Comey created the monster, the bogus allegation there was some "Russian connection." When he got fired, the monster was still sitting there, and in spades in the press.
Rosenstein woule be pilloried if he fires Comey then closes Comey's investigations.
I'm cutting Rosenstein some slack. His "fire Comey" memo is excellent.
And at this point, we don't know exactly what investigations are on Mueller's plate. He may in fact have a narrow scope. Only the investigations that Comey spoke of in a Senate hearing.
I'm not advocating Mueller is a white hat, I don;t think he is. But I think it is the country;s best interest to let Mueller tell us what he is looking at, and what he has found, before jumping down his throat.
At the same time, and I know this will come off as contrdictory, I think the calls to "dump Mueller" are healthy. They force him to stick to his charter, and limit his range of partisan output.
I’m unable to cut Rosenstein slack on his initial appointment letter.
His authorization to investigate “links” or “coordination” between Trump people and Russia is vague and open-ended and not tied to a crime.
His authorization for Mueller to go after any other crimes he comes across directly in his investigation goes above and beyond the “process crimes” such as perjury that Mueller is already authorized in the Special Counsel regulation to go after.
The Special Counsel appointment should have been tied to the investigation of specific crimes, in particular the alleged hacking of the DNC and Podesta computers and any criminal conspiracy involving US persons or others in connection therewith.
I would like to know whether Comey or Mueller saw a draft of this appointment letter beforehand. And what discussions were had beforehand between Comey and Mueller, Mueller and Rosenstein, and Rosenstein and Comey.
It is bizarre that no explicit reference was made in the Appointment Letter to the alleged Russian computer hacking, which is the foundation of this entire matter.
It strikes me the omission was deliberate in order to draw focus away from the fact that the FBI and the DOJ never even investigated this, but relied unquestioningly on the DNC outside vendor Crowdstrike’s claims on this.
This is astonishing if the Russian hacking is a huge national security crisis as claimed by the Dems and the Never Trumpers, that the FBI never examined the hacked computers.