The problem I see is that Mueller and others in the FBI have allowed criminals (or people they have some compromising evidence on) to roam free and continue to do what they do simply so they can use them as a cause for investigation whenever they find it convenient to do so.
How many other secretly investigated people are out there whose files are used by the FBI to snooker the courts to provide warrants that conveniently sweep in other people's information? If they actually launch a grand jury, they have to notify the target, so it's much better to do nothing but use the information already gathered to spin as wide a web of snooping as possible. All "legal", all "legit."
Does anyone even know how many people are being used like this and how wide the sweep of information is?
I think you and I are on the same page on this, though it might not be clear. In my post I said "...Granted,those bad things were by people in the Trump campaign who had reason to hold a personal grudge against him...but still..."
Heh, I had written those words "but still" with the intention of fleshing them out, but in the process of checking out some dates and facts, never did.
What I intended to finish up there with was "...but still, that doesn't mean someone should get swallowed up in this anti-constitutional witch hunt just because he sounds like a jerk..."
In your post edie1960, you do reference the modus operandi of the Mueller team in this, which has been well documented by Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent with plenty of experience in investigations. What the Mueller team is doing is typical and classic behavior.
They are putting the squeeze on underlings to Trump in the hope that one of them will squeal and reveal something to nail Trump with, because...that is how these things are often done in the criminal arena when they don't have anything on their prime target who happens in this case to be Trump.
As you well know, they used Papadopoulos and Page as pry bars to get the cover of legitimacy for their FISA warrant which is...TAH DAH! ...retroactive.
So, with their bull$*** "Crossfire Hurricane crap, we know they started this surveillance far further back than the May 10th meeting between Papadopoulos and Downer, and certainly even further before they got an approved FISA warrant on October 21, 2016.
They wanted it all retroactive, because they had already, using the "two hop rule" (which means they can not only surveil Papadopoulos but they can also surveil anyone he communicated with....and anyone THEY communicated with, which pretty much means they were electronically surveilling the ENTIRE Trump campaign and probably familiy and friends as well. All with that "two hop rule".
So, in answer to your excellent question, edie1960, the sweep is wide.
Think about it. When FISA surveillance started out, it used to be a "Three Hop Rule", which means they could legally surveil the subject, everyone the subject communicated with, everyone those people communicated with, AND EVERYONE THEY COMMUNICATED WITH!!!!!
And it would all be "legal". If you do the math, you can see they were approaching being able to surveil MILLIONS of unknowing Americans...legally.