After 2,800 subpoenas, 500 executed search warrants, millions of pages of documents, and 500 witness interviews over a span of 22 months, the conclusions reached by special counsel Robert Mueller on Trump campaign collusion and obstruction of justice are unquestionable wins for President Trump. Attorney General William Barr’s four-page summary of Mueller’s exhaustive report is essentially a legalistic version of what the president has been tweeting and saying since the first day of the special counsel investigation: “No collusion. No obstruction!”
You could practically hear Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow’s delight when they called into CNN about an hour after Barr’s letter was released. The two lawyers put in countless late nights and weekends dealing with perhaps the most difficult client on the planet while at the same time battling Mueller’s team of hungry, aggressive prosecutors. Barr’s judgment that Trump did not commit an obstructionist offense and that the underlying investigatory thread, coordination with Russia during the 2016 presidential election, simply didn’t happen will be as much of a relief to Giuliani and Sekulow as it is to Trump.
Yet it would be the height of naivete to believe the book is closed. Democrats on Capitol Hill are not just going to take the attorney general’s conclusions and move on to new things. One key line in Barr’s letter, “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” provides House Democrats with an opportunity to move Mueller’s investigation from the special counsel’s nondescript Washington, D.C., office building to the halls of Congress. You can bet your bottom dollar that Democrats will use their subpoena power if that’s what it takes to figure out why Barr made the prosecutorial decision he did and why he took only 48 hours before issuing his initial findings.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., is already vowing to bring in Barr for a hearing.
Special Counsel Mueller worked for 22 months to determine the extent to which President Trump obstructed justice. Attorney General Barr took 2 days to tell the American people that while the President is not exonerated, there will be no action by DOJ.
— (((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler) March 24, 2019
The chairman isn’t the only one who has questions; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will be demanding declassification of the full Mueller report so the public can make their own determinations. If the Trump administration doesn’t cooperate, Nadler will subpoena Mueller for his testimony and get the details in a far more dramatic way. If Nadler doesn’t do it, Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., one of Trump’s most effective instigators in Washington, will.
Such a strategy is certainly possible, and indeed likely, from a party who thought obstruction of justice was in the bag. One goal of this approach is ensuring maximum transparency. But another is getting into the weeds of Mueller’s full report (some of those weeds could be steamier than Barr’s lawyerly assessment), showering sunlight on those weeds, and putting the president back on the defensive. Whatever Democrats decide to do, the White House Counsel’s Office will remain busy fighting requests for information and preparing for a lawsuit that may or may not come.
Sunday was the best day President Trump has had since Election Day 2016. The president’s men are rejoicing. Trump is defiant in victory. Donald Trump Jr. is bragging. Congressional Republicans are jubilant, ready to use Barr’s summary to bludgeon Democrats as the real obstructionists.
But make no mistake: this is the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end. The fight will go on for weeks and months, this time over whether the attorney general made the right call and whether impeachment should be on the table.
Americans will be smothered with all things Russia for a little while to come.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
