Robert Mueller is dead, but his toxic legacy lives on in the destroyed lives of the innocent victims targeted by the Russia collusion probe that bears his name.
To understand why President Trump had no kind words for the former FBI director when he died over the weekend at age 81, you have to understand the human toll on the president and dozens of his friends and allies.
Who knows whether Mueller, who had Parkinson’s, was in command of all his faculties when he was appointed special counsel at age 72? But the deep state evildoers on his team knew exactly what they were doing when they used his formerly prestigious reputation to pervert the course of justice for their “Get Trump” frolic.
In the end, the Mueller gang found no Russian collusion by the Trump campaign, but they crippled Trump’s first presidency anyway, and their witch hunt continued through the Biden administration and even into last year, through covert surveillance, subpoenas, debanking and crippling legal costs that were incurred even without charges being brought.
Independent journalist Catherine Herridge’s searing interview with longtime Trump ally Michael Caputo last week gives you a glimpse into the Kafkaesque nightmare he endured at the hands of Mueller and his henchmen, such as Andrew Weissman, Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad, Aaron Zelinsky and Walter Giardina.
The FBI investigation into Caputo only ended after he made a personal appeal to Trump last December, he says.
There are so many others like Caputo who deserve accountability.
First come the revelations. Gradually, we are learning more details about the unprofessional atmosphere in the Mueller office.
One of the central players was Giardina, a “very liberal” FBI agent who was fired from the bureau last year, according to new insights from a colleague who worked with him on the Mueller probe.
Giardina, who performed financial tasks in the special counsel office, was outspokenly biased against Trump, was convinced the lurid allegations in the discredited Steele dossier were true, and believed the president was a Russian agent, said his former colleague, who has been interviewed by the FBI.
“Walter Giardina was very liberal in his politics and very biased in his discussions about political matters and in how he felt about people in the Trump administration,” said the unnamed agent.
“Giardina was convinced this [Russia collusion] was the biggest investigation in the bureau and was a true believer. Giardina read and believed the Steele dossier.”
The “Steele dossier” was a Hillary Clinton campaign smear sheet concocted by British former spy-for-hire Christopher Steele that falsely alleged Trump had participated in “golden showers” with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel and was being blackmailed by Vladimir Putin.
These new revelations about Giardina’s anti-Trump hostility confirm previous claims by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that he was the FBI’s “Agent Zero,” who kept popping up in numerous anti-Trump operations.
Giardina played a “significant role” in the prosecution of Trump advisers Peter Navarro, Dan Scavino and Roger Stone, the Hillary Clinton cases, and in various “Get Trump” operations such as Arctic Frost, Crossfire Hurricane — and Mueller’s investigation, for which he received an award.
Grassley last year wrote to AG Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, providing whistleblower allegations of Giardina’s “misconduct while on the taxpayers’ dime that ought to be investigated.”
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The fact that Giardina harbored animosity toward Trump and his allies comes as no surprise to one of his victims, Navarro, a trade adviser to Trump in both presidencies.
Giardina arrested Navarro at Reagan Airport in Washington, DC, in 2022 as he was about to board a plane.
“He wouldn’t let me call a lawyer,” Navarro recalls bitterly, after spending four months in prison in 2024 for failing to comply with subpoenas from Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 star chamber.
“He put me in leg irons for a misdemeanor. He perp-walked my wife.”
“Giardina is the Forrest Gump of anti-Trumpism in the deep state, and he needs to be held accountable.
“He’s the single most important witness to uncover the orchestrated attack on Donald Trump and his lieutenants.”
Navarro’s assessment appears to be buttressed by the new recollections provided by Giardina’s former Mueller colleague.
Giardina has retired into obscurity, but he just might be drawn into the “grand conspiracy” investigation led by US Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones in the Southern District of Florida.
Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey was subpoenaed last week, according to Axios, among at least 130 other former Obama-era intelligence and FBI officials accused of anti-Trump weaponization sins.
Let’s hope Quiñones probe brings accountability — before the Democrats seize the reins again and do even worse.
