Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.

If the president’s most ardent supporters on the Fox News Channel, at pro-Trump websites and at other anti-anti-Trump outposts get their way, we might find five or six new special counsels under the tree on Christmas morning to investigate special counsel Robert S. Mueller’s investigation.

Mueller’s critics aren’t ticked off by what he has accomplished—the guilty pleas (George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn) or the criminal charges (Paul Manafort and Rick Gates). Those cases seem rock solid. Nor did many of his current critics find fault with him when he was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. They found him to be of unimpeachable character and high credentials. But now that he’s drawing a noose around the president, they have turned on him, alleging behind-the-scenes acts of bias and conflict of interest by the Mueller team. The only correctives possible, they say, are new investigations to uproot all the Mueller bias and conflict. Mueller, once worshiped as a terrific Republican cop, must be taken down a peg.


Several stories broken by Fox have energized the investigate-the-investigators movement. One Fox story points to the connections between Fusion GPS and Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and spouse, Nellie Ohr, connections the critics say taint the whole case against the president. Ohr was demoted last week, Fox implied, for meeting with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele (author of the Simpson-commissioned dossier) just after the 2016 election. Nellie Ohr, Fox continues, worked for Fusion GPS during the campaign and, in the eyes of Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow, this cross-pollination constitutes “obvious conflicts of interest.” Sekulow demands a second special counsel to look into the matter. His call follows the November news about Attorney General Jeff Sessions contemplating a second special counsel to look into the Clinton Foundation’s connections with Uranium One, the pseudo-scandal that has replaced Benghazi among Hillary-haters.

Earlier this month, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), tweeted a similar message: “It’s long past time for a Special Counsel to investigate Clinton email scandal, Uranium One, role of Fusion GPS, and FBI and DOJ bias during 2016 campaign.” In his Washington Post column, conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt has called for an additional special counsel to delve into the words and deeds of FBI agent Peter Strzok, sacked from the Mueller team last summer after the discovery of anti-Trump text messages he sent to another Mueller team member (and which the Department of Justice, in a controversial move, shared with reporters). Did Strzok “tilt” the investigation? Hewitt asks. “It’s time for Mueller to put up or shut up. If there’s evidence of collusion with Russia, let’s see it,” said Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) this past week. The Mueller show, concurs President Donald Trump, is a waste of money, as he said—once again—in a tweet this week. His direct campaign against the investigation was captured in a Nov. 30 New York Times headline which read, “Trump Pressed Top Republicans to End Senate Russia Inquiry.” Meanwhile, former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy plugged in National Review for a special counsel to plunge into Iran’s nuclear weapons program to investigate “any Obama-administration collusion in that enterprise.” Not wanting to be left out of the game, Democrats claim that if any political bias contaminates the FBI, it’s anti-Clinton bias.

Given their way, Trump supporters will establish so many special counsels the offices will cease to be special. But they will have enough to field a reasonably competitive office softball team.

Of course, Trump loyalists in the House of Representatives have been advocating Mueller’s dismissal for months, insisting that only his departure will prevent his investigation from turning into a coup d’état. But for now the political balance appears to reside with Senate Republicans who, as the Washington Post reports, hope to “shield” him from interference. Mueller, these Republicans say, did the right thing when he learned of the anti-Trump texts. Even Graham conceded that point, saying, “This FBI agent doesn’t taint Muller’s investigation, because Mueller’s going to be responsible for the final product. Mueller fired the guy, I liked that.” Mueller’s boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein went to Capitol Hill to affirm his confidence in the special counsel—“I believe he was an ideal choice for this task”—and to deny that he has asked for the special counsel’s removal.

Also backing Mueller was Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who wrote a convincing column sketching out the known-knowns of the Russia investigation. “There is a growing, mostly undisputed body of evidence describing contacts between Trump associates and Russia-linked operatives,” he wrote. Russian operatives hacked the computers of Trump’s opponents; Trump expressed his affinity for Vladimir Putin throughout the campaign, and Trump aides echoed that affinity by taking or attempting to take Russia-friendly meetings. Russians made a pitch to deliver political dirt on Hillary Clinton to Trump’s son. Cambridge Analytica, hired to do research for the Trump campaign, asked WikiLeaks' Julian Assange to share the hacked emails with it. Trump and the Trump camp demonstrated a familiarity with the hacks that raises suspicions.

Just before Trump’s inauguration, the Washington Post reported in a jumbo-sized piece (7,000 words) this past week, his inner circle begged him to publicly acknowledge the message U.S. intelligence agencies had delivered to the higher echelons of government—that the Russians had interfered in the 2016 elections, and done so at the bargain basement price of about $500,000. Trump bristled then as he does now at the thought that Putin’s people had helped him in any way. “If you talk about Russia, meddling, interference—that takes the [president’s daily brief] off the rails,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told the paper. “Rather than search for ways to deter Kremlin attacks or safeguard U.S. elections, Trump has waged his own campaign to discredit the case that Russia poses any threat and he has resisted or attempted to roll back efforts to hold Moscow to account,” reports the Post.

Rob Goldstone, everybody’s favorite bit player in the Trump Tower scandal, reappeared this week. Goldstone, the publicist with a Russian roster, gained fame for scheduling the June 2016 meeting between Russians who claimed to have incriminating evidence on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. In a Washington Post story sourced to an email “turned over to investigators,” the paper asserts that Goldstone worked as early as July 2015 to arrange a meeting between candidate Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Goldstone claimed that his client Emin Agalarov (son of oligarch Aras Agalarov) could act as the go-between. In a July 24, 2015, email to Trump assistant Rhona Graff, Goldstone wrote, “Maybe [Trump] would welcome a meeting with President Putin.” Did Goldstone (or Agalarov) want Trump to meet Putin? Or did they want Putin to meet Trump? Or did they divine that Trump would want to meet Putin, so they sought to make it happen? And why?

The only way to find out for sure would be to appoint me as the umpteenth special counsel.

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At the rate we’re going, I’ll either be a special counsel or be targeted by one. Send incriminating evidence to [email protected]. My email alerts would cast the late John Candy as Goldstone in the movie version of the scandal. My Twitter blames all the election hacking on that mythic 400-pounder. My RSS feed, like Trump, sizzles whenever anybody mentions Russia.