I would love to have seen Mueller or the Democrats argue the Republican challenges to Mueller because those will be floating around in the ether without much of a challenge. But let me deal with one.
The FBI has had an ongoing investigation into Russian spying in the US since before the Cold War. Over the past decade, the best FBI team on counter-intelligence against the Russians was led by Peter Strzok. Strzok knew every intricacy of the Russian efforts as did most of his team. So when Papadoplous was identified as having been approached by a Russian spy, that was merely adding to what Strzok and the FBI already knew.
The British counterpart to Strzok was Michael Steele. They knew each other because they shared intel as needed. So when Mitt Romney wanted intel on Trump, he hired a research group that went to the newly retired Michael Steele who sent a numbers of reports to Romney and to his friend, Peter Strzok, at the FBI.
Strzok added that material to his already expansive files on Russian espionage being monitored and countered by his team.
When Romney dropped out, the Clinton Campaign took up the research firm's work to help them, knowing the FBI was already on the case.
The Republicans have no case trying to say it was Steele who started everything and blame Hillary for it. Even if the Steele material never came along, the FBI was long ago on the case and had enough to allow Pres. Obama to throw out two Russian troll teams working in the US, impose new sanctions on the Russians, and confiscate their mansions before he left office.
BTW, when the Strzok and Paige emails came out, Mueller immediately removed them from his team. Under Jeff Sessions, the rest of Strzok's anti Russian spy team was fired or removed without any reason given. Maybe the Republicans need to investigate THAT!
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