últimas notícias

The special counsel report makes three things clear: First, there was never any evidence to back up the collusion conspiracy. Second, there was not enough evidence to accuse President Trump of obstruction.

Third, the lawyers that put together the report were really disappointed with both findings. Trump was right all along that Robert Mueller’s team was “conflicted.”

Even though It specifically states that the investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated” with Russia, and that because “the evidence we obtained did not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime,” it nudges House Democrats in the direction of impeachment anyway.

Attorney General William Barr accurately summarized the report Thursday morning when he repeated over and over again that the investigation uncovered no evidence to back up the ridiculous Russia conspiracy and that Mueller’s team deferred to his supervisors on the question of obstruction, which Barr and his deputy Rod Rosenstein settled themselves by saying there wasn’t enough there, either.

But the full report still contains little hints for Democrats that it’s possible there in fact was collusion (despite the lack of evidence) and that they would be justified in pursuing their own corruption case. Did they let Maxine Waters edit this thing?

After meticulously documenting the events of the 2016 campaign and finding nothing that showed Trump or his campaign coordinated on any criminal level with Russia, Mueller’s team slipped in this gem: “While this report embodies factual and legal determinations that the Office [of Special Counsel] believes to be accurate and complete to the greatest extent possible … the Office cannot rule out the possibility [that] unavailable information would shed additional light on (or cast in a new light) the events describe in the report.”

They might as well have ended the report with, “To be continued, maybe …”

Given unlimited time, money and power, the special counsel found nothing. Adding that caveat undermines the whole reason that the investigation ended. The point of concluding an investigation is that it’s done!

On the obstruction question, the report acknowledges three crucial reasons that it declined to make a prosecutorial decision. One of them is a longstanding Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted. But the other two reasons are more important: that there was no underlying crime in relation to Russia and the campaign, and that there was “substantial evidence” that any of Trump’s efforts to curtail the department’s investigations (including with the firing of James Comey) were undertaken because he honestly “believed that the erroneous perception he was under [personal] investigation harmed his ability to manage domestic and foreign affairs, particularly in dealings with Russia.”

The report does lay out evidence to the contrary, suggesting it’s at least possible Trump was actually more concerned with the investigations turning up something criminal — such as when he told White House aides to say that Comey was fired over his handling of the Hillary Clinton email controversy, a clear pretext from the beginning.

But what the report doesn’t say is that Trump would have very obvious political reasons in choosing not to be up-front about that. It doesn’t take mental strain to guess how Democrats would have reacted if Trump had said he was firing Comey because he wouldn’t publicly state that the president wasn’t under investigation. That would have put us in the exact same place we are today.

That he thought Democrats would believe he had fired Comey over the Clinton controversy speaks to Trump’s self-delusion, not to criminality.

But in any case, the special counsel team admits there was no evidence of an underlying crime, and that there was “substantial evidence” that Trump’s actions in office regarding the investigation had a noncriminal motive. And yet the report includes a nice road map for Democrats who want to impeach him anyway, with a suggestion that even if Trump did not obstruct justice, he’s nonetheless corrupt.

“We concluded that in the rare case in which a criminal investigation of the President ‘s conduct is justified,” the special counsel team wrote, “inquiries to determine whether the President acted for a corrupt motive should not impermissibly chill his performance of his constitutionally assigned duties.”

In case the point wasn’t quite getting across, they added that Congress may still “apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office” because it “accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.”

Is that tortured cliche really something we needed to hear again?

Democrats and liberals in the media threw a fit because Barr used the phrase “no collusion” in his press conference Thursday, because it’s the same one Trump has used. I’m sure they’re tickled pink, though, at seeing their own language — “no person is above the law! — used in the report, justifying their impeachment fever-dreams.

The special counsel team didn’t find anything on Trump. The report makes that much clear. But it also makes it clear that it’s not the result the special counsel team wanted.