Reframing the Mueller Investigation

The Mueller report has been finalized, Barr has released a four-page summary to the American people, and now the fight has been moved to Congress to determine what happens from this point on.  Barr’s summary, though it is notably not a substitute for the entire report, states that “no evidence of collusion” was found on the President himself, and the obstruction of justice case produced results that neither “indict nor exonerate” Trump.  For Democrats, perhaps, and especially those that have been counting on Mueller to save them, the outcome, at least so far, was underwhelming. Now, the focus shifts to Congressional Democrats to decide whether they should fight to have the Mueller report released and move forward with a possible impeachment or simply move on.  But it is important to see the end of the Mueller investigation for what it is: not an unsatisfying end but part of the larger process to remove Trump from office. 

Before we go there, though, it is worth looking back at what reasonable observers should have expected at this point. The Mueller investigation took 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, 2,800 subpoenas, 500 interviewed witnesses, and almost two years.  Over its course, it charged 34 individuals, including nine connected to the Trump campaign, though it did not ultimately bring about criminal charges for Trump.  In a lot of ways, the Mueller investigation turned up way more information than we should have expected: what was once a question about a few Russian internet trolls and Facebook algorithms now sheds so much light on the wrongdoing inside and around the Trump campaign.  As compared to past scandals, spanning from Iran-Contra to Whitewater and beyond, Russiagate was a very successful investigation: many people very close to Trump are likely to receive justice and Mueller also recommended other findings about unrelated crimes to their respective departments.  For those who want to see Trump out of office and unable to act on his regressive agenda, the Mueller investigation was hardly a failure, even if it was overhyped by some.

Still, something about it feels disappointing, which is likely to do with our own naivety than anything else.  In other words, we should have expected this to be the institutional result of all this Russia-talk. In America, it has long been said that we have two justice systems—one for the poor and powerless and one for the rich and powerful—and that alone should explain the non-result which has come of Mueller’s investigation.  Beyond that, the history we like to remember tells us a much different story than the one which is true. In school, we all learn about Nixon’s impeachment, from break-in to coverup to resignation. We learn that a popular president was eventually forced to resign by an exhaustive investigation and about how the wheels of justice turn against all who are guilty.  But just maybe we forget or are unaware of the important context that goes along with it. A lot has been said recently of the allies Nixon courted precisely because of—and not in spite of—the Watergate investigation, of people like M. Stanton Evans who said, “I didn’t like Nixon until Watergate.” Eventually, the public turned against Nixon, despite their unwillingness to do so earlier, and the Republican Party was prompted to abandon him too.  In this way, impeachments are not like trials with Congress members as jurors, but trials in which the American people force their representatives’ hands.

Due to this reality, the lesson that transcends Nixon is that removing Trump from office through electing a Democrat in 2020 and through a successful impeachment are not necessarily two divergent strategies forward.  They are, at best, one strategy, with two divergent ends. In other words, the way to impeach Trump is not to find enough evidence to change the GOP’s view on him to obtain the votes, but to change the people’s minds enough to force the GOP to abandon him to protect themselves.  To do this, the Democrat’s private strategy must be seemingly at odds with their public choices. In effect, the bar for impeachment is much higher than the bar for voting him out in 2020: while no one who supports impeachment supports his eventual re-election, there are many Americans currently who support neither his impeachment nor his re-election.  The path forward, then, is to use the cloud of the Russiagate scandal along with the failings of the Trump presidency to fell the president, killing two birds with one stone towards getting him out of office.

On the former, the Democrats have a lot to work with: the uncertainty of the verdict of the Mueller report, it doesn’t exonerate the president, nor leave him untouched with the indictments of his former staff; its incomplete nature, as the people have not read the report and the investigation did not touch on many of issues raised since by Cohen’s testimony; and the apparent secrecy of the findings, Barr issued a summary letter when an innocence-proving-document would warrant a public release.  All of this makes up the public strategy forward for Democrats, but—though I am rarely one to warn Democrats about going too far—I would say their private agenda should be one of caution. Clearly, the evidence in the case is not overwhelming, or Barr would have had to cede such findings. Therefore, impeaching Trump on the grounds of Mueller’s investigation alone with a Republican majority in the Senate is patently impossible.  With that said, Democrats need to publicly raise the Russia questions while never quite bringing the issue to a breaking point, which would likely go against them. To the plain eye, Trump is a conman, but the burden of proof for people as powerful as he is high, and that must be understood.

The point in all this is that the left would benefit from a reframing of Mueller’s investigation from a verdict of success or failure towards a realization that this is but one step in the ultimate process.  While they should not count on the Russia scandal, the left also must never forget it: when they win, they hold all the cards to enact their agenda and keep their place. It is then up to the opposition—those who support democracy and the rule of law—to take it from them.  While legal justice requires a standard beyond reasonable doubt, electoral justice only requires 270. 

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