USA TODAY International Edition
Imagining Robert Mueller unplugged
I’m done. You must help yourselves.
Former special counsel Robert Mueller has said that he won’t go beyond his 448-page report in testimony scheduled Wednesday before two House committees. But imagine if he were to let loose and say whatever he wants:
Think of me as a hostage, tied to this chair, my wrists in handcuffs, a gag stuffed in my mouth.
I can’t help you. Do you understand? You will have to help yourselves.
If I could stand up to raise my right hand, I’d swear to tell the truth. And it would be this: Of course I would have indicted Donald Trump if I could have. What don’t you get about “if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that”? Or 10 textbook cases of obstruction of justice? Or the difference between “no collusion” and insufficient evidence to nail down a criminal conspiracy with the Russians?
Regrets, I have a few, starting with letting Attorney General William Barr take over public relations for my painstaking report. He called me “snitty” — snitty! — for objecting to the way he tried to clear Trump of wrongdoing and mislead about why we didn’t indict him. We couldn’t! Our hands were cuffed! I mean, tied!
I do regret being overly considerate of the president and his right to a “speedy and public trial.” We faced so many limits and obstacles, I should not have added more restrictions voluntarily, out of a sense of sportsmanship. We are in a crisis that demands clarity and, alas, I did not recognize just how dire our circumstances — Barr’s perfidious misrepresentations, maddening Democratic caution, scandalous Republican indifference — until too late.
Let me be perfectly clear
As for Russia, I thought I spelled it out (“The investigation did not always yield admissible information or testimony, or a complete picture of the activities undertaken by subjects of the investigation”). Let me be even more clear: We might have been able to pin down a conspiracy if we had been able to get testimony from people who refused to talk to us, or invoked their right to remain silent, or were unavailable to us due to Justice Department guidelines or attorney-client privilege or news media source protection, or who had deleted relevant communications before we got to them.
What did we miss?
Vast troves of evidence and facts, no doubt. For instance, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen testified this year that in early June 2016, the same month as the Trump Tower meeting with Russians about “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, he heard Donald Trump Jr. tell his father that “the meeting is all set” and concluded later that Trump Sr. knew all about it. Both men declined to be interviewed. The president did respond to written questions, but said more than 30 times that he did not recall or remember or have an independent recollection. More than 30!
If I were an ex-president, like Jimmy Carter, I could tell you exactly what was on my mind. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Russia elected Trump and that he is an illegitimate president, which is what Carter said. And yet it’s a definite possibility that should be explored.
I feel sick, don’t you?
After all, beyond all the hacking of computers associated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party entities, we found evidence that Russians hacked into computers belonging to state election boards, secretaries of state and voting technology manufacturers. We said their goal was to “steal voter data and other information.” And we said they succeeded.
Why isn’t attention being paid? Where are the investigations?
Frankly, as a Marine veteran and a Republican and a former FBI director, it makes me sick to see Trump laughing with Russian President Vladimir Putin over election “meddling” and ridding themselves of “fake news” journalists (which in Putin’s case sometimes means having them killed).
Does it not make you sick, Democrats and Republicans of the House?
I am 74 and never wanted to spend two years digging into the kind of foreign intervention that kept the Founders awake at night. I never wanted to investigate a president who outdid Richard Nixon in trying to obstruct an investigation into his campaign.
To Republicans, I hope you can take off your partisan blinders and come to terms with the damage this legally challenged president is doing.
To Democrats, I am at wit’s end. I have done all I could, but it’s never enough for you. So with apologies to O.J. Simpson lawyer Johnnie Cochran, here are my final words: Don’t just teach; you must impeach. Don’t give a speech; you must impeach. If there’s a massive breach, you must impeach. If it’s not a reach, you must impeach. If it’s no day at the beach, and it won’t be, YOU STILL MUST IMPEACH.
Am I clear? Do you finally get it? You know what, I’m going to Europe for six weeks and growing a beard.