[usconservative]

Mueller is WAY OUT OF LINE if he is looking for crimes not associated with the Trump campaign, which didn't even exist before 2015.

No disagreement there! I'll simply restate what I said in one of my initial posts: We all know that the job of a special prosecutor is to find "something" to pin on "someone" to justify the existence of the special prosecutor in the first place.

A special prosecutor finds something on someone, then transitions to making that person the fall guy. Prosecute, prosecute, convict, imprison/besmirch that person, ruin their lives, then call it a day and go home.

That is exactly what every special prosecutor has done in my lifetime (I'm going on 55) so the pattern to me seems pretty clear.

I've yet to see a special prosecutor stay within the boundaries they were given and IIRC the one time a President acted against a special prosecutor to remove them that President was threatened with impeachment and removal before resigning in disgrace.

[Cboldt]

-- That is exactly what every special prosecutor has done in my lifetime (I'm going on 55) so the pattern to me seems pretty clear. --

There have only been a few SC or similar in the last 60 years. Most fit the pattern you describe.

• Cox on the Whitewater breakin. Nixon fired him, and things ran downhill from there.
• Walsh on Iran Contra. Nearly bagged Poindexter, North and Weinberger.
• Starr on Whitewater. If it hadn't been him, somebody else would have pushed Jones' sex-harassment case where Clinton lied under oath.
• Fitzgerald on Plame. I think Libby did lie, but Bush boxed in his staff by ordering them to testify and so on. Bush should have just admitted that Plame was not NOC. Instead he protected the deep-state CIA.
• Danforth was a SC appointed to whitewash the Waco massacre, and he delivered that.

I think that is all of them. One per decade, and each one being unprecedented in some ways.

Mueller's appointment bothers me because no crime is sitting out there to be investigated. All the others had reported evidence, facts, that were plausibly crimes.

I'm a radical minority on FR in that I see practical reason for an appointment in this case. The extent deep state has managed to spin up the public with guilt by insinuation can't be spun down by a summary dismissal. If Mueller stays in bounds with the scope of his jurisdiction, the fact that he shouldn't have been appointed as a matter of law is tolerable, to me.

Administrations just can't investigate themselves and deliver a credible result. We'd bitch if a hypothetical AG Podesta gave Crooked Hillary a clean bill. I see a special counsel as inevitable (and damn Comey and Congress for perpetrating the travesty) - it has nothing to do with Comey's leak or Sessions' recusal.

Team Trump has to force Mueller to stay in his box, and it has to do that in a public way. That effort is beginning. Once news reports Mueller is out of his box, Trump's team can get to work.