INDICTMENT ! WHO IS FIRST ?

The spear carrier for the Times’ newsroom opinion, media reporter Jim Rutenberg, singled me out for making a “dubious argument” that Mueller has too many conflicts of interest. Rutenberg, who assumed the role of Baquet’s apologist for its biased coverage of Trump, flatly declared doubts about Mueller unwarranted because “there is no evidence to support the assertion that the Democrats hired Fusion GPS with the purpose of getting Russians to spread ‘wild allegations’ about Mr. Trump.”

His straw man is a diversion and his logic turns the concept of evidence on its head, making it required before an investigation can start. Isn’t the point of investigations to find evidence?
Besides, if the lack of evidence is sufficient to avoid investigation, why is Mueller still investigating Trump, since more than a year of FBI probes has turned up no evidence of Trump wrongdoing.

The editorial page was even more venomous, calling criticism of the special counsel “crazy talk.” Incredibly, it also equated us with those who were silent in the face of Nazis by opening the editorial with, “And then they came for Robert Mueller.”

The zeal to protect Mueller from any criticism raises the question of why the Times cares so much. With the mainstream media in lockstep with its jihad against Trump,
why bother to smear a handful of skeptics?

My great sin was to argue that Mueller’s close relationship with his successor at the FBI, James Comey, was always a problem and that recent developments created a situation that was fixable only by resignation.

Those added conflicts include the revelation that Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Party paid for the Russian dossier against Trump, with some of its paid sources linked to the Kremlin.

Because the FBI reportedly used the dossier to launch its probe of Trump and considered hiring its author, any probe faithful to Mueller’s assignment would include an examination of the FBI’s role in 2016.

That would put Mueller in the untenable position of investigating the agency he led for 12 years.

Moreover, as questions grow about whether the Obama White House used the dossier as justification for unmasking Trump associates picked up in wiretaps in an attempt to swing the election to Clinton, Mueller’s probe must also examine the previous administration. But that, too, is an impossible task for him because he spent more than four years working for Obama, where he was a colleague of ­Clinton’s.

Resignation under these circumstances is not a radical idea, especially because I did not call for the Russia probe to end. I merely stated an obvious fact about how serious conflicts of interest are routinely resolved in the criminal-justice ­system.

For example, a judge with Mueller’s relationships and history would almost certainly be recused from overseeing those cases, so why should a special counsel investigating the president be held to a lesser standard? And if Justice Department rules required Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from anything related to the 2016 campaign because he was a Trump surrogate, those same rules should apply to Mueller’s relationship with Clinton, Obama and Comey.

In the end, the Times’ rabid ­defense of Mueller resembles the debacle of its 2016 campaign coverage. It never saw Trump’s victory coming because it was blinded by its hatred for him and contempt for his 63 million voters.

A year later, the Gray Lady has learned nothing.