One of the more bizarre moments of Muellerpalooza was an exchange between Utah’s Chris Stewart and Bobby Three Sticks:
During former special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony on Wednesday, Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) boldly claimed to have a list of leaks about the investigation that originated in Mueller’s office.
Lifting a binder during the House Intelligence Committee’s hearing, Stewart declared, “I’m holding here in my hand a binder of 25 examples of leaks that occurred from the special counsel’s office.”“All of these have one thing in common, they were designed to weaken or to embarrass the President,” he added. The congressman later amplified his comments on Twitter.
Reporters who’ve spent months covering Mueller and his team — and who’ve noted their reputation for not leaking — were baffled.
Stewart’s claims turned out to be specious. They were the sort of rumors that only Fox News viewers and or tin-foil hat wearing Alex Jones types are familiar with. No, Team Mueller did not leak the story about Roger Stone’s arrest to demon CNN. They had Casa Rog staked out.
A binder full of leaks sounds messy, doesn’t it?
I wonder if Stewart conferred with Utah Senator Willard Mittbot Romney about his choice of words? Who among us can forget the Binders Full Of Women moment during the 2012 debates? Not me. It launched a thousand memes, after all:
I was so intent on getting my instant analysis post online the other day that I neglected to suggest a theme song for Judiciary Committee GOPers. Bob Dylan gets the last word:
Who remember’s Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy saying, “I have in my hand a list of 75 employees of the State Department who are card carrying members of the Communist Party.” He never had a list.
We can’t seem to call out enough today’s legion of Joe McCarthy robots.
As Bob Mueller would say, “I take your question.”
The ‘binder’ thing is not new to U.S. politics. Why is it that no one is tempted to say, ‘You do? Hey! Toss it over! I’d sure like to see it!’, or, ‘Well, is that so? Go Ahead, open it up and take a couple out at random and read them!’ That does not descend to the ‘You lie!’ level of exchange that # 44 had to endure, but still, what was in that binder? At least we ‘know’ that Romney’s was full of women.