Opinion: How Mueller's Reign of Terror Can Be Stopped
Special Counsel Robert Mueller is an out-of-control, raging bull, set loose in President Donald Trump’s china shop. He’s trampling on the lives and reputations of anyone he chooses from among those who have had any connection with the president. It matters not to Mueller if that connection was short-lived or inconsequential. In his mind, anyone who was ever associated with Trump is the enemy and should be shown no mercy. It seems that no one can stop Mueller, making conservatives wonder if this political inquisition will ever end.
Of course, it never should have started in the first place. By now, we all know the story. The entire Mueller matter is a carefully-planned coup against the government of the United States that none of the conspirators ever thought would be uncovered.
It didn’t start as a coup — but a dirty plan to take down the Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency. When it didn’t work and the anticipated whitewash of the entire matter by President Hillary Clinton never came to fruition, the skulking rats went running, looking for the best way off their sinking ship.
But some of those who were in on the plot weren’t ready to give up on getting rid of Trump after it failed. During the candidate stage of the conspiracy, there were some “just in case” plans ready to take Trump down in the unlikely and unthinkable event that he could, somehow, win the election.
Former FBI agent Peter Strzok was one of those prepared to carry on the battle, no matter what. In his infamous email to FBI lawyer and extramarital lover Lisa Page, he assured her that there was an “insurance plan” to bring down Trump if he did manage to get elected.
Both the candidate plot and government coup plans were, as we now know, a “house of cards” based on a scurrilous, fictional report written about Trump by an English spy and paid for by a consortium of benefactors, including the FBI and the DNC. The fly in the ointment, however, is that this phony report was used by the FBI and the Department of Justice to trick FISA judges into approving search warrants on people who had a connection to the president.
The FISA warrants were illegally obtained and were, thus, illegal warrants. They were the initial snowball that was kicked downhill by the coup cabal that grew and grew into a Special Counsel, investigations, arrests, trials, convictions and sentences of people who whose only real sin was knowing Trump. All these illegal weapons had one ultimate purpose: to bring down a sitting president.
In the legal world, there is a doctrine known as, “The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree.” This colorful legal metaphor describes what happens when a poisonous seed is planted by the government. It grows into a poisonous tree and all the fruit it bears is poisonous.
In the metaphor, a poisonous seed is an illegal search warrant and the poisonous tree grows from it. The poisonous fruit is what the government harvests from the tree to use against their targets. But the fruit they pick and use, being poisonous, makes anything the tainted fruit provides the government also poisonous.
Mueller’s appointment as Special Counsel is poisonous, having come from the fruit of the poisonous tree. It was illegal. Everything he has done as Special Prosecutor is illegal. His investigations are all illegal, his warrants, seizures, surveillance, interviews, arrests, imprisonments, convictions, and everything else he has done as Special Prosecutor is illegal.
The rub is that any first-year law student knows about the “The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree.” This begs the obvious question: Why has no one raised this doctrine in opposition to the Special Counsel investigation? It could be used to plunge the sword of justice between the shoulder blades of the raging bull and bring it to its knees. Many lawyers, this writer included, are therefore baffled by the failure to act on the basis of this doctrine.
This would seem to be the “Silver Bullet” conservatives are hoping for. It could finally end this Mueller Madness that’s wreaking so much unnecessary havoc in the lives of so many and interfering with the multitude of constructive projects Trump wants to complete during his presidency.
It’s as though some part of this terrible puzzle is missing — something we don’t know. But what we do know is that there is a powerful antidote available that could end this unmerciful, unfair, and illegal pogrom being carried out against anyone Mueller chooses from within the Trump circle. Most importantly, the Poisonous Tree Doctrine can be used to foil the ongoing coup being currently waged against the United States government.
Terry Ray is a professor of law, Emeritus. He is now a full-time novelist for Sunbury Press.
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