Trump Loyalists are Undermining Mueller’s Investigation

Here’s why it must be protected.

Frequent observers of Bob Mueller’s Russia investigation may have noticed increased efforts this week by Trump loyalists questioning its integrity. Recent news has centered around the question of bias on the part of two former members of Mueller’s team who exchanged text messages that criticized then-candidate Trump. The former investigators using government issued phones acted inappropriately; however, Mueller acted swiftly to remove the agents from the investigation, and their dismissal confirms Mueller’s strict standard for his team’s professionalism.

Efforts to undermine the investigation aren’t new. Some of President Trump’s most fervent supporters in Congress have been calling for Mueller to be fired for months. Without even a hint of a problem, Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) demanded in November that the investigation into the President and his campaign team be called off entirely. As the indictments come closer and closer to the White House inner circle, the calls to fire Mueller are becoming more frequent and more fervent. These efforts are about protecting the President and his people, not finding the truth or justice.

At Stand Up Republic, we believe that the truth is required for accountable government and democracy. That’s why we’re going to explore this controversy in full, laying out all of the facts, and just the facts, to show why the Mueller Investigation still deserves our trust and our protection.

Strzok and Page — What Happened?

The two agents, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were involved in a romantic affair. In the conduct of that affair, the two agents exchanged hundreds of text messages, many of which were about their personal political opinions on the election. The messages showed a strong personal preference for Hillary Clinton and disdain for Trump. Some of the messages, without any real context, have been interpreted to imply a desire or an effort to stop Trump.

These messages were brought to Robert Mueller’s attention as soon as they were discovered. The agents in question were quickly reassigned. Strzok, who seems to have been the author of most of the problematic texts, appears to have been reassigned out of the special counsel’s office within a week of their discovery.

So is Mueller’s Investigation Compromised?

The agents in question acted inappropriately, in more ways than one, and Mueller likely made a wise decision to separate them from the investigation. His swift response proves his commitment to preserving the integrity and objectivity of his work. Once he identified even a hint of a problem, he removed it. We couldn’t ask for anything more from him than that.

As for the integrity of his agents, we have to be careful and draw a clear line. It is not wrong, nor unexpected, for FBI agents to have political opinions. People who have devoted their careers to catching criminals, protecting the country, and disrupting gang and terrorist networks are understandably passionate about America. Strzok expressed a lot of opinions, critical of many public figures on every side of the political divide. The problem isn’t that he has political views on Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump, it’s that he expressed them in a way that called his objectivity into question. We cannot and should not impose a political litmus test for federal agents, or any public service.

But the people calling for the firing of Mueller aren’t fighting against politicization in the FBI, they’re actually fighting to make it more politicized. If this was about ensuring politics isn’t interfering, the removal of Strzok from the team would be sufficient. But instead, the same people who have been arguing for ending the investigation before this story broke are claiming this validates their views. They don’t want investigators that are impartial, they want investigators that are blindly loyal to the president and their causes.

That isn’t how you ensure a fair and independent law enforcement institution. If these critics were being honest, they would acknowledge that the agents’ actions were troubling, but that Mueller had taken the steps necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity. Strzok’s activities do not invalidate the work of the many other dedicated Americans working on Mueller’s team, or the work of Mueller himself.

Are There Other Politically Motivated Influences?

Amazingly, some of the most concerning cases of political meddling in the investigation appear to be on behalf of President Trump. Some Trump Loyalists are actively calling for the investigation to be shut down, without any evidence of actual misconduct or political influence. At the same time, there are questions about how Trump’s Department of Justice is handling this and other stories. For example, Trump’s DoJ recently released the text messages to journalists in advance of the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Not only did they release the text messages, they invited journalists to come late at night to view them, in order to ensure that they were reported in time for the hearing. They released these to the Press before they released the same material to the committee who is supposed to be overseeing the investigation. It’s unclear why the media was given access to the material before Congress, but it certainly looks like an attempt to build suspicion and undermine the investigation before Rosenstein could defend it publicly.

But there’s a trend that is far more concerning. Several members of Congress and the far right media have taken the Strzok and Page texts to make an even more absurd and terrifying claim. People like Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, and Fox News analyst Gregg Jarrett compared the FBI to the former Soviet Union’s secret police, the KGB.

That kind of rhetoric isn’t just hyperbole, it’s down right dangerous. It’s a direct attack on the men and women who dedicate their lives to protect our country. More importantly, it’s an attempt to make Americans distrust the very institutions that we would rely on to protect us from corruption, collusion, and criminality in every level of our government. We should be very concerned about efforts by the administration, loyalist members of Congress, and other figures tied to the President, to discredit the FBI or make them appear to be enemies of the people. This is the very politicization that threatens our democratic principles and our national commitment to liberty, justice and equality.

So Should it be Shut Down?

Absolutely not.

Congress should exert oversight, and they should absolutely ensure that Mueller and his team are not being influenced or pressured in any direction. But there’s absolutely nothing that demonstrates a need to shut down the investigation. Anyone arguing that Strzok and Page’s texts prove that the investigation is untrustworthy are being disingenuous at best, deceitful at worst. Nothing that has been reported to date has shown anything other than Mueller’s personal commitment to protecting the integrity of his investigation, and we should be pushing Congress to enact legislation protecting him from outside threats or from being fired.

Mueller’s investigation has to be free to operate, without any outside pressure or meddling steering it unfairly in either direction. The text message controversy has been dealt with, but political forces are trying to use it to discredit the entire investigation. We can’t let that happen. America deserves to know the truth, whatever it may be.

If you agree, take a minute to sign our petition asking the Congress and Senate to enact legislation protecting Mueller.