For years, the political world has been consumed by the question of whether special counsel Robert Mueller would provide Congress with enough ammunition to impeach President Trump. Now that the report is out, it appears that the answer is no.
Though there are many aspects of the report that reveal improper behavior by Trump, the reality is that the report concluded that there was no coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, and it was equivocal on the question of obstruction of justice.
The report and its contents will be an ongoing source of partisan wrangling, but its release does not change the overriding political dynamic. That is, even if House Democrats have the sufficient votes to impeach Trump, there is no way that Senate Republicans will go along with them.
One could certainly argue that Republicans were ready to stand by Trump no matter what Mueller ended up finding. And that may be true. However, had Mueller more clearly implicated Trump in a crime, Republicans would have paid a political price for their loyalty to Trump. Now, they have plenty to point to in the report to make the case that after two years of investigation, Mueller wasn’t able to establish coordination with Russia in its attempts to influence the 2016 election — the original basis for the probe.
Impeaching Trump, whether or not it’s favored by the Democratic base, is not particularly popular with the general public. A CNN poll taken last month found support for impeachment was down to 36%. The ideal scenario for Democrats was that Mueller found some shocking bombshell that was unequivocal about Trump engaging in crimes. In that case, it would be easier to move public opinion, and they’d be able to rally their party around impeachment while forcing Republicans to choose between loyalty to Trump and disregarding the will of the voters. Now, that isn’t the case at all.
Knowing this, Democrats now are much more likely to try keep up the specter of investigation as long as possible rather than go for impeachment. This was already signaled in Democrats’ early reaction to the Mueller report and their focus on the redactions rather than arguing out of the gate that it makes a strong case for impeachment, which no doubt would have been the immediate message had the report been more obviously damning.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told CNN, “Based on what we have seen to date, going forward on impeachment is not worthwhile at this point. Very frankly, there is an election in 18 months and the American people will make a judgment.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., also downplayed the immediate prospect of impeachment when asked in a press conference Thursday afternoon.
“That’s one possibility, there are others,” he said.
In describing the process going forward, Nadler said, “The first thing we will do is make sure we get the rest of the report and the underlying evidence. We will have Attorney General Barr testify to the Judiciary Committee May 2. I anticipate that Mr. Mueller will testify sometime in the next couple of weeks after that. And we’ll probably hold a series of hearings on other aspects and we’ll see where we go from there.”
Clearly, right now the strategy is to drag things out as long as possible — raise the prospect that the redacted portions are hiding evidence that would more likely prove obstruction or collusion, even if Mueller’s possession of that evidence led him to reach the conclusion that no coordination was established and to leave the obstruction question open ended. Turn the Barr hearing into a showdown over whether Barr is trying to cover for Trump.
Then, have Mueller testify, and thus provide another opportunity to expand on the sections of the report that don’t make Trump look particularly good, such as his clumsy efforts to try to get former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “unrecuse” himself and to get former White House counsel Don McGahn to tell the Justice Department to fire Mueller, and then to try and get McGahn to lie about it.
Further, Democrats could focus on the fact that while the report did not establish coordination it did assert, “that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts …”
So, right now, it appears that Democrats are going to use every opportunity, through testimony, hearings, document requests, and follow up requests, to keep alive the story without going through the process of impeachment.
