Mueller Should Ask for Help

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.,

The Russia special counsel should say frankly what he’s not investigating and what others should.

Mr. Mueller was handed a counterintelligence investigation—a hunt for the truth about Russia’s role in the election, not a hunt for a Trump crime. Still, it has become unrealistic now to expect him to cover the widening gamut of matters that properly come under the heading of Russian influence—and it would help if he publicly said so. Mr. Mueller would clear the air by saying the following things need to be investigated, even if he’s not going to do it: James Comey’s intervention in the Hillary Clinton email matter; the Trump dossier; attempts by Democrats to use the FBI to get the Trump dossier allegations into the press before Election Day; after Election Day, the use of illegal intelligence leaks to destabilize the incoming administration.

Mr. Mueller needs to say something, and not just because of the partisan proclivities of some of his investigators. Even more astonishing is word that the wife of one ranking Justice Department official worked during the 2016 campaign for Fusion GPS, the secretive firm Democrats paid to assemble the Trump dossier.

Let me state my own intelligence “estimate” regarding these matters: During 2016, the counterintelligence activities of the Obama administration elided, informally and erratically (and clumsily), into an attempt to protect Hillary Clinton and keep Mr. Trump out of the White House, then to delegitimize his election when these efforts all went absurdly and embarrassingly awry.

Secondly, Mr. Mueller, like Mr. Comey before him, can be expected to step daintily around these minefields for the sake of his ex-agency—i.e., engage in a coverup—on his way to clearing Mr. Trump of any allegation that he engaged in a conspiracy with Russia to commit crimes.

Luckily, Americans have another vessel of investigative juice to call upon—the press. The media routinely rely on unnamed sources who are willing to violate duties of confidentiality to make new facts available to the public. It’s time for some in the press to do the same.

Who was the source or sources that last week misled CNN about the date of an email received by the Trump campaign to make it seem like the campaign was illegally in cahoots with WikiLeaks? No sooner had CNN posted its false scoop than CBS and MSNBC confirmed it. It’s hard to believe CNN, CBS and MSNBC don’t have Rep. Adam Schiff on speed dial. And by the “circumstantial evidence” standard that Mr. Schiff has applied to Trump collusion allegations, he would be my No. 1 suspect. Nobody’s reputation is more at risk if the Trump-Russia conspiracy fails to pan out.

Whoever it was, don’t underestimate the significance of this episode. A source or sources the media has apparently conditioned itself to rely upon seems to have deliberately (and desperately) planted a fake story about Mr. Trump just as revelations about the possibly tainted nature of the FBI’s role in the 2016 election were pouring forth.

Unfortunately, many in the press are not as intrepid as they like to think. They see only the stories they are not afraid to see. To acknowledge that Mr. Trump, in some instances, has been unfairly maligned is not to turn him into an admirable character. As exit polls and Trump supporter interviews show, even many Trump supporters recognize all the ways he falls short of admirable. But there are other truths that also matter. The American people deserve better than a coverup.

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