The media were ecstatic when news broke that President Trump’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen reached a plea deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. 

As part of the deal, Cohen was brought into a federal court and confessed to lying to Congress during his 2017 testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee. As a result, Cohen is expected to receive a lighter sentence in exchange for helping Mueller get Trump.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Once again, this plea deal has nothing to do with the reason why Mueller’s investigation exists. Cohen’s testimony to Congress was related to a Trump Tower construction project in Moscow. Mueller is supposed to be determining whether there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives to influence the 2016 election. Cohen’s confession isn’t about the campaign. It’s about a real estate deal that ultimately did not happen.

• Lying to Congress is a very bad thing to do — but apparently only if you are a Republican. There are all kinds of people walking around Washington from the previous administration who repeatedly misled Congress and none of them have been brought to justice. Lois Lerner, John Brennan, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, and James Comey come to mind. There is also evidence that Glenn Simpson, the head of Fusion GPS who was colluding with Russians, committed perjury, which is why he is refusing to testify again.

• There is a Deep State and it wants to destroy Trump at any cost. This is now the second time that Mueller and his team of Hillary Clinton lawyers have gone into court and attempted to embarrass the president as he was out of the country preparing for a major foreign policy event. I don’t believe in the tooth fairy. And I don’t believe this is a coincidence. Donald Trump was elected to drain the swamp, and the swamp is fighting back. (Read more here.)

The Mueller/Cohen “bombshell” appears to be a dud, as a few serious journalists have noted. For example, Byron York points out that the plea deal completely ignores a key collusion allegation — that Michael Cohen traveled to Prague to coordinate with the Russians. Evidently, Robert Mueller couldn’t prove that.

And during an interview with Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, CNN’s Jake Tapper said:

“But once again I look at these documents and I don’t see any evidence of conspiracy between members of the Trump team and the Russian government to interfere in the election.”

We have heard that refrain time and again, even from famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward, yet Mueller keeps marching on.

Democrat commentator and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz brilliantly summed up the problem with the Mueller probe. Speaking to Fox News, Dershowitz said:

“I think the weakness of Mueller’s substantive findings are suggested by the fact that he has to resort to false statement prosecutions, which really shows that he didn’t start with very much…

"These are not crimes that had been committed prior to his appointment, they’re crimes that were committed as the result of his appointment… In the end, I don’t think Mueller’s going to come up with very much … and that’s pretty shocking.”

In a later Fox interview with Sean Hannity, Dershowitz added:

“The problem is Mueller is straying away from his mandate to find crime, and he is now looking for political sin. Building buildings in Moscow, using stolen material from [Julian] Assange — these are not crimes.  He has no authority to be a roving commissioner to find political sins.

"So far, I don’t see any evidence of crimes, except for ones that he helped to facilitate by getting people to lie in front of his own investigators.”

In short, Mueller is coming up empty-handed on his mandate to investigate campaign collusion, so he is setting a bunch of perjury traps to justify the continued existence of this ongoing witch hunt.

What’s Wrong

Speaker Paul Ryan is on his way out, leaving Congress when this session ends. I have worked with him many times over the years, and he is a good and decent man. 

But during an interview with The Washington Post, Ryan once again demonstrated what is wrong with the GOP establishment. Referring to the election results in California, Ryan said this:

“California just defies logic to me… This election system they have, I can’t begin to understand what ballot harvesting is…

"When you win the absentee ballots and you win the in-person vote, where I come from, you win the election. I’m not saying there’s anything nefarious about it, because I just don’t know, but we believed we were up about six seats in California the night of the election, now I think we lost just about every single one of those.”

What happened in California is outrageous! There should be a federal investigation. Ryan was right to bring it up and question the process. But then he backed off. 

Too many times, when it matters most, the GOP establishment losses its will to fight.

Just Two People

Did you see the big news? Scientists recently completed a massive study of genetic “bar codes” and were shocked to discover that all human beings are descended from two people. They could have saved time and money by just reading Chapter 1 of Genesis.