Former FBI Director James Comey has beefed up his legal team, hiring Patrick Fitzgerald, the former federal prosecutor who served as special counsel during the George W. Bush administration[.] ...

It was no surprise that liar and leaker James Comey added Patrick Fitzgerald to his legal team and is one of the three to whom Comey leaked memos of his private and classified conversations with President Trump. The two go way back and have in common a relentless pursuit of the innocent to protect their political favorites and targeting of the political opposition. Using government power to pursue their political agenda, even if it means ignoring the truth and lying, is a trait both have in common:

Comey and Fitzgerald have been friends for decades. It was Comey, who in 2003, as deputy attorney general, appointed Fitzgerald special prosecutor to investigate the Bush White House over the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity to the press[.] ... Fitzgerald's investigation led to the prosecution of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, for obstruction of justice and perjury. President Donald Trump pardoned Libby on April 13.

President Trump's pardoning of Scooter Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, corrected a grave injustice in which James Comey and Patrick Fitzgerald were co-conspirators. It followed a D.C. Court of Appeals decision reinstating Libby to the bar in 2016. Comey, who falsely claimed that no serious prosecutor would take the case of Hillary Clinton, was among those who found sufficient evidence to prosecute and convict Scooter Libby. But, as Washington, D.C.-based former U.S. attorney Joe DiGenova has noted, the case was seriously tainted:

"Scooter Libby was restored to the practice of law by the DC court of appeals because they believed that Scooter Libby presented evidence that his original trial had been corrupted by false testimony. And that false testimony was coerced by Jim Comey's friend Patrick Fitzgerald and Comey was part of the team to destroy the vice president of the United States and it didn't happen," DiGenova said.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) notes that the Libby case involved many involved in the current Deep State coup against President Trump and the illicit targeting of American citizens:

In 2003, during yet another fabricated and politically-charged FBI investigation, this one "searching" for the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity to the media[,] Robert Mueller's very dear close friend James Comey was at the time serving as the Deputy Attorney General. Comey convinced then Attorney General John Ashcroft that he should recuse himself from the Plame investigation. At the time, Ashcroft was in the hospital. After Deputy A.G. Comey was successful in securing Ashcroft's recusal, Comey then got to choose the Special Counsel. He then looked about for someone who was completely independent of any relationships that might affect his independence and settled upon his own child's godfather and named Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the source of the leak. So much for the independence of the Special Counsel. The entire episode was further revealed as a fraud when it was later made public that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald, FBI Director Mueller, and Deputy Attorney Comey had very early on learned that the source of Plame's identity leak came from Richard Armitage. But neither Comey nor Mueller nor Fitzgerald wanted Armitage's scalp. Oh no. These so-called apolitical, fair-minded pursuers of their own brand of justice were after a bigger name in the Bush administration like Vice President Dick Cheney or Karl Rove. Yet they knew from the beginning that these two men were not guilty of anything. Nonetheless, Fitzgerald, Mueller and Comey pursued Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, as a path to ensnare the Vice President. According to multiple reports, Fitzgerald had twice offered to drop all charges against Libby if he would 'deliver' Cheney to him. There was nothing to deliver.

There was nothing to deliver, just as today there was no Russian collusion with Team Trump. Just as the Libby case was nothing more than an attempt to "get" Dick Cheney, Comey, Mueller, and now Patrick Fitzgerald are participants in an effort to "get" Donald Trump, attempting to get the lesser fish like Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn to turn on their former boss. But now, just like then, they have nothing to deliver.

Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter professor of law emeritus at Harvard Law School, reminds us of the delicious irony of an investigation that began with "reports" of collusion with the Russians by Team Trump and charges of Russian hacking of our elections, now reverting to the tactics of Russia's most murderous tyrant, Josef Stalin. As Dershowitz writes in the Washington Examiner:

Special counsel Robert Mueller was commissioned to investigate not only crime but the entire Russian "matter." That is an ominous development that endangers the civil liberties of all Americans. Federal prosecutors generally begin by identifying specific crimes that may have been committed – in this case, violation of federal statutes. But no one has yet identified the specific statute or statutes that constrain Mueller's investigation of the Russian matter. It is not a violation of any federal law for a campaign to have collaborated with a foreign government to help elect their candidate[.] ... One does not have to go back to the Soviet Union and Lavrentiy Beria's infamous boast to Stalin, "Show me the man and I will show you the crime," in order to be concerned about the expansion of elastic criminal statutes. There are enough examples of abuse in our own history. From McCarthyism to the failed prosecutions of Sen. Ted Stevens, Rep. Thomas DeLay, Gov. Rick Perry and others, we have seen vague criminal statutes stretched in an effort to criminalize political differences.

Again, we saw this Stalinesque persecution in the case of Scooter Libby, who was convicted, again, of lying to the FBI, because he misremembered events under relentless questioning. He was charged long after Patrick Fitzgerald knew that it was Richard Armitage who had leaked the name of CIA desk jockey Valerie Plame to the press. Instead of dropping the investigation at that point, prosecutors persisted, knowing they had to find a crime committed by someone somewhere to justify their existence:

Remember the alleged outing of the already known CIA officer and desk jockey Valerie Plame? We were told then that the Vanity Fair cover girl's 15 minutes of fame jeopardized our national security even if everybody already knew who she was. "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, went to jail because his memory of events and who said what to whom regarding Plame differed from the recollections of others, particularly news reporters.

Yes, Virginia, this is a witch hunt. Robert Mueller III was appointed special counsel after his friend, the vindictive James Comey, committed a federal crime by leaking a memo that was a government record to the press. Mueller has picked staff and prosecutors as if he were stocking Hillary Clinton's Department of Justice. He has picked a bevy of Clinton donors, an attorney who worked for the Clinton Foundation, a former Watergate assistant prosecutor, and even a senior adviser to Eric Holder. Objective professionals all (snarkiness intended).

Mueller is in fact colluding with Comey to enact revenge on President Trump for Comey's firing, something that even Comey said Trump was constitutionally entitled to do. There is no evidence of collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice. It is not obstruction of justice for a president to exercise his legal and constitutional authority.

The facts and the lack of an actual crime will not stop Robert Mueller. Just show him the man, or woman, and he will show you the crime.

Comey, Mueller, and now Fitzgerald are the real partners in a real crime, the attempt to overthrow a duly elected and sitting president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

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.