Alright, this has gone on long enough. An American president colluding with the Russians, secret dossiers filled with peeing hookers, and a stolen election? It's the stuff of a cheap dime store novel or, rather unbelievably, the fever dreams of an increasingly unhinged Democratic Party.
Just call Robert Mueller Tylenol PM, because he can finally put all of this to rest.
In announcing that the former FBI director will serve as special counsel investigating the alleged ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, the Justice Department effectively killed the Democrats' foremost talking point: That the Trump Administration was afraid of an independent investigation.
Well, now there is an independent investigation. And now we wait for Democratic cries that Mueller isn't independent enough.
The Trump Administration's move can be seen one of two ways: Either it feels as though it was backed into a corner or it feels as though it has nothing to hide. The former means that the Administration is as stupid as it is timid and that it's only a matter of time before Mueller exposes the rampant criminality. But the latter explanation is far more likely--that the Administration is tired of the leaks and the insinuations of wrongdoing and, knowing that there was no actual wrongdoing, it is essentially calling its' political opponents' bluff: "Oh, you're holding a hand that will lead to impeachment? Let's see it."
Remember, it was President Trump's Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, who named the special counsel. Would it be in his interests to expose his boss as a criminal mastermind and himself as a willing enabler? More directly, would Sessions really be willing to go down with the Trump ship if he, after months of overseeing all of the evidence collection, really thought there was anything incriminating?
Of course he wouldn't. No one in the Trump Administration (or any presidential administration, for that matter) would sign off on a special counsel unless they were either phenomenally stupid or phenomenally confident that there was no collusion, no impropriety, no wrongdoing whatsoever.
And that's the thing about this Trump-Russia affair: There hasn't yet been a single shred of evidence tying the Trump Administration to the Kremlin or even to anything improper (or even impolitic). In naming a special counsel, it's fairly obvious that the Trump Administration doesn't expect him to find any evidence.
Why would they? No one--not the FBI, not the House, not the Senate--has found a single document, a single phone call, a single witness to prove or even suggest that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
Even when the Obama Justice Department was investigating for at least four months, it found nothing.
Now, it's fairly obvious that the Trump Justice Department expects Mueller to find nothing as well, which is why it finally relented and named him as special counsel. Knowing that it could not adequately prove its innocence on its own, it is relying on yet another outside entity to do so.
In doing so, the Trump Administration can only be accused of naivete in thinking that even an independent investigation will stop Democrats from making fact-free accusations of wrongdoing.