Shifting hopes as Republicans, Democrats wait for Mueller
WASHINGTON — It’s a witch hunt, a vendetta, the worst presidential harassment in history.
That’s what President Donald Trump has shouted for two years about the special counsel’s Russia probe. Now, barring an eleventh-hour surprise, Trump and his allies are starting to see it as something potentially very different: a political opportunity.
With Robert Mueller’s findings expected any day, the president has grown increasingly confident the report will produce what he insisted all along — no clear evidence of a conspiracy between Russia and his 2016 campaign. And Trump and his advisers are considering how to weaponize those possible findings for the 2020 race, according to current and former White House officials and presidential confidants who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
A change is underway as well among congressional Democrats, who have long believed the report would offer damning evidence against the president. The Democrats are busy building new avenues for evidence to come out, opening a broad array of investigations of Trump’s White House and businesses. It’s a striking role reversal. No one knows exactly what Mueller will say, but Trump, his allies and members of Congress are trying to map out the post-probe political dynamics.
One scenario would have seemed downright implausible until recently: The president will take the findings and run on them, rather than against them, by painting the special counsel as an example of failed government overreach and Trump himself as the victim who managed to prove his innocence.
The top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, said on the House floor last week that he had a “news flash” for Democrats who had high hopes that the report would be damaging to Trump.
“What happens when it comes back and says none of this was true, the president did not do anything wrong?” Collins asked. Trump’s tweeted version was even more graphic: The Democrats’ House investigative committees were going “stone cold CRAZY.”
That was in reaction to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler’s document requests to 81 people, businesses and organizations related to Trump. Nadler said his panel must look at “a much broader question” than Mueller has.
Adam Schiff, chairman of the intelligence committee, also said there’s much more to look into. Mueller, he said, “can’t be doing much of a money laundering investigation” if he hasn’t subpoenaed Deutsche Bank, which has loaned millions of dollars to Trump. Schiff ’s panel, along with the House Financial Services Committee, is looking into money laundering and Trump’s foreign financial entanglements.
The Russia probe, taken over by Mueller in May 2017, has posed a mortal threat to the presidency since Trump was elected — a possible case for collusion or obstruction of justice that could begin a domino effect ending with impeachment. Those fears still exist, but as the investigation winds down, other feelings have taken hold in the White House, namely a cautious optimism that the worst is over and that no smoking gun has been found.