings,” in homage to Anita Hill’s role as the Left’s heroic accuser. At the time, Thomas was a judge of the same eminent D.C. Circuit federal appeals court on which Bork had served. As he viewed Thomas’s “high-tech lynching” in horror, Bork recalled, a friend of his, the iconic Irving Kristol, approached and asked him what was happening. “The end of civilization,” the judge sadly quipped. “Of course it is,” Kristol deadpanned. “But...

For precisely what federal crimes is the president of the United States under investigation by a special counsel appointed by the Justice Department? It is intolerable that, after more than two years of digging — the 16-month Mueller probe having been preceded by the blatantly suspect labors of the Obama Justice Department and FBI — we still do not have an answer to that simple question. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein owes us an answer. To my mind, he has owed us an answer from the beginning, meaning when he appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller on May 17, 2017. The...

I do not share my friend David French’s theoretical constitutional concerns about the president’s revocation of security clearances — at least when it comes to former government officials who become media commentators and have no demonstrable need for a security clearance. Like David and many other analysts, though, I think it’s a big mistake to politicize the revocation of security clearances. Still, I am even less of a fan of the politicization of intelligence itself. And that justifies the revocation of former CIA director John Brennan’s clearance. As is often the case with President Trump, the right thing has been...

On a sleepy summer Saturday, after months of stonewalling, the FBI dumped 412 pages of documents related to the Carter Page FISA surveillance warrants — the applications, the certifications, and the warrants themselves. Now that we can see it all in black and white — mostly black, as they are heavily redacted — it is crystal clear that the Steele dossier, an unverified Clinton-campaign product, was the driving force behind the Trump–Russia investigation. … It turns out, however, that the crazies were right and I was wrong. The FBI (and, I’m even more sad to say, my Justice Department) brought...

Here is former U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy today analyzing the redacted FISA documents released by the Justice Department last night. He is very strong in saying he is “shocked” to find that, indeed, the FBI used the unverified and discredited Steele Dossier to justify their need for a FISA Warrant to spy on Carter Page. McCarthy said he really didn’t think they would do that – that he didn’t think something like this could happen here. But it has. . . .

Watch here.

‘You’re the boss.” That was Representative Jim Jordan’s terse rejoinder during a feisty exchange with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein at the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight hearing on Thursday. The Ohio Republican was blasting Rosenstein over information Republicans say Justice Department officials have concealed from Congress for a year. snip These calls were made by subordinates, Rosenstein DAG-splained. “They work for you,” Jordan bluntly replied. ...while House Republicans revel in reminding anyone who will listen that DOJ’s intransigent middle managers work for Rosenstein, they never quite get around to mentioning that Rosenstein works for President Trump. The president is better...

The president runs the executive branch, after all. I confess to being more weary than dizzy from the Dr. Gowdy–and–Mr. Trey routine. Just three weeks ago, Representative Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee, ( assured us) that everything was peachy with the FBI — no way, no how did the bureau “spy” on the Trump campaign when it deployed an “informant” to pry information from Trump-campaign officials. As (Mollie Hemingway) pointed out at the time, Gowdy had not seen relevant documents the FBI and Justice Department have been withholding from Congress — in fact, his...

While generally cautious about criticizing Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the Clinton-emails investigation, Trump supporters have taken aim at its chief logical flaw: Although key investigators harbored anti-Trump and pro-Clinton bias, and even made statements indicating an intention to act on that bias, the IG did not find that this bias was the proximate cause of any particular investigative decision. This conclusion is easy to rebut; I did so myself in a column last week. Yet, the Trump camp should also be embracing it. Why? Because if this is the Justice Department’s position, then Special Counsel Robert Mueller has...

And they won’t be solved by whining about criticism. hat do you do with an FBI agent, sworn to uphold the law, who flagrantly violates the law in a rogue investigation aimed at making a name for himself by bringing down some high-profile targets? Why . . . you promote him, of course. At least that is the way the Justice Department answered that question in the case of David Chaves, an FBI agent who serially and lawlessly leaked grand-jury information, wiretap evidence, and other sensitive investigative intelligence to the media in his quest to make an insider-trading case against...