"The crime at the center of this deep-state initiative is the election of Donald Trump." But his biggest crime has been fighting back against his enemies!

In American Greatness, Roger Kimball writes about Mueller's prosecution of Manafort,

...The point is, when you have carte-blanche to torment someone, why stop when you’ve got him locked up for life? Like a cat toying with an injured mouse, the modern major prosecutor keeps batting his prey about till he stops moving altogether. What might have been justice for a serial killer is gleefully applied to someone who fudged his tax returns or tripped over himself answering an FBI agent. Then we have sadism, not justice.

When it comes to our legal system, they say that the process is the punishment. But that leaves out the other side of the equation: that for the system, for wretched power-drunk commissars like Robert Mueller, the process, because of the punishment, is all the fun. They enjoy tormenting people.

...The crime at the center of this deep-state initiative is the election of Donald Trump. The tort? He was elected without the permission of the ruling class, its jesters and its scribes and moralists. Pete Wehner does not approve of Donald Trump. Bill Kristol thinks he is infra-dig. Psychiatrists are still trying to figure out what Mad Max Boot and Jabbering John Brennan think.

But this, Ladies and Gentlemen (and unlike the MTA and the London Tube, we still use the phrase “Ladies and Gentlemen” here), this is the crime: Donald Trump was elected. That’s it. That’s the crime. It’s not in the statute books, but a little thing like that never stopped a diligent bureaucrat, especially one armed with a phalanx of partisan prosecutors and an unlimited budget.

Getting Donald Trump is the point of this entire sordid “investigation.” (It has a subsidiary goal of distracting attention from the only real Russian collusion in the 2016 election, that between the Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS, and Christopher Steele on one side and dubious Russian sources “close to the Kremlin” on the other, but that really is just a collateral benefit to team Mueller.)

...Think about this: not one of the people indicted by this wholesale indictment factory, not one, would have been indicted had Mueller not thought him a possible conduit to the president. How’s that for guilt by association?

In practical terms, it means that the president has to approach the midterms not state-by-state but nationally. The midterms are a referendum of the 2016 election. The president needs to go to the people and ask: was your vote in 2016 legitimate?

He should say: “I promised you judges who would interpret the law, not seek to make the law, stronger borders, tax cuts, economic growth, low unemployment, a stronger military, and a more rational, less intrusive regulatory environment. I have delivered on those things as much as Congress would allow me. Do you want more of that or do you want tax hikes, weaker borders, and more regulation? Do you want more Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Nancy Pelosi or Brett Kavanaugh and Mike Pompeo? That’s your choice in November.”

A nonpartisan friend (he did not vote for Trump or Hillary) wrote me with another bit of practical advice for the president. Reflecting on the vindictive, death-by-a-thousand-cuts procedure of Robert Mueller, he noted that the president could “avoid this form of slow water torture by simply pardoning Manafort and anyone else who has gotten in Mueller’s sights.

...After somehow managing to get elected, Donald Trump’s biggest crime has been fighting back against his enemies. They are not used to a president who gives as good as he gets. They’re used to having a monopoly on calling people unpleasant names and acting like dyspeptic toddlers. Donald Trump has had the temerity to repay them in kind. How dare he! Robert Mueller has been about impeachment all along. Bring it on, and let’s see what happens.

Read more here.