Obstruction of Nothing

Mueller vindicates Trump on collusion and plays Hamlet on obstruction.

Robert Mueller is certainly thorough. The special counsel makes clear across the 488 pages of his report released Thursday that he and his band of prosecutors left no entrail unexamined in their two-year dissection of President Trump. Those who demanded this may not like the conclusions, but they can’t say Mr. Mueller didn’t hunt down every potential crime.

The report exposes some Trumpian excesses and lies, but it also shows that, on the most important issue and the charge that started it all, Mr. Trump has been telling the truth. He and his campaign did not conspire or coordinate with Russians to steal the 2016 election. Try as he did to find a crime regarding Russia or obstruction of justice, Mr. Mueller found nothing to prosecute.

The details validate the four-page public summary of the report’s conclusions that Attorney General William Barr released last month. The AG issued the full report with limited redactions related to grand-jury testimony and intelligence sources and methods. Democrats will claim secrets are hidden in the redactions, but Mr. Barr says he’ll let senior Members of Congress see most of those too. Claims of a coverup are spin for the anti-Trump media.

Mr. Mueller devotes some 200 pages to the Russia tale, and the news is how little is new beyond what we already know from leaks and court filings. The special counsel’s biggest public service is laying out in detail how Russia sought to meddle in the election.

Yet the Trump-Russian contacts that were supposed to be proof of treason end up as unconnected anecdotes.

Mr. Mueller makes no “prosecutorial judgment” about obstruction, though he conspicuously says that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

This is Mr. Mueller’s cheapest shot because the standard for a special prosecutor is not exoneration, whether or not Mr. Trump claims it. The standard is whether there is sufficient evidence to charge a crime. Mr. Mueller concedes he lacks enough evidence to know what Mr. Trump’s motives were in firing Mr. Comey or asking him to go easy on Mr. Flynn, so he should have left it there.

The factual “analysis” about obstruction that Mr. Mueller does offer is hardly persuasive, even if Mr. Trump often behaves badly. Were his public and private comments praising Messrs. Flynn and Manafort and (for a while) Michael Cohen attempts to dangle pardons so they wouldn’t cooperate? Well, all three have been convicted of crimes and no pardons have been offered.

Mr. Trump was dumb to ask White House counsel Don McGahn to ask Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to fire Mr. Mueller. But Mr. McGahn refused to do it and was prepared to resign over the matter before the President dropped the subject.

Mr. Mueller essentially reveals a President behaving in predictable Trumpian fashion at being investigated for a crime he didn’t believe he committed—and which even Mr. Mueller now concedes he didn’t commit.

Nothing in the end was obstructed. The FBI probe continued after Mr. Comey was fired, and Mr. Mueller wasn’t interfered with. Mr. Mueller prosecuted those he could find enough evidence to try to turn for state’s evidence, but there was no coverup because there was no collusion with Russia to cover up.
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None of this will placate Mr. Trump’s adversaries who will take Mr. Mueller’s Hamlet act on obstruction and perhaps try to turn it into an impeachable offense. Democrats have the constitutional power to try, and the media will be their handmaiden. But if even Robert Mueller and his relentless prosecutors couldn’t prove their case, we doubt the American public will look well on the effort.

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