"The demand was like Sammy the Bull's Cosa Nostra induction ceremony," referring to Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, a former leader of the Gambino crime family, whose testimony ultimately helped convict mob boss John Gotti.

In an act of delicious irony, James "The Liar" Comey will remind us on 20/20 that in his new book, A Higher Loyalty, he compares President Trump and his alleged demands for loyalty to that required by a crime boss. Comey writes :

This extension of his 15 minutes of fame to 20/20 comes soon after the man he got appointed as special counsel, Robert Mueller, shredded the 4th Amendment to the Constitution and the attorney-client privilege by raiding the offices of Trump attorney Michael Cohen looking for anything that might justify Mueller's existence after a failed Russia collusion investigation, taking everything except the towels in Cohen's hotel room.

No doubt Gravano would have been proud of this thuggish action, one not dissimilar to the no-knock raid on Paul Manafort and his family as they slept, another cooperating witness, in stark contrast to the FBI's treatment of Hillary Clinton:

Everything that has happened in the Trump probe stands out against a backdrop of leniency in the Clinton investigation. While Mueller has prosecuted two Trump associates for lying to the FBI, the Obama Justice Department gave a pass to Mrs. Clinton and her subordinates, who gave the FBI misinformation about such key matters as whether Clinton understood markings in classified documents and whether her aides knew about her homebrew server system during their State Department service. Mueller's team conducted a predawn raid at gunpoint in executing a search warrant on Paul Manafort's home while Manafort was cooperating with congressional committees. When it came to the Clinton case, though, the Justice Department not only eschewed search warrants, or even mere subpoenas, but they never even took possession of the DNC server alleged to have been hacked by Russian operatives.

Comey has no problem with being loyal to Robert Mueller, who conducts his business in much the same way as Gravano did. In the Manafort raid, Mueller also violated attorney-client privilege, a pattern from his checkered past of shoddy legal work in which the end justified the means:

One example, which has not been previously reported, came when Mueller's investigators raided Paul Manafort's house in Virginia. Among other items, investigators seized a binder full of information that Manafort and his legal team considered privileged, according to a source familiar with the matter. Manafort's lawyer wrote a strongly worded letter to the special counsel's office saying the material was privileged, and the binder was ultimately returned.

Returned after it was examined by Mueller's people, which is undoubtedly happening with Cohen's files. Someone will be designated to examine them, determine what is privileged, and return them. But you can't unread a document. Someone on Mueller's team will know what he shouldn't know, information that was illegally obtained.

Confronted by the actions of the Mueller mafia, top-heavy with Democratic donors and Clinton operatives, some GOP lawmakers are actually working with Democrats to protect Mueller from a firing that even if politically impossible is legally justified:

Following the FBI's shocking raid Monday at the home, office, and hotel room of President Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, Republican lawmakers are rallying behind the still-unjustified investigation into whether Trump's campaign colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election. (Like just about everything else the probe has produced so far, the Cohen matter appears unrelated to anything Russian.) Senators Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) will partner with Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to introduce legislation that would protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller if Trump fires him. The bill would give Mueller a 10-day window to "seek expedited judicial review of a firing." ... NeverTrumpers, who fantasize about Mueller hauling the president out of the White House in handcuffs, have formed yet another group to solidify congressional support for the special counsel. On Wednesday, "Republicans for the Rule of Law" aired an ad during "Fox and Friends" – Trump's must-watch morning program – that touted Mueller's credentials and urged viewers to call their representatives to demand they "protect the Mueller investigation."… Republicans for the Rule of Law is led by Bill Kristol, editor-at-large of The Weekly Standard, and NeverTrump's de facto leader.

The prospect of Lindsey Graham uniting with Cory Booker to protect the Mueller witch hunt into Team Trump is mind-numbing enough, but the widespread ignoring of Mueller's questionable track record takes us into a parallel universe of injustice.

Consider the anthrax case, which James Comey and Robert Mueller bungled together as they hounded the innocent, ignored the guilty, and ended up with one of the most colossal legal failures of all time, complete with human collateral damage:

Comey and Mueller badly bungled the biggest case they ever handled. They botched the investigation of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks that took five lives and infected 17 other people, shut down the U.S. Capitol and Washington's mail system, solidified the Bush administration's antipathy for Iraq, and eventually, when the facts finally came out, made the FBI look feckless, incompetent, and easily manipulated by outside political pressure[.] ... Despite the jihadist slogans accompanying the mailed anthrax, it had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein or any foreign element; the FBI ignored a 2002 tip from a scientific colleague of the actual anthrax killer, who turned out to be a Fort Detrick scientist named Bruce Edwards Ivins; the reason is that they had quickly obsessed on an innocent man named Steven Hatfill; the bureau was bullied into focusing on the government scientist by Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy (whose office, along with that of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, was targeted by an anthrax-laced letter) and was duped into focusing on Hatfill by two sources – a conspiracy-minded college professor with a political agenda who'd never met Hatfill and by Nicholas Kristof, who put his conspiracy theories in the paper while mocking the FBI for not arresting Hatfill[.] ... In 2008, after Ivins committed suicide as he was about to be apprehended for his crimes, and the Justice Department had formally exonerated Hatfill – and paid him $5.82 million in a legal settlement – Mueller could not be bothered to walk across the street to attend the press conference announcing the case's resolution. When reporters did ask him about it, Mueller was graceless. "I do not apologize for any aspect of the investigation," he said, adding that it would be erroneous "to say there were mistakes."

Then there's Mueller's handling of the Whitey Bulger case, in which Mueller let four innocent men rot in jail in order to protect Bulger's role as an FBI informant, something that has outraged the likes of Professor Alan Dershowitz:

Sunday on New York AM 970 radio's "The Cats Roundtable," Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz ripped special counsel Robert Mueller, calling him "a zealot." "I think Mueller is a zealot," Dershowitz told host John Catsimatidis. "I don't think he's partisan. I don't think he cares whether he hurts Democrats or Republicans, but he's a [non]-partisan and a zealot. Look, he's the guy who kept four innocent people in prison for many years in order to protect the cover of Whitey Bulger as an FBI informer[.] ... Those of us in Boston don't have such a high regard for Mueller because we remember this story. The government had to pay out tens of millions of dollars because Whitey Bulger, a notorious mass murderer, became a government informer against the mafia." "[T]hese four people – two of them died in jail, and two of them spent long, long periods of time in jail. And that's regarded in Boston as one of the great scandals of modern judicial history. And Mueller was right at the center of it," he recalled.

As investigative journalist Sara Carter notes, Mueller was not above punishing the innocent and withholding exculpatory evidence to achieve his ends, which in his view justified any means:

Journalist Kevin Cullen wrote extensively about the FBI's involvement with Bulger and raised concerns about the old case in a 2011 article in Boston.com after Obama asked Congress to make an exception to allow Mueller to stay on two extra years beyond the mandated 10-year limit as FBI director. Cullen said in his story that Mueller who was first an assistant US attorney, "then as the acting US attorney in Boston" had written "letters to the parole and pardons board throughout the 1980s opposing clemency for the four men framed by FBI lies[.] ... In 2001, those four men, who were convicted in 1965 of Teddy Deegan's murder were exonerated by the courts. It was discovered that the FBI withheld evidence from the court to protect their informant that would have cleared the men, according to reports.

Mueller's record of thuggery; dishonesty; and, yes, criminality under the cover of law shows a record that warrants exposure, not defense, and prosecution, not protection. The only thing that can be said about his persecution of Donald Trump is that it is consistent with his less than stellar past, which resembles more the actions of a mob boss than a seeker of truth and justice.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.