Mueller Report Left Egg on Dems’ Faces
THEY wanted it, and they got it. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election has been released, and it confirms — yet again — what everyone except liberal conspiracy theorists already knew: President Trump’s campaign and Russia didn’t collude. Good news: We still elect our presidents! Yes, Trump once taunted Russians to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. Yes, Trump’s inner circle took a meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer. And yes, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and others have been charged with crimes. These things look bad and, to varying degrees, they are. But they don’t add up to any kind of Kremlin–Fifth Avenue conspiracy to subvert democracy.
In fact, Trump’s election is now the most verifiably legitimate election in history. No other campaign has endured the kind of scrutiny that the Trump team has withstood. For nearly two years, 19 lawyers and 40 investigators questioned some 500 witnesses worldwide. They issued 500 search warrants and 2,800 subpoenas.
Here are some key findings from Mueller’s report: “The investigation did not identify evidence that any US persons knowingly or intentionally coordinated with” a Russian social-media campaign aimed at exacerbating our political tensions.
Nor did the Trump campaign work with the Russians who hacked the Democratic National Committee. Investigators, finally, “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.”
We knew all of this already. Attorney General William Barr said as much in his March 24 letter, not that it made a dent in the paranoid theories of die-hard anti-Trumpers.
“Undoubtedly, there is collusion,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said after Barr’s letter was made public.
“We will continue to investigate the counterintelligence issues.” Have fun with that. Sen. Cory Booker, meanwhile, kicked off his 2020 presidential bid with a speech tying the president to Russian meddling. “From 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to the Kremlin, we know what their strategy is,” he said. “It is to pit us against each other for their own gain ... That is how they win.”
No, Senator, Trump won this time by having his name cleared in a thorough special-counsel probe.
Has Trump somehow turned his enemies on the left into masochists? What else explains their eagerness to relive their own humiliations? Every day for two years, they said that Mueller was closing in on Trump. Then, when Barr announced that collusion was a bust, they demanded to read it directly in the special counsel report. Now that that’s done, what comes next?
Undoubtedly, they will move on to the question of whether or not Trump obstructed justice. On that, Mueller’s report is more murky. It cites several incidents that could be seen at least as Trump’s attempting to hinder the probe. But the report states, “Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
That’s more than enough of an opening for anti-Trump activists to jump through. And when they jump, they’ll head right over a cliff.
If Democrats and Never Trumpers attempt to make an obstruction case against a president who’s been wrongly accused — by them — of conspiring with Russia, they’re going to humiliate themselves once again.
Justice has been served. There was no underlying crime. The Trump campaign didn’t collude with Russia, and that’s been demonstrated.
And if Donald Trump actually exceeded his executive authority in one of his impulsive outbursts about getting rid of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions or in his actual firing of former FBI Director James Comey, Mueller’s report would have simply nailed him for it. But it’s not so simple. Donald Trump is the chief executive, and executive authority flows from his person.
Then, too, the anti-Trump crowd has talked a lot about the threat that the president supposedly poses to cherished norms. But he never fired the special counsel, and the investigation was completed.
Mueller was the left’s hero. He was supposed to deliver them from a Trump presidency and set their world right again. If they now reject his findings, they’ll be party to a process more damaging than anything Trump has done in the course of this investigation.
Trump’selectionisnowthemost ’ verifiablylegitimateelectioninourhistory.