Mueller intervention makes impeachment unavoidable
A man yearning for the ordinariness of retirement or a shrewd legal mind conveying a dark truth about the President of the United States?
It was hard to watch Robert Mueller face the cameras on Wednesday and not waver between the two assessments. The man who America – and, indeed, the world – had been waiting to hear from wasn’t quite what we expected. His is still the former Director of the FBI, a Marine veteran, and a loyal servant to his country. Yet, he also seemed camera shy, reticent, and just a little worn down by the two-year investigation. The burden must have been something for a 74-year-old, so it’s understandable if there was a sense that his speech amounted to “keep me out of this childish squabble”. Yet that wasn’t what he wanted to say to the American public. This, as far as Mueller will ever go, was a public display of defiance. It was a scream of indignation which amounted to: please let my report speak for itself and for me!
Herein lies the problem. The whole of the Mueller Report is crafted around a Department of Justice policy that the sitting President of the United States cannot be indicted of a crime while in office. The problem with this so-called “Office of Legal Counsel opinion” is just that. It’s an opinion and if that seems crazy to you then join the queue of legal experts who say the same. Mueller is a legal expert in his own right but also a strict institutionalist. He understands the limits of his power. He was tasked – legally – to investigate the President and, as he outlined yesterday, secure the evidence. He was not empowered to question the OLC policy and, so, the Mueller Report goes as close to the line as it’s feasibly possible to go. He’s investigated the President but formed no judgement about the President’s innocence or guilt.
This adherence to the rules has produced something of a problem in Washington. We have the legal version of Schrödinger’s Cat, with Republicans choosing to look at the box and declare the cat dead. Case closed. Let’s move on. Mueller stood up yesterday to say that’s bad philosophy. He has explained why the cat is neither alive nor dead but, strictly speaking, both. He wants to retain his “non-judgement” and hand it to Congress, which is where that matter can be dealt with properly through the process of impeachment.
Congress and the House of Representatives are, of course, currently considering whether to start to impeach Trump so it’s odd that Mueller chose to go public. Indeed, he might have chosen to go silently into retirement were it not for William Barr. Mueller has played everything with a straight bat but the same cannot be said about the White House and, specifically, their friendly Attorney General.
It’s Barr who quickly seized the narrative on behalf of Trump when the Mueller Report first appeared. Over the course of a couple of days, he produced the now infamous “summary” which wasn’t a summary. In it, he engaged in legal contortion of the knottiest kind, essentially saying that since Mueller hadn’t declared the President innocent, it fell to him to make that call. He even said of Mueller: “He was not saying but for the OLC opinion he would have found a crime”. That, of course, wasn’t what the Mueller Report said and subsequent letters from Mueller forced Barr to walk back that assessment, muddying waters at every opportunity, while the President continued to tell anybody who will listen that the Mueller Report “could not have been better”. It’s easy to see why Mueller might have been getting frustrated.
A small anecdote to make the point. Last week, Congressman Justin Amash became the first Republican to call for Trump’s impeachment. That naturally led to a backlash from his electorate. However, meeting with voters earlier this week, he received applause when he explained his position. The media covered the story widely and highlighted one important point. Republicans emerging from the meeting described how shocked they were to learn that the Mueller Report did not clear the President – they’d heard otherwise from Conservative media. In other words, a large part of the American people had not heard Mueller’s message as contained in his report.
This can hardly come as a surprise. Republicans have been creating quite the narrative around the report. From Mitch McConnell to cable news talking heads, for Republicans the Mueller business was settled. Trump himself has been treating the Mueller Report as his ace card, claiming that it proved that there was “No collusion. No obstruction”. Again, that is wrong. It did find collusion, though Mueller decided not to charge Donald Trump Jnr because they believed he did not understand the illegality of what he was doing around the Trump Tower meeting. Ignore the larger problems but that might be one of the report’s odder conclusions since ignorance of the law has never been a strong defence.
On the matter of obstruction, there is even more overwhelming evidence. Indeed, obstruction is happening now on almost a weekly basis as the President orders various members of his administration to violate the law and refuse to appear before Congress. Steven Mnuchin could face prison time for his refusal to hand the President’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee, after the chairman, Richard Neal, issued a subpoena for their release. Of course, Mnuchin probably won’t face jail time but it highlights the degree of illegality going on that the White House are trying to avoid Congressional oversight. That looks like it will be settled in court and, most likely, quite quickly, since, as other cases around Trump’s tax returns have shown, the basis of the President’s objections are trivial to non-existent.
Meanwhile, Mueller is now retired and hoping he’ll be able to lead a normal life. He might deserve it but equally unlikely he’ll find it. Yesterday he put a stick in a hornet’s nest and gave it a good old stir. That Democrats will launch the impeachment process is now almost certain. Even more likely is that we’ll again hear from Robert S. Mueller III, even if what he says is what he said yesterday, which is: read my report.