So, This Mueller Investigation...

Have I mentioned once or twice or three dozen times that I am very dubious about Special Counsel Bob Mueller's investigation? That I am concerned it lacks urgency? That I fear it will effectively, if not intentionally, create all the space Republicans need to consolidate power while keeping the public complacent and patiently waiting for accountability that will never actually come? That maybe lifetime Republican Mueller isn't actually as interested as we are in seeing an entire Republican administration brought to its knees and then frog-marched out of the White House?

Anyway. Here are two things that I find concerning!

1. Zachary Warmbrodt at Politico: Schiff Questions Mueller's Approach on Deutsche Bank.

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff on Sunday raised doubts about the extent to which special counsel Robert Mueller has probed [Donald] Trump's dealings with Deutsche Bank, bolstering Democrats' case for moving ahead with an investigation into the German lender.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," the California Democrat cited reporting that Trump had once sought to fire Mueller over reports that investigators had subpoenaed Deutsche Bank — crossing a "red line" into his family's finances — but that the president backed down after being told the claims were inaccurate.

"If the special counsel hasn't subpoenaed Deutsche Bank, he can't be doing much of a money laundering investigation," Schiff said.

Schiff has previously been very careful to say that House investigations would not step on Mueller's toes, so the fact that he and his colleague Rep. Maxine Waters are launching an investigation into Deutsche Bank suggests that Mueller has indeed not been doing that investigation himself. Yikes.

2. Sharon LaFraniere, Kenneth P. Vogel, and Scott Shane at the New York Times: In Closed Hearing, a Clue About 'the Heart' of Mueller's Russia Inquiry.

Of the few hints to emerge from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, about evidence of possible collusion between [Donald] Trump's campaign and Russia, one of the most tantalizing surfaced almost in passing in a Washington courtroom last week.

Comments by one of Mr. Mueller's lead prosecutors, disclosed in a transcript of a closed-door hearing, suggest that the special counsel continues to pursue at least one theory: that starting while Russia was taking steps to bolster Mr. Trump's candidacy, people in his orbit were discussing deals to end a dispute over Russia's incursions into Ukraine and possibly give Moscow relief from economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.

WTF. This is not a theory. We have known that the Trump campaign pressed for a change to the Republican platform's plank on Ukraine since before the 2016 election. The lead story in my We Resist thread from March 3, 2017 — nearly two years ago — was about J.D. Gordon, the Trump campaign's national security policy representative for the Republican National Convention, openly admitting "that he pushed to alter an amendment to the GOP's draft policy on Ukraine at the Republican National Convention last year to further align it with [Trump's] views," which just happen to align with Vladimir Putin's.

Either the Times is gaslighting the fuck out of us, or the Mueller investigation is even hotter garbage than I imagined. (And I'm not ruling out "both" as an option.) This is infuriating. Fuck.