McCarthy puts things in perspective...

The IG Report Should End Mueller’s Obstruction Investigation

While generally cautious about criticizing Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the Clinton-emails investigation, Trump supporters have taken aim at its chief logical flaw: Although key investigators harbored anti-Trump and pro-Clinton bias, and even made statements indicating an intention to act on that bias, the IG did not find that this bias was the proximate cause of any particular investigative decision.

This conclusion is easy to rebut; I did so myself in a column last week. Yet, the Trump camp should also be embracing it. Why? Because if this is the Justice Department’s position, then Special Counsel Robert Mueller has no business investigating the president for obstruction.

So the article is worth a read. But like many McCarthy articles it gets a little wordy, so I will attempt to get to the point in a much quicker fashion. Bottom line is that Horowitz is taking the position (and by proxy it is the position of the DOJ/FBI) that:

• Proving bad intent (in this case political bias) requires either documented proof of bad intent, or a testimonial admittance of bad intent.
• That it is not the job of investigators to use their own opinion or judgement to determine whether or not there is bad intent. 
• The reasons given by the people under investigation for questionable actions must be accepted as valid, unless the reason is so unreasonable that there is no defense of it.
• There would be no consideration for an "accumulation" of questionable actions proving bad intent. Rather investigators must view each incident independently of one another when looking for specific bad intent.  

In his testimony to Congress the other day Horowitz shows that he clearly believes that there was bias and that it effected a variety of facets of the investigation. But he stood by the position that it's not his place to accuse someone in a factual investigative procedure that could lead to a criminal prosecution, without actual tangible proof. 

In other words, the case against the FBI in their handling of the Clinton email investigation was entirely "circumstantial". There is certainly enough circumstantial evidence to cause most reasonable people to believe that there was bias, and that this bias effected their decision making. The problem was that Horowitz believed that there was no "tangible evidence" that could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Because of the lack of a "smoking gun" it was not his place to make the accusation.

Clearly if that is the standard used by the DOJ (and obviously Mueller is under the umbrella of the DOJ) then Donald Trump has not committed any obstruction of justice. As long as Trump doesn't either provide documented physical or verbal admittance that he was attempting to obstruct justice with any of his actions, it's not up to Mueller to opine differently. As long as Trump had a reasonable explanation for firing James Comey or taking other actions, then it cannot be obstruction.

Now quite obviously the Trump haters out there will not take kindly to the suggestion that Mueller cannot simply "decide" that Trump committed obstruction without a smoking gun. Obviously these Trump haters are not going to like the concept Mueller must accept that unless somehow Trump admits he had bad intent, that the special prosecutor cannot make a finding of the sort of bad intent that would be required to make the accusation of obstruction. 

All that being said, we obviously live in the real world. In the real world, there are different types of justice. There will always be one set of standards surrounding people with names like Clinton and Obama, and a completely different set of standards for people with names like Trump and Manafort. 

Hypocrisy has always been the bedrock of liberalism, and today that same hypocrisy appears to be the bedrock of our law enforcement.