Since June, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating whether the Russian government and the Trump campaign colluded in an effort to swing the 2016 presidential election in Trump's favor.  To help with the task, Mueller assembled a team of seventeen accomplished lawyers, although in September, two of the seventeen were terminated.

The credibility of the Mueller team depends on the degree to which the public perceives it as being above politics.  No reasonable person would think Mueller and his team members lack a political position of some sort, but American society is justified in expecting that each of them will at least maintain the appearance of objectivity and that as a team, they will have a rough balance between left- and right-leaning political views.  Mueller's enterprise is "independent" only to the degree that it betrays no sign of favoring one political side over the other.

What follows is a list of the all the team members in alphabetical order with any public information regarding their political orientation.  The likelihood that such a heavily pro-Clinton and anti-Trump team orientation happened by chance is infinitesimally small.

Zeinab Ahmad

Greg Andres: Donated money to Democrat(s).

Rush Atkinson: Donated money to the Clinton campaign.

Peter Carr

Michael Dreeben

Kyle Freeny: Donated money to the Clinton campaign and to other Democrat(s).

Andrew Goldstein: Donated money to Democrat(s).

Adam Jed

Lisa Page (dropped from Mueller team): Exchanged emails with Strzok deploring Trump.

Elizabeth Prelogar: Donated money to the Clinton campaign and to other Democrat(s).

James Quarles: Donated money to the Clinton campaign and to other Democrat(s), but also donated lesser amounts of money to Republican(s).

Jeannie Rhee: Donated money to the Clinton campaign and to other Democrat(s).  Legal defense counsel for the Clinton Foundation against a racketeering charge.

Peter Strzok (dropped from Mueller team): Exchanged emails with Page deploring Trump.

Brandon Van Grack: Donated money to Democrat(s).

Andrew Weissman (reputed to be Mueller's lead investigator): Donated money to the Clinton campaign and to other Democrat(s).  Attended Hillary's election-night "victory" party.  Sent email to acting attorney general Sally Yates complimenting her refusal to implement the Trump executive order stopping immigration from eight countries.

Aaron Zebley: Defended Hillary Clinton I.T. staffer Justin Cooper during the federal investigation of Hillary's email controversy.

Aaron Zelinsky: Wrote blogs for the Huffington Post promoting mainstream Democratic Party positions.

As we can see, thirteen of Mueller's seventeen-member team have been strongly supportive of Democrats or openly antagonistic to the Trump administration.  The politics of the remaining four are unknown.  A most disturbing thing about all this is that the cheerleaders for the Democrats have been so incautious as to potentially expose their political leaning.  All are veterans of the governmental side of the legal system, so they know that public knowledge of their political affiliation would hinder their effectiveness as neutral servants of blindfolded Lady Justice.

These are smart folks who know better.  They know that email exchanges may go public.  They know that financial contributions to politicians are public information.  They knew in advance that they had a conflict of interest – or at the very least, the appearance of one.  There are lots of great lawyers and investigators out there.  Why didn't Mueller pick ones who avoid wearing their politics on their sleeve?

Robert Mueller -- the man of great integrity.  Really?

As director of the FBI from 2001 until September of 2013, Mueller knew that Tenex (the American subsidiary of the Russian state-owned nuclear umbrella agency, Rosatom) was engaged in illegal activities with the objective of gaining Russian control over American uranium resources.  He knew this because the FBI had a spy named William Campbell inside Tenex who, starting in 2009, documented that the Russians were engaging in illegal activity to bring about the sale.  Campbell's work led to the trial in 2014 of Valery Mikerin, the head of Tenex, who was found guilty of bribery and racketeering and sent to prison.

At least as early as February of 2009, Robert Mueller also knew about a Russian spy ring that was trying to get close to the Clinton State Department for the purpose of influencing its decisions but also to be well positioned in the likely event that Hillary became president.  Mueller knew all this.  He knew that the Russians were trying to manipulate the Obama administration into approving the sale of Uranium One to Rosatom (and he knew that the Russians were angling to gain influence over Hillary as a potential president).

Uranium One was a privately owned Canadian company at the heart of the Russian gambit.  It owned the rights to about 20% of the U.S. production of uranium.  Rosatom wished to buy Uranium One, and Uranium One wanted to sell, but the deal could not occur without the approval of the Obama administration.  First it required certification by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS) and then the president's signature.  In late 2010, the sale was approved.  Not long before this, Bill Clinton received a payment of $500,000 (twice his usual fee) for a speech given in Moscow to Renaissance Capital, a Russian bank that was promoting Uranium One stock.  Shortly after approval of the Uranium One sale, over $2,000,000 was donated to the Clinton Foundation by former owners of Uranium One.

As head of the FBI, Robert Mueller was fully aware of all this history (except, possibly, the donations to the Clinton Foundation).  And yet he found no reason to question the wisdom of permitting the sale to Russia of a resource vital to American national security -- a resource in such short supply that the United States must import most of what it needs.  Of course, Mueller had no authority to stop the transfer, and it is possible he notified those higher up (Eric Holder or Barack Obama) about the Russian maneuvering to corner the global uranium market, but if he did, it only indicts those above him in authority.

If his reports to the Obama administration failed to block the disastrous sale of our uranium to Russia, why did Mueller not resign and take the whole matter public?  His failure to do so undermines his reputation as a straight shooter: it suggests he lacks the integrity to be expected of someone in his position.  Perhaps it also suggests that his alleged identity as a Republican is questionable.