It took 22 months for special counsel Robert Mueller to deliver his definitive report to the Department of Justice. Less than 48 hours later, Attorney General William Barr is in with his verdict: neither President Trump nor anyone on his campaign colluded or conspired with the Russian government in their multiple attempts to illicitly interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
In the course of his investigation, Mueller issued over 2,800 subpoenas, interviewed around 500 witnesses, made 13 requests from foreign governments for evidence, and executed almost 500 search warrants. Despite nearly two years of sustained hysteria across cable news and print media, Mueller ran a watertight operation, devoid of the leaks that have plagued the Trump administration itself.
As skeptics across the political spectrum have maintained, including our editors, Trump ought to have welcomed the Mueller probe. The former FBI director was a stalwart professional of the highest order, a Republican appointee of the Bush era, and an apolitical fixture of the deep state, unlike those tainted by the biases and leaks of those surrounding his since ousted successor, James Comey. There were no ill-advised press conferences and there was a total absence of fame hungry underlings clandestinely sharing secrets with the press.
In the two-year odyssey of the Mueller probe, there was neither smoke nor fire. The most damning possibility was the Trump Tower meeting, first publicly reported on more than 20 months ago. If Don Jr., Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and since incarcerated and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort had actually conspired or colluded with the Kremlin’s Natalia Veselnitskaya, the president would run the severe risk of impeachment on the basis of a campaign gone rogue. But not only was Trump exonerated for collusion or criminal conspiracy, but his entire clown car of a campaign was exonerated as well.
Mueller, unfairly smeared by Trump for the better part of two years, could not find a shred of evidence to charge Trump or his colleagues with a single collusion crime, and Trump ought to be thankful that his better friends encouraged him to let the investigation run its course.
Right-wing renegades will surely continue to lambaste Mueller and the Deep State, but they ought to be thanking him. Trump played too public a game of footsie with a foreign dictator while the opposite party still occupied the White House. With his sycophancy toward Vladimir Putin, and his erroneous and politically charged ouster of Comey, he brought the appointment of a special counsel upon himself.
Liberals will likely mull over Barr’s section regarding obstruction of justice. I’d like to save them some time in advance and remind them a basic truth of most process crimes: it’s a fool’s errand. While it’s easily the most uncertain portion of Mueller’s report, at least as Barr puts it, it is telling that nearly 3,000 subpoenas later, Mueller was unable to recommend charging Trump or any of his associates with obstruction or any other process crimes.
Say anything you will about Trump’s rhetoric and conduct toward women, immigrants, minorities, former business associates, or even his own subordinates’ spouses. But Mueller just exonerated him of the single worst charge a president can face: Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. In doing so, he extinguished 22 months worth of #Resistance hopes and dreams.
