Here’s where we are in the investigation into Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election: Special counsel Robert Mueller hasn’t charged anyone with anything related to collusion with the Russians; President Trump seems more annoyed by this fact than one might expect.
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is on trial for alleged crimes that don’t involve collusion and have little to do with the campaign. The president on Wednesday compared him to “Alfonse” Capone, who was convicted of the least of his crimes.
“Where is the Russian Collusion?” Trump demanded. He tweeted for the first time that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has recused himself from the Mueller probe, should shut it down. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani taunted Mueller: “I guess if we were playing poker, we’re not, but we’d say, ‘Put up or shut up. What do you got?'”
Giuliani then answered his own question: “We have every reason to believe they don’t have anything.”
If by “anything” the former New York City mayor means evidence that the president was complicit in a Russian conspiracy to sway the last election, he may have a point. Giuliani doesn’t need to even quibble with whether collusion is actually a crime — that’s not what Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, or George Papadopoulos have been charged with doing. Carter Page has yet to be charged with anything. The indicted Russians, if they ever step inside a U.S. courtroom, so far don’t have any publicly identified campaign allies.
None of the indictments even try to build the case that a broader Trump-Russia conspiracy exists, despite the infamous Trump Tower meeting and suspicious contacts with Papadopoulos and Page. All the public signals point to the president being more of a person of interest with regard to obstruction of justice, not collusion — which makes the tweet to Sessions all the more inexplicable, since it comes after reports Mueller was looking at Trump Twitter activity as part of his “wide-ranging” obstruction probe.
Aside from some ominous notes in the last wave of Mueller indictments that appear to reference longtime Trump political adviser Roger Stone — who had no formal role in the campaign — and inferences drawn from when certain Russian cyberattacks occurred in relation to comments by candidate Trump, the defense is arousing more suspicion than the prosecution.
Liberals, among other Trump detractors, have begun to assert that Helsinki was collusion in plain sight while the president’s tweets constitute obstruction in plain sight. The prevailing theory of how Manafort’s current trial is connected to collusion is that it will make apparent how dependent his lifestyle was on Russian interests at the time he took an unpaid senior position with the Trump campaign.
Writing in GQ, Julia Ioffe made this claim: “The kompromat is the election result itself, and Trump is lashing out at the people who are trying to get him to do something on its basis: the press, the Democrats, the intelligence community, Robert Mueller, and Trump’s own Department of Justice.”
This ought to take us far afield from disseminating stolen Democratic emails and directing the deployment of Russian troll farms, the definition of collusion that carries the greatest risk of impeachment. And yet something feels off about Trump’s escalating public assault on Mueller following his break with Michael Cohen, even in the absence of new information that would imperil his presidency.
[Related: Trump calls on Jeff Sessions to end Russia probe ‘right now’]
Perhaps Trump and Giuliani merely want Mueller to quit while they are ahead. Certainly, Trump would like to have the Russia cloud hanging over him lifted. No matter what Mueller finds or alleges, it is important to shape public opinion and preserve a bulwark of Republican skepticism of a probe powered by “17 Angry Democrats.” Finally, Trump is an impulsive man who often just can’t help himself, speaking (or tweeting) where silence would be the prudent course.
The output of the Trump-Russia investigation thus far suggests Republican skepticism is warranted, at least as far as the president and direct coordination with the Russians are concerned. The tweets, however, speak for themselves.
