Okay. The Mueller Report is done, his investigation is complete, he’s given it to Barr. That central focus of the last two years is soon to be in the rear-view mirror, at least w.r.t. the Special Counsel’s efforts.
It all seems a bit anti-climactic, at least here in the first 24 hours after the report was dropped. Like so many, my attention has been riveted to the ongoing saga: the indictments, the trials, the convictions, the investigations that were spun off. Like everything else in the Trumpian universe, there was simply too much of it to process; the overall miasma of wrongness was so complex and intertwined that it defied efforts to comprehend it. But it was nevertheless impossible to look away. To think the primary investigation is over and done is akin to that deflation that I used to feel after all the Christmas packages had been opened. Sitting amid the chaos of paper and ribbons and boxes, the feeling was “What? No more? That’s it?”
Except of course, we know there is more: more investigations, more revelations and almost certainly more indictments. But the thrust of these ancillary actions are, by all accounts, with regard to financial corruption. Definitely enough to eventually put more people in jail. But not likely to affect the ongoing damage to national security, international affairs, elections jeopardy, and the tidal wave of corruption that Donald Trump has unleashed on our nation. On the question of Russia and the 2016 election, the endgame of the Mueller investigation, with its notable lack of indictments against Trump and his family, seems to have come up short.
So let’s recap. These are the cogent points.
- The report is done. The Mueller Show has closed down, tents folded, Nothing else will come from this fount of many legal blessings.
- We don’t (yet) know what is in it. Attorney General Barr has pledged to be “as transparent as possible,” and to even work with Mueller and Deputy AG Rosenstein to determine what can be made public. That may be a good sign, but Barr’s stated positions on the power and immunity of POTUS make his intentions suspect. Time will tell, and it needs to be as short a time as possible.
- There are no more indictments coming from Mueller, and in particular, there are no accusations of conspiring with the Russians. This is perhaps the most distressing of the apparent conclusions. The infamous June Meeting in Trump Tower and the trip by Eric Prince to the Seyschelles to meet with a confidant of Vladimir Putin seem to be open and shut instances of Russian coordination. The demonstrable perjury by Don, Jr., Eric Prince and others would seem to require indictment. And surely to God obstruction would be an open-and-shut case, even when it was largely done in the public forum, open to see for everyone.
If this is all that comes out, it is evident that Trump and his minions will claim, arguably with some basis, that they are completely vindicated. Their victory lap will play like gangbusters with the GOP base. Even given the circle of convictions that surround the President, and the cloud of corruption being tracked down by the Southern District of New York, the fact that most people never dig very deep into the facts will likely mean Trump’s numbers will get a boost. Without direct evidence damning him, Donald Trump may very well emerge much stronger, and the Democratic strategy and tactics to unseat him will require a definite shift, or else run the risk of losing the impetus of outrage that currently fuels the opposition.
The bottom line is that we run a great risk of Donald Trump being reelected. And that would all but complete the re-normalization of America’s expectations of what constitutes a legitimate President of the United States.
And that would be the worst long-term damage of all.
© 2019 Chuck Puckett