When You Set Out to Kill the King…

My wife, Patricia, and I converse with one another a great deal over coffee in the morning, over a glass of wine at dinner, and typically throughout the evening as we sit and read. When two people talk as much as we do, they generally come to a common point of view on most issues.
Well, let me tell you that is not the case regarding the next steps the nation should take in the aftermath of the just-concluded Mueller Report. Patricia is firmly of the opinion that the nation has been drawn through the mud far too long, that we need to close this chapter of divisive national politics and get on with normal life. I am resolutely of the opposite view.
I utterly agree with Patricia, that we need to work past this rupture and collaborate on the monumental issues facing us. I don’t, however, feel that unity will come about until any lingering abscesses have been excised. Some charge this investigation was, in fact, a witch hunt concocted to unseat the winner of the presidential election. If so, that would constitute a treasonous act against our democracy. The perpetrators must be punished – for reasons of both justice and deterrence. We will not know unless we investigate further; so, we must.
Such an inquiry would be of a far smaller magnitude than the Muller probe. It would not be a pursuit of needles in a haystack, as the players are already identified. It is just a matter of establishing activities and intent, which should require far less than the $30 million to $40 million price tag and 675 days Mueller consumed.
Kim Strassel, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, makes the same point in the March 25 edition, stating that these findings “… are a searing indictment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as a reminder of the need to know the story behind the bureau’s corrosive investigation. … The FBI unleashed its powers on a candidate for the office of the U.S.  presidency, an astonishing first. … And it used the most aggressive tools in its arsenal…
“None of this should ever have happened absent highly compelling evidence.” It undertook its probe on an overheard conversation by a third-tier campaign aide and a fabricated dossier financed by a rival presidential campaign. 
“Americans now deserve a full accounting of the missteps of former FBI Director James Comey and his team – in part so this never happens again.”  This is my point to Patricia. If this two-year examination was, in fact, an effort to unseat a political rival, those persons doing it must be punished. Otherwise, such dirty tricks will be employed in the future undermining the electoral process whereby we the people select our leaders. 
We as Americans can all breathe a lot easier now that this exhaustive search did not lay before us evidence that our political process was internally compromised (Russia’s efforts to undermine our political system are a separate, but unrelated concern.).
As the saying goes, “When you set out to kill the king, make sure you don’t miss.” If those who set out to unseat the president did so falsely, we need to know about it, and they need to fear the consequences.