Mueller's Done, And We Know Nothing. But We Know This About Trump.
It is a wait and see game for now.
Mueller's Done, And We Know Nothing. But We Know This About Trump.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/03/22/mueller-report-released-226107
Whatever the special counsel concluded, expect the president to fight. And perhaps spark a constitutional crisis.
By JEFF GREENFIELD
March 22, 2019
There are any number of ways that the Mueller report, which has been delivered as of Friday to Attorney General William Barr, could become the most anticlimactic event since Gerald Rivera drilled open Al Capone’s vault. It could summarize the many crimes and misdemeanors committed by a platoon of Donald Trump’s band of brothers and sisters; it could point to the many acts of the president to deflect the investigation into Russian collusion; it could note the president’s campaign to discredit Mueller’s own probe. It could do none of that and simply note that the special counsel has concluded that he has charged every crime he thinks has a reasonable chance of successful prosecution, and that’s that.
So far, all we know per an anonymous Justice Department briefer is that the report is “comprehensive”; that Mueller got everything he asked for; and that the special counsel is recommending no further indictments.
That hasn’t stopped Trumpworld from declaring victory. Donald Trump, Jr., the president’s son, is gloating on Twitter. Mark Meadows, the South Carolina Tea Partyer who has emerged as Trump’s fiercest enforcer on Capitol Hill, has declared a premature verdict of “no collusion”—as if that squishy term carries any legal weight whatsoever. And surely the president will declare victory no matter what it says.
That’s all the normal cut and thrust of politics, as much as anything can be normal in the Trump age. But there is one way in which Mueller’s report, the main conclusions of which will likely go public this weekend, could mark the beginning of a genuinely consequential crisis. If it offers evidence of potentially criminal or—more likely— impeachable conduct by the president, it could set either the courts or the House Judiciary Committee on a course to demand evidence Trump has no intention of providing................................