Full transcript of Mueller’s court ‘beatdown’ shows how bad it really was for him, Brit Hume has message for the judge

Special Counsel Robert Mueller had a really bad day Friday when a federal judge in Virginia sharply challenged his case against Paul Manafort, suggesting that Mueller overstepped his authority in a quest to topple President Donald Trump from office.

Judge T. S. Ellis III said prosecutors had pursued fraud charges against Manafort in hopes of gaining evidence to incriminate the president, according to The New York Times.

(Photo credit BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud,” said Ellis, who reportedly lost his temper at times. “You really care about getting information that Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Trump and lead to his prosecution or impeachment or whatever.”

Ellis said the charges against Manafort “manifestly don’t have anything to do with the campaign or with Russian collusion,” and that Mueller may be overstepping his authority to “tighten the screws” on Manafort so he’ll give up the goods on Trump, The Times reported.

“I don’t see what relation this indictment has with anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate,” he said, according to the transcripts. “What we don’t want in this country is we don’t want anyone with unfettered power.”

If that doesn’t convince you how bad a day it was for Mueller, then take the word of Fox News senior news correspondent Brit Hume, a widely respected journalist, who took to social media to offer his analysis after reading the transcript from Friday’s hearing.

“I did not realize until I read the full transcript of Friday’s court hearing how badly it went for the Mueller team, which was reduced to arguing: yeah, we violated the regulations governing special counsels but those regs are not enforceable in court,” Hume tweeted, linking to those transcripts.

Hume also expressed gratitude to Judge Ellis for “bringing such a violation to light.”

“Mueller’s team may be right that the court can’t toss the Manafort indictment based on violation of the special counsel regulations,” he said in a follow-up tweet, “but we are in debt to the judge for bringing such a violation to light.”

President Trump commented on the judge’s comments Friday during a speech at the National Rifle Association annual meeting, suggesting it confirms that Mueller is out of control.

“I’ve been saying that for a long time,” Trump said. “It’s a witch hunt.”

Hume linked to the Techno Fog Twitter feed in another tweet for the crib notes of the 48 pages of transcript.

“Great thread if you’re interested in the Federal Court hearing 5/4 where the judge challenged the special counsel’s authority to conduct the investigation that led the a Paul Manafort indictment. Interesting read,” he tweeted.

Techno Fog shared a blow-by-blow of the beating Team Mueller took Friday, as seen here:

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