Just Politics

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FOCUSING ON MUELLER AND COLLUSION DISTRACTS FROM THE BIGGER TRUMP VULNERABILITY
By Max Boot
March 4 at 6:58 PM

The “phony war” was the name given to the six-month period following Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, when there was no fighting along the Western Front. It feels like we are in our own phony war as we await the results of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation. The battle lines are drawn. Sniping is picking up; check out President Trump’s Twitter feed. But the real war has not yet begun, as all sides wait to see whether Mueller will drop a bombshell — or a dud.

Mueller could end his work with a bang — indicting someone from Trump’s inner circle (Donald Trump Jr., perhaps) — when the special counsel is no longer in danger of being fired by a vindictive president. But even if no further indictments are filed, Mueller already has done yeoman’s work, producing 37 indictments and seven convictions, including of Trump’s former campaign chairman (Paul Manafort), personal lawyer (Michael Cohen) and national security adviser (Michael Flynn).

Yet, Mueller’s report still might be considered anticlimactic because, as former prosecutor Renato Mariotti notes for Time magazine, our expectations have diverged from reality. When it comes to collusion, expectations may be too high — and when it comes to obstruction, too low.

Keep in mind that “collusion” is a journalistic term, not a legal one. It is actually an apt word, because Mueller is primarily conducting a counterintelligence — not a criminal — inquiry, and the Justice Department has already ruled out filing criminal charges against a sitting president. It is, therefore, important not to judge this part of the case by a strictly legal standard, i.e., whether Mueller finds enough evidence to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump engaged in a conspiracy against the United States or aided and abetted Russian hackers.

Don’t get me wrong. I agree with Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, that there is “direct evidence” of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. I’m just not sure whether there is direct evidence of collusion between Trump and the Kremlin beyond what is already known, such as Trump’s call for Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails. (And, no, he wasn’t joking.)

We know of 102 contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. These allegedly include Manafort giving 75 pages of polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik; longtime Trump associate Roger Stone contacting WikiLeaks at the behest of a “senior Trump Campaign official,” as Mueller’s indictment of Stone said; and most of the Trump campaign’s high command meeting with a Russian operative promising “dirt” on Clinton. All the while, Cohen was negotiating a Trump Tower construction project in Moscow. These contacts are all the more shady given how Trump and his minions have lied about them. It seems likely that Trump was aware of what was going on, but the “smoking gun” may not exist to prove his active participation beyond saying “wouldn’t that be great.” He could still be impeached for collusion with a hostile foreign power, but there may not be enough evidence for a criminal indictment even after he leaves office.

The issue with obstruction of justice is the opposite: Rather than a paucity of evidence proving Trump’s personal culpability, there is an overabundance of it. Trump told NBC News that he fired FBI Director James B. Comey to stop the investigation of the “Russia thing.” He fired then-attorney general Jeff Sessions for essentially the same reason. He has tried to fire Mueller — and was only thwarted when the White House counsel at the time threatened to resign. Trump has also posted countless tweets impugning Mueller and his team, hinting at pardons and encouraging witnesses not to cooperate.

It is difficult to imagine that Mueller will adopt the White House position that all of this is okay because the president can fire anyone for any reason. It looks like a textbook example of obstruction of justice and witness tampering — not to mention a violation of the president’s obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” But precisely because so much of Trump’s misconduct has occurred in public, there is a danger that even if Mueller accuses him of obstruction of justice, the reaction will be, “Ho hum. What else is new?”

We must guard against a cynical or jaded reaction to whatever Mueller comes up with. Even if the special counsel’s report doesn’t live up to the dreams of Trump’s critics, or to the nightmares of his supporters, it is likely to be bad enough to warrant the president’s removal from office, either by impeachment or the 2020 election.

Whatever Mueller finds, it will hardly be the last word, given the investigations of Trump’s operations by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and by House Democrats. After all, the most clear-cut sign of possible criminality on Trump’s part, outside of obstruction, are the campaign-finance violations suggested by Cohen’s guilty plea to providing hush-money payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. That may not have anything to do with Russian “collusion,” but, if proven, it’s still a crime — and it should still matter whether the president breaks the law.
-washingtonpost.com
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/04/focusing-mueller-collusion-distracts-bigger-trump-vulnerability/?utm_term=.9bbd7a47ca99