Newt Gingrich is once again driving the narrative surrounding the multiple investigations into President Donald Trump and his campaign. After Gingrich asserted in a tweet Friday that it's "time to rethink" the assumption that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team of prosecutors will behave impartially, Axios has followed up with a report noting that nearly every member of Mueller’s team has contributed to Democratic candidates. The Axios report echoes a similar story by CNN, which previously reported on donations by three members of Mueller’s team.
“The donations:
James Quarles: Donated almost $33,000 to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. He has also donated about $2,750 to Republicans — the only lawyer on Mueller's team to have done so.
Jeannie Rhee: Donated more than $16,000 since 2008 to Democrats, including the maximum donation possible to Clinton in both 2015 and 2016. Rhee has also donated to Obama.
Andrew Weissmann: Donated more than $4,000 to Obama in 2008 and $2,000 to the DNC in 2006.
Elizabeth Prelogar: Donated $250 each to Clinton in 2016 and Obama in 2012.
There are no FEC filings for Aaron Zebley. It was not immediately clear whether Lisa Page had donated. The Michael Dreeben listed in the FEC database is not the same Dreeben Mueller hired, per CNN. Bob Mueller has not made donations.”
The assumption of impartiality has been made by both Republicans and Democrats. During testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this month, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said the donations didn’t necessarily preclude Mueller’s team from being objective…but considering deluge of leaks out of Mueller’s office that were clearly meant to embarrass Trump, Rosenstein might want to rethink those claims.
Republicans are delusional if they think the special counsel is going to be fair. Look who he is hiring.check fec reports. Time to rethink.
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich)
Mueller hasn’t donated to candidates of either party, records show. Mueller's team is investigating both the allegations of collusion between Russian entities and the Trump campaign, as well as whether Trump’s treatment of former FBI Director James Comey amounted to obstruction of justice.
Gingrich’s comments in recent weeks have been eerily prescient. In a June 17 interview with Sean Hannity, Gingrich noted that some Senate Democrats were beginning to question whether Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s conduct during the campaign merited an investigation – and took a swipe at Republicans for letting Lynch off the hook. Less than a week later, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced it had launched a bipartisan-endorsed probe into Lynch.
Gingrich also told Hannity that the Mueller investigation will likely result in “somebody going to jail.” Though that somebody probably won’t be President Donald Trump.
Trump also weighed in during a Fox News interview on Friday, when he told Ainsley Earhardt that he is bothered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's close relationship with fired FBI Director James Comey. When asked whether Mueller should recuse himself, Trump replied "well he's very, very good friends with Comey which is very bothersome... We're going to have to see."
As radio host Mark Levin noted that the investigation is beginning to look like a premeditated “pretext for impeachment” given the close relationship between Mueller and key witness Comey.
As LibertyReport’s Mike Krieger pointed out earlier this week, retired FBI special agent Coleen Rowley punched holes in the consensus narrative that portrays Mueller and Comey as honest, diligent and impartial public servants. A closer look at their conduct during the Bush administration reveals that the two officials participated inn post-9/11 coverups and secret abuses of the Constitution.
“Mainstream commentators display amnesia when they describe former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey as stellar and credible law enforcement figures. Perhaps if they included J. Edgar Hoover, such fulsome praise could be put into proper perspective.
Although these Hoover successors, now occupying center stage in the investigation of President Trump, have been hailed for their impeccable character by much of Official Washington, the truth is, as top law enforcement officials of the George W. Bush Administration (Mueller as FBI Director and James Comey as Deputy Attorney General), both presided over post-9/11 cover-ups and secret abuses of the Constitution, enabled Bush-Cheney fabrications used to launch wrongful wars, and exhibited plain vanilla incompetence.”
How quickly Senate Democrats, many of whom lambasted the Bush Administration for deceiving the country with questionable intelligence to justify an invasion of Iraq, forget…
