Oh my, how will the erstwhile unimpeachable, and irreproachable Robert Mueller rescue his reputation? In mid-June the former FBI director under presidents Bush and Obama -- Washington DC’s liege lord -- recruited thirteen, now up to twenty-one, mostly partisan adventure seeking knights-errant formerly pledged to Hillary, presumably determined to slay the “Russians, and Trump hacked the election” dragon.

Any honorable counselor would have demurred. Not Robert Mueller. Bored with semi-retirement, he could have gone gathering black winter truffles in the royal forest. Not Robert Mueller. He chose to search for the Black Knight.

Meanwhile, Independence Day, Veterans’ Day, and Thanksgiving have come and gone. Mueller’s armorers have outfitted his legion with lance, mail, and mace. Percherons are groomed, and well fed. But where have these knights-errant trotted about to find a worthy errand? Capturing beleaguered Michael Flynn who admitted lying to the FBI about conversations that were perfectly legal. Where is the evidence of collusion, and nefarious collaboration charges against Trump and his insurgents? There isn’t any.

Trump’s threats to the republic have vanished, like so many ghosts evaporating from a misty heath after sunrise.

Former Obama valet, Jeh Johnson, also holding the tenuous title Secretary of Homeland Security -- stumbling over honesty carelessly discarded at the bottom of the turret stairs -- was the most recent Obama official to debunk the ‘Russia hacked the election” theme. And president Barack Obama was well aware of the attempts by the Russians to hack into more than 100 state election polling systems, amongst other mischief-makings. Yet Obama informed no one else, much less sounded any alarms, until Trump was elected, instead creating the phony chronicle that it was Donald Trump who facilitated the Russian malfeasance.

But there was no Trump criminal conspiracy with the Russians, a longstanding truth finally disgorged by Chaucer’s glutton of sanctimony, former FBI chief James Comey, a Mueller pal, and confidant.

As Andrew McCarthy writing in National Review and others have pointed out -- notably retired Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, not exactly a Trump partisan -- collusion without a crime is no more nefarious than two passersby tipping their hats. Collaboration is equally innocuous, unless it drifts into a conspiracy to commit a crime, which no one, including Comey, Mueller, nor any Democrat party member of Congress, except resorting to innuendo, have shown any evidence, neither blood nor motive.

And Trump’s so-called obstruction was never to frustrate the finding of truth, already known to Comey, and Senate/House leaders. Instead Trump called out the conspirators who refused to reveal the truth -- that Trump has never been the target of a conspiracy nor an obstruction probe, and there is zero evidence of Trump or his associates in conspiring with anybody -- except legitimate voters -- to seize electoral victory.

Moreover, Comey’s unwitting, and Johnson’s nearly prostrate, confessions opened the drawbridge inviting Mueller to redirect his probe into those Democrat party co-conspirators, the DNC, Comey’s FBI, and the Obama Justice Department.

Comey unveiled Obama’s late-term AG Loretta Lynch’s conspiracy to keep the unindicted criminal Hillary Clinton screened off from charging her with obvious felonies, by obstructing the FBI investigation, and providing secret warnings and tip-offs to the DNC.

Or was it Obama himself who desperately wanted Hillary to succeed him, not to secure an honorable legacy, but inoculate himself from post-presidency opposition scrutiny on his entire administration -- ranging from gunrunning into Mexico, to illicit arms trading via Libya to Syrian rebels, to spying on members of Congress, to Benghazi, to IRS targeting of conservatives, to unmasking of U.S. citizens via intelligence bureau sweeps of opponents’ communications.

Meanwhile South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy, teased out from Jeh Johnson how the FBI was itself an accessory to the coverup -- and diversion -- over the mysterious DNC refusal to “cooperate” with the FBI in examining its server for alleged Russian hacking evidence -- more likely containing evidence that the hacking was an inside job. More sinister are the FBI’s and DNC’s fingerprints all over the procurement, assembly, and dissemination of the salacious fake smear dossier on Trump.

Mueller’s own incompetence, and cover up in the FBI malfeasance over the Uranium One pay-for-play conspiracy directed by Bill and Hillary, is just more of the same sordid intrigue undermining truth, justice and the American Way.

Mueller and his knights-errant could accept a compelling crusade, the beckoning to cross the drawbridge into the Democrat courtyard cum cesspool which would yield a treasure of corruption, and criminal conspiracy, justifying millions of special prosecutor salaries, office costs, IT security, travel expenses, special consultants, leather briefcases and black trench coats. Something to show for all of the melodrama.

Instead, Robert Mueller can only muster a feeble roundup of a few poachers in the royal forest who have taken a wild boar or two for Christmas Eve’s past, snatched a wayward goose, and dragged a red herring across a sheriff’s trail.

Thus, Mueller’s percherons savor grasses on the high meadow, waiting to be saddled up for something athletic, while his knights yearn for tales of brave cunning that will never be. And Robert Mueller, the inscrutable Grand Prior, seems content to wield a mighty whetstone grinding on idle blades, ready to slay only trifles and tangents.