An enduring piece of Robert Mueller’s legacy will be the way he attempted to justify his political assassination on President Trump 1.0 — the 2017 “Russian interference” investigation — by not just saying that he found no crime committed by the president (he didn’t) but adding that the probe “also does not exonerate him.”
It isn’t the job of a special counsel to exonerate anyone. It’s also not his job to convict anyone. That gratuitous line in the conclusion of his money pit of an investigation served as nothing more than a lifeline for Democrats and the rabidly anti-American, anti-Trump media to maintain that they had every reason to continue calling the president a Russian agent, though they had none.
So crucial to Mueller’s legacy is it that the New York Times obituary for his death last week included it in the very first sentence. “Robert S. Mueller III, who led the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 12 tumultuous years, brought politically explosive indictments as a special counsel examining Russia’s attack on the 2016 presidential election, and then concluded that he could neither absolve nor accuse President Trump of a crime,” it said, “died on Friday.”
Nearly seven years after Mueller released his findings — such as they were — and still “the walls are closing in,” “the noose is tightening,” and Trump’s presidency is “at a turning point.” At some point, surely, Trump is cooked.
Mueller’s great discovery essentially was that a Republican who was running for president didn’t concede victory because his Democrat opponent was despised by a foreign government, Russia. Trump potentially benefiting from any outside election interference isn’t a crime, the same way it’s not a crime, inexplicably, for our national news media to throw their full weight behind one party to win elections. We might find both scenarios unsavory, but they don’t come with prison time, try as hard as Democrats and Mueller might.
This happens all the time in the Trump era. Some figure of middling repute takes it upon him or herself to stop or mitigate the will of the voters who put Trump in the White House, inevitably self-destructing. Michael Avenatti, John Kelly, Miles Taylor, Mark Milley, Andrew McCabe, and on and on. They’re all gone. Trump is still here. To wit, after Mueller testified on his investigation in front of Congress, looking every bit as senile as Joe Biden on a day with nice weather, Democrats hastily threw him overboard as if he were deadweight on a sinking ship.
It remains a mystery that former FBI Director James Comey was thoroughly dragged through broken glass for publicly declaring he wouldn’t recommend charges, declaring “no reasonable prosecutor” would charge Hillary Clinton for apparently stealing public property (sometimes falsely referred to by Democrats in the media as “her emails”); but nobody says anything about Mueller unilaterally announcing Trump might be guilty of a crime, without saying which one. Comey was in no position to say what a “reasonable prosecutor” would or wouldn’t do. He was the FBI director, not the attorney general. Likewise, Mueller was in no position to convict or exonerate anyone. He was the special counsel, not a member of a jury.
Rest in peace, Robert Mueller. The world hardly knew you, and you hardly knew how to stay in your lane.