What the Mueller Probe Really Means

The Mueller Report, despite the best efforts of the chief author and his partisan investigative staff, is a bone-crushing defeat for the president’s enemies. There is not a whit of evidence that any American collaborated with any Russian to alter the results of the 2016 presidential election, and there is extensive evidence that the Trump campaign was the subject of enticements to collaborate and rebuffed all of them at all levels. The laborious bulk of Mueller’s minute description of completely inconsequential twists and turns in his investigation leaves the reader in no doubt of his thoroughness, and in no doubt of the complete absence of any case that could be made for collusion, let alone cooperation in an actual crime of attempting to influence the election illegally. As there is clearly no excuse for the special counsel to have been established, Mueller devotes the second half of his report to an effort to scratch together a virtual justification for it, by leading the reader through another maze to imply that there might be a conceivable case against the president for obstruction of justice. He acknowledges that he does not have a clear idea of the president’s motives, and so cannot judge if there was a corrupt motive, but cannot exonerate him either.