The special counsel does not appear to have provided a case for impeaching the president
“IT WAS a complete and total exoneration!” crowed Donald Trump on March 24th, shortly after his attorney-general released a four-page summary of Robert Mueller’s findings. “This was an illegal takedown that failed.”
It will take a fuller disclosure of Mr Mueller’s findings, which Mr Barr has promised, to ascertain quite how reassuring this conclusion is. But it is nonetheless a big win for the president. Despite the nagging caveats—given his team’s many lies, evasions and demonstrable openness to receiving Russian help—it comes as close to corroborating the president’s “NO COLLUSION!!” assertion as he could possibly have hoped.
The other main part of Mr Mueller’s inquiry was a closer run thing. Mr Barr’s summary confirms that the special counsel looked into “a number of actions by the president” that might have constituted an illegal effort to obstruct investigations into the Russian plot. The main investigation, by the FBI, was handed over to Mr Mueller in part because of Mr Trump’s decision to sack the bureau’s then director, James Comey. That was one such action.
According to the attorney-general’s summary of his conclusions, he relayed his findings on Mr Trump’s dubious actions without concluding whether or not they constituted clinching evidence of obstruction. Instead Mr Mueller provided arguments on both sides of the question. According to Mr Barr, “the special counsel states that ‘while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it does not exonerate him either.
That battle will shortly take on a political life of its own. In his summary Mr Barr reiterated that, “mindful of the public interest in this matter”, he hoped to make as much of the special counsel’s report public as he could, “consistent with applicable law, regulations, and departmental policies.” Yet that could keep a lot of Mr Mueller’s report under wraps.
If anything, the heavy burden of proof the special counsel was labouring under made his investigation look like a distraction from the more salient political questions surrounding Mr Trump’s dealings with Russia.
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