Attorney General William Barr appears before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee to make his Justice Department budget request, Wednesday, April 10, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

The Hill’s Kevin Brock published a quote from an anonymous Wyoming rancher. This shrewd man said, “We know that old boy didn’t actually steal any horses, but he’s obviously guilty of trying to avoid being hanged for it.” I don’t think I’ve ever read a better, more understandable explanation of what the Mueller Report is all about.

We know that Trump didn’t collude with the Russians to win the presidency. We knew it before the Mueller Report was released. And the report confirmed it.

Three previous investigations had drawn the same conclusion.

But Mueller and his minions, all of whom were Democrats, and many of whom were donors, couldn’t disappoint their anti-Trump comrades by coming up empty-handed.

Trump was understandably angry and frustrated over being accused of a crime he had not committed, especially because he knew they knew he hadn’t done it. But he was powerless to do anything about it other than comply to their requests. And sometimes, he lashed out at those who had unfairly accused him. As anyone would.

On one of those occasions, he ordered the White House Counsel, Dan McGahn, to arrange for Mueller to be fired. McGahn wisely refused and the Mueller investigation continued along.

Even if McGahn had followed Trump’s orders, it wouldn’t have been illegal. A new Special Counsel would have been appointed to replace Mueller, but it would not have made the investigation go away.

Determined to find a crime and grasping at straws, the Mueller team decided to turn Trump’s angry behavior and his request to have Mueller fired, into the crime of obstruction.

As lawyers, they knew Trump’s actions fell well short of obstruction. However, they also knew that the process of impeachment in the House was not subject to the same legal standard. So, while they could not charge the President with a crime, they provided a roadmap for House Democrats to impeach him.

As the wise rancher said, Trump is “guilty of trying to avoid being hanged” for the crime he did not commit.

At this point, some Democrats are so rooted in their three-year-old narrative that, at some level, they may actually believe Trump committed a crime. But, the smarter ones, know that they perpetuated a lie. And, as they feel the DOJ’s noose tightening, their actions are becoming more desperate.

Brock, a former Assistant Director of Intelligence for the FBI, and an FBI special agent for 24 years, says, “That is why we are seeing the principals involved — Comey, McCabe, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper — clamoring ahead of time to set a diverting narrative focused on the “badness” of the president. Their nervousness is easy to spot.

Brock asks a question in a Hill op-ed, “Want the truth?” And he provides an answer which is, “Put your money on Bill Barr, not Jerry Nadler.”

Referring to the rancher, he writes:

The House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), wants a hangin’ no matter what. We know they’re serious because they had former Nixon counselor John Dean testify, which had everyone in America under age 60 searching Google. The parallels to Watergate apparently are uncanny in the minds of some.

Let’s face it, Congress seems little more than a parody now. The legislative branch of our constitutional government has withered to a thin twig, completely overshadowed by the executive and judicial branches that have far more impact on our lives.

Rightly, he says that they have “abandoned America’s right to sober, statesman-like, bipartisan lawmaking in exchange for political demagogue theater.”

The “obstruction of justice by the president” chimera that House members are chasing along party lines pales in comparison to their own corrupt, empty practices. Out of frustration stemming from their evident irrelevance, they are hurling, tantrum-like, subpoenas for personal financial records without legitimate legislative grounds, along with increasing contempt of Congress citations and threats against anyone who won’t buy a ticket to their party politics theater.

Frankly, most Americans hold Congress itself in contempt.

I would recommend reading Brock’s entire op-ed. Here are some of the highlights.

The Mueller report has surfaced a concern much greater than fuzzy obstruction of justice issues: Did the intelligence community of the Obama administration initiate an intelligence operation, illegitimately leveraging the immense powers of government, against an opposition party presidential campaign?

Were members of the Trump campaign, as U.S. citizens, improperly targeted by confidential human sources of either the FBI or CIA prior to an official investigation initiation? Early indicators of potential misuse are troubling.

Did the interaction of these sources with Trump campaign members actually help create the predication that Comey’s team relied on to justify the initiation of its counterintelligence investigation? In other words, did the government enable its own investigation?

The attorney general’s efforts, in all likelihood, will expose the sad truth that one political party abused governmental powers to go after the other political party. And now they want to impeach because their abusive efforts failed. It’s an ugly truth, but we deserve to know it in full.

Well, the attorney general has been armed with a couple of power tools that should not be underestimated in their effect. The first is a presidential order to the heads of intelligence community agencies to fully cooperate with Barr’s requests for information, and the second grants the attorney general the authority to declassify documents and records as needed when relevant to his inquiry.

Attorney General Barr probably will uncover the ultimate truth if he gets the cooperation that has been ordered. Put your money on him. The legislative twig, not so much.