Reporters and news commentators are grief-stricken following Attorney General William Barr’s announcement this weekend that special counsel Robert Mueller’s since-closed investigation failed to establish that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election.
Consequently, various members of the news press are trying to convince themselves that this is not a victory for an administration once accused of coordinating directly with a hostile foreign government. Some are characterizing Barr’s announcement as further legal trouble for the White House. Some are denying the two-year Mueller investigation landed with a thud. Others are arguing that the president must be guilty of something, even if Mueller’s investigation failed to establish proof of collusion and obstruction.
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression. It’s all as sad as it sounds.
“The Mueller report and Barr’s letter do not change this core element of the Russia scandal: Trump and his crew engaged in a profound act of betrayal,” Mother Jones’ David Corn, who has claimed repeatedly to have uncovered evidence of “collusion,” declared in his latest promise to crack wide the Russia scandal.
“The scandal may not be a crime. It’s a betrayal,” states his article, which is titled, “Trump Aided and Abetted Russia’s Attack. That Was Treachery. Full Stop.”
Over at CNN, national security analyst Sam Vinograd explained to her 60,000-plus Twitter followers that the Justice Department’s judgment that the president “and his campaign didn’t conspire with Russia is not the same as saying that they were not Russian intelligence assets.”
For reference, the Mueller investigation, which included 40 agents, 2,800 subpoenas, some 500 search warrants, and 500 witness interviews, concluded it could not “establish that the members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Barr also there is also not enough evidence “to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
Surely, though, there must be something here to hang around the Trump administration’s neck, shout despondent members of the news media.
“Key to no prosecution on obstruction may be no evidence of an underlying crime of conspiracy with Russia,” said NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell. “But did #Mueller not find evidence of conspiracy with Russia because so many people lied? Catch-22.”
The Atlantic’s David Frum said elsewhere, “What is being called ‘vindication’ today is the acceptance not only by Trump but by the conservative world – and slices of the hard left too – of the most successful clandestine foreign perversion of a US election in US history.”
He added, “No exoneration. The president remains a security risk.”
The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, a former conservative, raged on social media, “Mueller should testify under oath to make clear everyone hears he did NOT exonerate Trump. He should go through the evidence he found of obstruction.”
“Mueller’s team investigated for 22 months but in the end the special counsel reached no conclusion – instead producing a report that merely marshaled evidence on both sides – and then Trump’s two top political appointees at DOJ made the call,” the New York Times’ Michael S. Schmidt, an actual hard-news reporter, said in a note that he laughably must have thought accurately described Sunday’s news.
New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, who rode the bogus collusion story very hard, complained elsewhere in an article titled, “If Trump Obstructed Justice, He Can’t Be Exonerated”:
[…]
The point is that his flamboyant refusal to cooperate deprives Trump of any claim to having been cleared. As Trump stated repeatedly, he considers “obstruction of justice” just a term to describe fighting back.
However, as National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke helpfully notes, the Fifth Amendment protects Americans from this exact sort of “you have nothing to fear if you’re innocent” type of nonsense.
It’s a good effort by Chait and company to spin the Barr news into something negative for the Trump administration. It’s utterly ridiculous, but it’s a good effort anyway. Don’t stop believing. Hold on to that feeling.
