What do we know and when did we know it?
After two long years, the Mueller investigation is over. The previous posts you read gave you the background to the Mueller investigation and told you that the report was now in the hands of the Department of Justice, headed by the Attorney General.
The report has not been released to the public or to Congress but a summary of it has been created by the new Attorney General, William Barr, a Trump appointee, and Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller in the first place. Barr was supportive of Trump and critical of the Mueller investigation prior to his nomination by Trump to the post of Attorney General. **Presidential cabinet appointees are subject to Senate confirmation. He was confirmed by all Republican senators but only three Democrats on a near party-line vote.
Their report says that Mueller makes it clear that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to advantage Trump, but finds no evidence that anyone in the Trump campaign colluded with them to do so. ** Remember the definition of collusion – knowingly conspired to deceive. From what we know, President Trump and his family are off the hook on that one.
As far as obstruction of justice, Mueller was cagier. According to Barr and Rosenstein, he laid out the evidence on both sides and left it to the Department of Justice to make a determination.
After about 36 hours of intensely reading the report, Barr’s own summary says he has decided that there was no obstruction of justice. As of now, the report has not been released so that anyone else can read it and make a judgment. Congress voted 270-0 to support a nonbinding resolution on the DOJ to release the report but Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell refused to allow a vote in the Senate.
What’s behind this difference in voting patterns? The House has a Democratic majority and the Senate has a Republican majority.
As this Axios piece makes clear, Trump is jubilant and is declaring victory all around. While that might be premature on the obstruction issue, if the Democrats can’t see Mueller’s report, it won’t matter. Right now, Trump is doing what he does well – creating a narrative where he is not only innocent but a victim of political forces determined to ruin his presidency. He has famously said that when he is hit, his strategy is to hit back harder. His hands have been somewhat tied by the investigation but now that he sees himself as free of its constraints, he also feels free to avenge what he has seen as an unfair attack on him.
That is the context for this Axios report.
Axios by Mike Allen
Donald J. Trump has twice gone to war with Democrats and most of the American media — and won both times, dramatically and consequentially.
Now, it’s time for victory dances — and vengeance.
- The one-two gut punch to his critics — first, beating Hillary Clinton, and now, vindication from Robert Mueller — won’t just define his first term in office.
- It’ll shape and sharpen his argument for re-election — and his war against the anti-Trump media.
“Within an hour of learning the findings,” the WashPost reports, “Trump called for an investigation of his critics and cast himself as a victim.”
- “Aides say Trump plans to … call for organizations to fire members of the media and former government officials who he believes made false accusations about him.”
Attorney General William Barr writes in his summary for Congress that Mueller “did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.”
- The summary leaves many open questions that could be answered by a full airing of the report, which will be Dems’ main focus this week at least.
- On obstruction of justice, Mueller wrote that while his report “does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
Why it matters: The outcome is a huge political victory, and Trump will use it to bludgeon the media and Democrats for the next 18 months.
- Much of the country will probably agree with him.
- The president will use it to cast doubt on investigations by House Democrats, or by other state and federal officials.
Now, the vengeance: Trump allies are already pushing to investigate the investigators and attack the media.
- Don Jr., the president’s eldest son, tweeted: “How his farce started and snowballed … into one the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the America should be discovered. Those responsible should be held accountable.”
- Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said: “The public deserves to see the interviews, documents, and intelligence that ‘justified’ this investigation in the first place.”
- And Rudy Giuliani said on Fox News: “[T]here has to be a full and complete investigation, with at least as much enthusiasm as this one, to figure out where did this charge emanate, who started it, and who paid for it.”
In the yesterday’s post’s annotation we noted that Trump has been an unusual president, breaking with the norms, the unwritten rules, that had constrained previous presidents. Some of the things that he is calling for now (investigations of the people who investigated him, targetting people who criticized him in the media, and investigating people he says did collude with Russia, like his former opponent Hillary Clinton,) are ways he has suggested “hitting back” that seriously violate political norms.
It’s not just unwritten norms being violated here. The First Amendment of the Constitution protects freedom of the press and that includes the press’s ability to pursue lines of inquiry that may turn out to be wrong (Donald Trump famously tried to get the press to doubt the validity of President Obama’s birth certificate, for instance, and to investigate his college records) and the Founders were extremely concerned to limit the executive’s ability to use the political system to investigate and imprison his or her enemies. That’s why the Constitution itself and several of the amendments protect citizens from abuse of the criminal justice system. Such actions would go beyond norm breaking to behavior that pushes the guarantees of the Constitution itself and threatens democratic governance. It remains to be seen how emboldened Trump feels by his vindication by Mueller of accusations of collusion.
Despite the partisan feuding that is bound to follow this report (see yesterday’s post) what all Americans should be glad about is that the president has been cleared of charges of conspiracy with a foreign power to undermine the electoral system. That would have presented us with a crisis of epic and unprecedented proportion. What they should be worried about is that it is clear that there were attempts made by Russia to undermine the system that Trump refuses to acknowledge (to do so is to diminish the force of his own victory) or and it is not evident what, if any, steps his administration is taking to be sure that it cannot happen again.
AmGov, Axios and the News 