We didn’t need a “special counsel” to tell us President Trump had not colluded with Russia to help him win the 2016 election. If a high-level Department of Justice official, a federal judge, or practically anyone with a law degree had been assigned the collusion investigation, he or she would have recognized Trump’s innocence from the start. And declared, “There’s no case here.”
Indeed, there was none: no evidence of a crime, no serious leads, nothing to suggest an indictment or impeachment would soon follow. True, Trump had foolishly boasted to an interviewer he had fired FBI Director James Comey to rid himself of the Russia probe. But that didn’t change the lack of facts on the ground.
Trump has a knack for getting himself in trouble. His remark, along with the intrigue of Comey, pressure from a horde of Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and the media’s eagerness to attack Trump, led to the summoning of Robert Mueller.
The result was an intense and seemingly never-ending drama. The country was tortured for 22 months with the possibility — even the likelihood — the president or his campaign aides had committed treason.
We will never know the full extent of the collateral damage. Special counsels can be counted on to produce plenty of it. They always have created national anxiety. Mueller was no exception. He knew he was under extreme pressure to find wrongdoing by Trump. And heaven knows he tried.
Attorney General William Barr summarized his effort: “He issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records, issued almost 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers, made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses.”
This massive scale didn’t impress the media. They got excited, but only briefly, over Mueller’s prosecution of Trump’s advisers and allies, such as his onetime campaign manager Paul Manafort, ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn, and personal lawyer Michael Cohen.
As captured prey, they weren’t sufficient. Mueller’s burden was far greater. He was expected to uncover crimes by Trump himself. That was why he was appointed in the first place. And that’s why he was under such pressure. He had been elevated to the status of national hero. He needed to deliver Trump in chains.
When he didn’t, the criticism and second-guessing erupted. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow had 15 unfriendly questions. Others said he should have interrogated Trump face to face rather than let him answer questions in writing. California Democrat Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, complained the Mueller report didn’t appear to address whether “the president or those around him had been compromised in any way by a hostile foreign power.”
So what was the collateral damage? The country was badly divided before the inquest. We’re divided more fiercely now. The split over the Vietnam War was tepid in comparison. Twenty-two months of hype of the investigation brought out the worst in Trump, the political community, and the media.
The press changed palpably and not for the better. It did something that’s common in the European press but new here: It took sides. The president became the enemy. What guided coverage was a “narrative” in which the president or his aides had connived with the Russians to tilt the election his way. And that may be why he won.
The problem is the narrative was false. But while it lasted, the president’s poll numbers stagnated as the economy recovered, a tax cut passed, and a wave of judicial nominees was confirmed. The Mueller probe and the press kept Trump polls from matching his presidential success. For sure, his personal conduct, often obnoxious, played a part. To no one’s surprise, voters, including a sizable chunk of Republicans, fled Trump in the midterm election. And that’s why the GOP lost the House.
The effect of the Mueller venture on hostile foreign leaders is impossible to gauge now. But we saw how a long-running scandal affected Bill Clinton. With Clinton weakened by the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998, Saddam Hussein kicked the U.N. inspectors out of Iraq. And got away with it.
Did Kim Jong Un of North Korea back away from reducing his nuclear arsenal when he saw Trump losing strength as the Mueller probe lingered? Maybe. What did Vladimir Putin think when he saw Trump’s grip on Washington waning? His troublemaking around the world increased.
There’s a lesson here, one we should have learned from the persecution of an innocent man, Scooter Libby, by an earlier special counsel.
Fred Barnes, a Washington Examiner senior columnist, was a founder and executive editor of the Weekly Standard.
