Can you differentiate between the career criminal and the political hack?

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Hanlon’s Razor

Everybody seems to have an opinion about Robert Mueller, law and order good guy or partisan political hack. In order to make an informed judgment, I think one must look at past actions, statements, and behaviors as a starting point. Once one looks at Mueller’s overall history his greatest achievement is his shameless self-promotion that turned a mediocre personality into a superstar.

But, he was the Director of the FBI. Yeah, so, the FBI is a bureaucracy with 13,412 special agents and 20,420 support professionals, such as intelligence analysts, language specialists, scientists, information technology specialists, and other professionals. The sheer size of the agency defies the efforts of a single person impact the direction the agency takes. It is especially easy to hide mistakes and miscues in such an organization. As Special Counsel, Mueller’s staff is around twenty attorney’s plus support staff and investigators borrowed from other Inspector General outfits. Mueller has discovered that the smaller the unit, the fewer places there are to hide, fewer scapegoats, and fewer opportunities to spread false information and innuendo with deniability.

John Dellaportas writing in the Federalist Blog sorts out Robert Mueller’s sorted history. What if Mueller were not some sort of avenging angel, but rather just a bumbling bureaucrat? To put it somewhat differently, why assume that the same folks who brought us Amtrak, the U.S. Post Office, and Healthcare.gov somehow knocked it out of the park with the Office of Special Counsel? Record-proves-Robert-Mueller-Clown-Prince-Federal-Law-Enforcement.

Dellaportas separates the man from the fiction what follows is a guy that has remarkable survival skills, but limited law enforcement instincts.  He shows how Mueller’s policy of requiring management qualified agents to serve a posting at FBI Headquarters for a year, in order to be qualified to be promoted. That policy gutted the agency of qualified agents who took a demotion, lateral or quit the FBI entirely. This policy opened the door for Comey, McCabe, Strzok and Page to begin their climb to the top.

According to Dellaportas Mueller has already demonstrated that the quest for justice will not stand in the way of expediency. In the 1960’s Boston had a gang war between the MAFIA and the IRISH Gangs, Winter Hill Gang were one of many. Three low-level mafioso were convicted of murder. AS time went by the conviction of three became a running joke, the three didn’t do it. The United States Attorney’s Office in Boston held firm and refused to reopen the case or not oppose parole. Mueller did his part and refused to take a second look. (Two were eventually released with multimillion-dollar payouts, the third died in prison). Whitey Bulger the head of the Winter Hill Gang was an FBI informant. The choice was let three innocent men go and possibly compromise Whitey or leave them in prison and let Whitey run Boston organized crime while blaming the Italians.

Whitey is in prison for life, two of the three wrongfully convicted are finally out of prison with no help from Mueller. In Mueller’s world, “Do the right thing,” is tempered with, “for the right people.”