When now-former Special Counsel Robert Mueller strode to the podium Wednesday morning (punctual, as per his usual) he appeared exhausted and war-weary. The former decorated Vietnam War Marine has aged a lifetime since he was tapped to head the investigation into the Kremlin’s election-meddling during the 2016 presidential campaign. Resignedly he began to speak, knowing each understated sentence and every particular chosen word would be parsed, dissected, and hyper-scrutinized by basement litigators and couch-confined investigators.

We witnessed quintessential Mueller — economy of words, the penetrating stare that accompanies a particular point he wants to resonate, and a refusal to take questions from the assembled press. I know this from having stood a few feet from him during innumerable protection details for the one-time FBI director, both stateside and in a combat theater.