In following news of the release of the Mueller report yesterday, The Guardian released their live reaction thread under the headline, “Mueller report: top Democrats say Barr summary ‘raises as many questions as it answers’ – as it happened.”

They’re absolutely right, of course. But the questions — despite the continued efforts of Democrats devoted to the smear — aren’t about obstruction (since, as Rudy Giuliani noted yesterday, “it’s impossible to obstruct justice if there’s no underlying crime.”)

Senator Marco Rubio highlighted a portion of the text of the 4 page summary yesterday that arguably raises the most important question in the entire affair, and may end up leading to what many are now calling for: an investigation into just how the FBI led us down the primrose path of collusion to the point a special prosecutor was appointed when there was apparently never any evidence of an actual crime.

After thorough & unimpeded investigation #MuellerReport

“did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government…DESPITE MULTIPLE OFFERS FROM RUSSIAN-AFFILIATED INDIVIDUALS TO ASSIST THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN.” — Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 25, 2019

You read that correctly. Russian agents, according to the Attorney General’s summary of the report, offered, on multiple occasions, to help Trump win and were rebuffed. This isn’t Russian hacking attempts of social media, or the receipt of emails from a DNC hack via Wikileaks.

This implies people talking to people. Offering their services to specifically help Trump defeat Hillary, and being turned down. And the resulting question?

How on Earth, if Mueller was able to discover these spurned efforts, did the FBI miss them and build a case for collusion using a questionable-at-best dossier and some weak justification of contact between marginal campaign players and random foreign officials?

Kimberly Strassel, in a short Tweet thread, makes a case that an investigation into how the FBI royally messed this one up is the one the American public is owed.

1) On the #NoCollusion findings of Mueller's report. It's worth recognizing that this is more than an exoneration. It's a searing indictment of the FBI. — Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) March 24, 2019

2) If you are going to investigate a presidential campaign, and on a charge as grave as collusion, and with the heavy-handed tactics the FBI employed–you'd better have a highly convincing reason to act. The Mueller report is a judgment that never was any real evidence. — Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) March 24, 2019

3) The Papadopoulos conversation was always thin gruel. And the Mueller findings now prove the dossier was a fabrication. The country now deserves a full accounting of how the FBI blew this so badly–so that it doesn't happen again. — Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) March 24, 2019

4) If Mueller has done his job, he will address some of this. But the real accounting needs to come from a full declassification of FBI/DOJ probe docs. Mueller report is only half the story. Time to go back to the beginning, to how we got a special counsel in first place. — Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) March 24, 2019

She also wrote a great piece about it.

The wreckage is everywhere. The nation has been engulfed in conspiracy theories for years. A presidency was hemmed in by the threat of a special counsel. Citizens have gone to jail not for conspiracy, but for after-the-fact interactions with Mr. Mueller’s team. Dozens more have spent enormous amounts of money and time defending their reputations. None of this should ever have happened absent highly compelling evidence—from the start—of wrongdoing. Yet from what we know, the FBI operated on the basis of an overheard conversation of third-tier campaign aide George Papadopoulos, as well as a wild “dossier” financed by the rival presidential campaign. Mr. Mueller’s no-collusion finding amounts to a judgment that there never was any evidence. The Papadopoulos claim was thin, the dossier a fabrication. Which is all the more reason Americans now deserve a full accounting of the missteps of former FBI Director James Comey and his team—in part so that this never happens again.

Amen. Let the real investigation into the real scandal begin. As LaDuke wrote this morning, it looks like an investigation of the FBI may actually come to pass. And that reality probably explains why this thing dragged on for two years and, indeed, why it went beyond Trump’s election when, if it is what it looks like, reasonable people would have stopped shopping the dossier and accepted the loss.

The FBI was already in deep with Bruce Ohr’s back channel funneling Fusion GPS propaganda and the manipulation of FISA warrants. They HAD to make something stick, no matter how much time or money it took, to avoid the investigation into their behavior that is now very likely to come.