Why the optimism?

Why is everyone in the liberal media signalling optimism on the Mueller front?

Trump sure is acting as though he has gotten a Mueller status report -- one that he (Trump) liked. Yesterday, Trump said that Mueller will be wrapping up soon. How would Trump know?

The President received his take-home quiz in October but held off on answering until after the elections, when he replaced Sessions with his toady Whitaker. I don't know what Whitaker has found out, or how he found it out, but it is fair to presume that Mueller has fewer secrets now than he did before.

And now Trump has answered the questions. I'm betting that Manafort has kept certain beans from spillage.

I'm worried about Trump's lack of worry. To me, his recent tweets and statements about Mueller have not seemed unhinged. They've seemed cocky. 

Here's what Marcy Wheeler had to say about that two days ago:

There’s good reason not to reveal publicly whether Manafort is cooperating fully until you’ve gotten whatever answers you’re going to get or given up waiting. If you reveal in a status report that Mueller’s team thinks Manafort hasn’t been cooperating, then Trump would feel more free to lie. If you reveal Manafort has been cooperating fully, including about Trump’s actions (in contradiction to some reports that he hasn’t been), then Trump will be more likely to avoid answering.

Yesterday, Trump announced that he has answered his questions, although he had not yet transmitted those answers to Mueller.

I'll believe that Mueller has the upper hand when I see a change in the public attitude displayed by Michael Flynn, Jr. So far, he has been defiantly MAGA. The son spent yesterday tweeting about what a communist Eric Swalwell supposedly is. (I'm all for changing the libel laws to allow public figures like Swalwell greater leeway to sue the people who tell such lies.)

Yesterday, we learned a new aspect of the Flynn saga:

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the GOP activist, Peter W. Smith, who died in 2017, secretly raised $100,000 to secure emails deleted from Mrs. Clinton’s private computer server, and that he struck up a professional relationship with Mike Flynn, then a Trump aide, who later pleaded guilty in connection with special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Mr. Smith was in contact with powerful Republicans in Mr. Trump’s orbit into the final months of his life, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Mr. Flynn and others, according to interviews and the emails reviewed by the Journal.

The emails show Mr. Smith brainstormed about business ventures involving Mr. Flynn and later went so far as to copy Mr. Flynn’s government-provided email account on a message to Mr. Trump’s incoming defense secretary, Mr. Mattis. In February 2016, Mr. Smith wrote to a friend to discuss “a possible way into cybersecurity to involve Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn.”

An attorney for Mr. Flynn declined to comment. The Pentagon also declined to comment.

Other emails that Mr. Flynn is copied on show Mr. Smith either communicating directly with high-level Trump administration officials and allies or discussing such connections.

"A possible way into cybersecurity"? What does that mean?

At any rate, Smith was in contact with "several groups" of hackers -- Russian hackers -- while remaining in communication with these high-level Trumpers. "No collusion" my ass.

I find Smith's "suicide" suspicious, since it came just a short while after he started talking to reporters at the WSJ. The "bag over head" method can be applied to an unconscious or woozy person, and there are ways to induce unconsciousness that won't show up in an autopsy. (Based on this, I think ruhypnol and GHB might do the trick.) Yes, there was a suicide note, but such things can be faked. From Wikipedia:

Police discovered a suicide note by Smith that stated no foul play was involved in his committing suicide, and that he was in poor health and his life insurance policy was expiring. However, it has been reported that that insurance policy was good for 8 more years.

If the note was genuine, why didn't Smith know the details of his own policy?

Alas, the only people questioning the suicide verdict are right-wing whackadoodles who automatically presume that Evil Hillary murdered Smith, no doubt with the help of Evil Soros. Seems awfully self-defeating for Evil Hillary to whack the guy shortly after he started blabbing about his ties to Flynn and Team Trump.