25 March 2019 — 0550 mdt
Barr reports Mueller concluded that Trump and
the Rooskies did not conspire to steal the election
According to U.S. Attorney General William Barr (letter to Congress), Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller did not unearth evidence that President Trump and his campaign conspired with Russian agents to steal the 2016 presidential election. Mueller did find evidence that the Russians meddled in the election. Barr also reports Mueller did not reach a conclusion on the allegations that Trump obstructed justice.
Below, brief summaries of Barr’s report, followed by my commentary. The highlighting is mine.
dRussian interference in the 2016 presidential election
Although they weren’t working in cahoots with Trump, the Russians used dirty tricks to try to affect the outcome of the election:
The Special Counsel’s investigation determined that there were two main Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. The first involved attempts by a Russian organization, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), to conduct disinformation and social media operations in the United States designed to sow social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election. As noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that any U.S. person or Trump campaign official or associate conspired or knowingly coordinated with the IRA in its efforts, although the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian nationals and entities in connection with these activities.
The second element involved the Russian govermnent’s efforts to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election. The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks. Based on these activities, the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian military officers for conspiring to hack into computers in the United States for purposes of influencing the election. But as noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.
Obstruction of justice allegations
According to Barr, Mueller did not reach a conclusion on whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice. But Barr himself concluded that Trump did not.
The report’s second part addresses a number of actions by the President - most of which have been the subject of public reporting - that the Special Counsel investigated as potentially raising obstruction-of-justice concerns. After making a “thorough factual investigation” into these matters, the Special Counsel considered Whether to evaluate the conduct under Department standards governing prosecution and declination decisions but ultimately determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment. The Special Counsel therefore did not draw a conclusion — one way or the other — as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction. Instead, for each of the relevant actions investigated, the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as “difficult issues” of law and fact concerning whether the President’s actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction. The Special Counsel states that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
The Special Counsel’s decision to describe the facts of his obstruction investigation without reaching any legal conclusions leaves it to the Attorney General to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime. Over the course of the investigation, the Special Counsel’s office engaged in discussions with certain Department officials regarding many of the legal and factual matters at issue in the Special Counsel’s obstruction investigation. After reviewing the Special Counsel’s final report on these issues; consulting with Department officials, including the Office of Legal Counsel; and applying the principles of federal prosecution that guide our charging decisions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense. Our determination was made without regard to, and is not based on, the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president.
Analysis and comment
Assuming that Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report is accurate — the summary is a start, but the full report must be released pronto — Trump is off some hooks, but not all. There are no smoking guns linking him to the crimes of conspiring with a foreign power to steal the election, or to attempting to obstruct justice.
But Trump remains on several hooks for conduct unbecoming a president. The stink bombs are the convictions of the scofflaws — Manafort, Cohen, General “Lock her up” Flynn — he hired to run his campaign, fix his scandals, and serve as his national security advisor. Our noses are wrinkled not by gunpowder fumes but by the spray from Trump’s skunks.
Given Mueller’s decision not to recommend a criminal prosecution of the President, and Barr’s decision that there’s not enough evidence to justify pursuing obstruction of justice charges, there’s virtually no likelihood that Mueller’s report will lead to Trump’s impeachment. Something else, of course, might, but the political bars to removing a president through impeachment and conviction are so high (see Stephen Griffin's post at Balkinization) they’ve never been crossed.
Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached, but not convicted. When the White House tape proving he had conspired to obstruct justice — the smoking guy — was released, Richard Nixon resigned before the U.S. House could vote on the three articles of impeachment the House’s judiciary committee had approved. There’s no smoking gun in Trump’s case. Eequally important, there’s no trio of Republican elders with the spines and eminence of Hugh Scott, Barry Goldwater, and John Rhodes, to march over to the White House to tell Trump his support in Congress has collapsed and that it’s time for him to go. The thought of Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, and Kevin McCarthy, trying to organize themselves into a hanging party is risible.
Unless he dies in office, or resigns (that will be the day the cows come home), Trump will serve the term he won on 8 November 2016. Whether he will serve a second term depends on whether enough voters can hold their noses long enough to vote for him on 2 November 2020, on whether the Democrats nominate a viable candidate, and perhaps on whether the Rooskies find a way to jigger that election’s outcome.