Fox Business guest refers to Mueller as ‘Anthrax Bob’

A Fox Business Network guest on Friday hit special counsel Robert Mueller over his management of the case involving the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and sickened 17 others.

Heather Higgins, president of the conservative-leaning Independent Woman’s Voice, joked Friday that the special counsel should be nicknamed “Anthrax Bob” over the Justice Department’s failure to identify the correct suspect in the case.

“Can we call him Anthrax Bob?” Higgins joked on Friday’s episode of “Mornings with Maria,” evoking laughter from host Maria Bartiromo.

“Because he is so revered, this is the man who, for five years, pursued somebody who clearly was not the cause of anthrax and wasted all of this taxpayer money on an investigation, Bob Mueller,” Higgins added.

{mosads}Mueller has been criticized for his handling of the case, which ended after a wrongfully identified suspect was exonerated and the key suspected perpetrator, Bruce Edward Ivins, committed suicide upon being informed by lawyers that he was about to be charged with murder for the attacks.

Ivins was not identified as the primary suspect in the case until 2008, years after Mueller’s unsuccessful prosecution of Steven Hatfill, a virologist in the Army’s laboratories.

Higgins’s comments came a day after Mueller’s investigation secured a guilty plea from Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former longtime attorney, for lying to Congress about Trump’s reported ties to Russia.

Trump and his supporters have sought to discredit Mueller’s investigation, often labeling it a “witch hunt” intended to undermine the president’s administration.