Last week my left-wing colleagues were excited, once again, by the prospect that Mr. Mueller would deliver damaging evidence against the President, this time via the arm-twisting of Mr. Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen. As it turns out, Mr. Cohen is a New York lawyer with a big mouth (surprise) but apparently short on information of collusion between President Trump and the Russians. Oh well, hope springs eternal and next in Mr. Mueller sights seems to be Jerome Corsi, an author, and commentator who allegedly has ties to Roger Stone, a Trump advisor. To extract what he wants from Mr. Corsi, Mr. Mueller has threatened to indict the 72-year-old witness because Mr. Corsi did not correctly recall how he handled his emails in 2016 (I will forego the obvious comparison of the dissimilar treatment received by Mrs. Clinton with respect to her email).

Mr. Corsi however, has filed a formal complaint with the Justice Department, accusing Mr. Mueller's team of threatening to indict Dr. Corsi, and effectively put him in jail for the rest of his life unless Dr. Corsi "would provide the false testimony that [the Mueller team] demanded, even after being informed that the testimony desired would be false."

Following Mr. Corsi's complaint, Mr. Mueller's defenders in the media immediately went into damage control mode, trotting out the usual suspects to declare Mr. Corsi's complaint "outrageous". But before rushing to judgment, anyone interested in Department of Justice practices should read Licensed to Lie, a book published in 2014, long before its author, Sidney Powell, could be accused of being a dupe for the administration. Ms. Powell served under 9 United States Attorneys from both political parties as an Assistant United States Attorney, and her book is an eye-opening dissertation on corruption and abusive tactics she witnessed while at the DOJ. Ms. Powell has been particularly critical of Mr. Mueller's lead prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, a "pit bull" whose track record includes a prosecution that destroyed the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen LLP, and some 85,000 jobs worldwide — a "victory" that was later reversed by a rare unanimous decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Weissmann was later involved in strong-arm tactics in the prosecution of four Merrill Lynch executives who were convicted and held in jail without bail pending appeal before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in and reversed. Based on these examples and many others, it is clear that hardball tactics that skirt the limits of the law are not unknown within the Department of Justice and in particular to Mr. Weissmann, so the allegation that the Mueller team has solicited false testimony and threatened Mr. Corsi may be in keeping with those tactics. The larger point is that if the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russians, after more than 2 years of investigation by the DOJ and the FBI, including electronic surveillance and spying by the intelligence community within the Trump organization, the evidence would surely be profound. There should be no need for the Mueller team to pursue bit players such as Jerome Corsi to make their case.

Finally, since we now know that raiding the office of a political candidate's attorney in search of evidence of collusion with a foreign power is an acceptable tactic, as Mr. Mueller did with Mr. Cohen, I suggest Mr. Mueller obtain a warrant for Marc Elias, general counsel for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. After Mr. Elias denied that the Clinton campaign funded the infamous "Russian dossier" that was the launch-point for the "collusion" allegations against President Trump, both the New York Times and the Washington Post reported over a year ago that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee had in fact funneled money through Mr. Elias to pay foreign sources to develop the Russian dossier. What has Mr. Mueller done with this information over the past year? It is obvious that if the goal of Mr. Mueller's investigation is to determine whether foreign operatives colluded with anyone in the U.S. to influence the 2016 presidential election, following the money trail from the Clinton campaign through its attorney would surely be obvious to Mr. Mueller's team of "pit bull" prosecutors. If safeguarding our electoral system against those who would collude with foreign powers to influence our elections was truly the objective of the Mueller investigation, Mr. Elias and others within the Clinton campaign and the DNC would already be under indictment. The lack of interest by the Mueller team in the real evidence of collusion, while they instead attempt to build a case against the President confirms that the investigation from the start has been a political operation and has nothing to do with safeguarding our electoral system and ferreting out "collusion" with the Russians.