No Criminal Collusion With Russia, But Lots of Corruption

Trump and his Vichy Republicans are crowing that the Mueller report exonerates Trump yet curiously, Mitch McConnell is acting to block the full release of the report to the public.   If, as claimed by Trump and the Republicans giving him politico fellatio, the report is a full exoneration, one would think they'd have wanted an immediate release of the full report. Why the inconsistent behavior?  It's likely simple. The report may not have found criminal conspiracy with Russia, but I suspect it is full of (A) ugly and unsavory details about Trump's minions and staffers (including Don, Jr.) which would be highly damaging, even if not criminal, and (B) details that would justify further House committee investigations into Trump and his years of corrupt business practices that seeming have not abated over the last two years.  A column in the New York Times looks at what may be behind the Trump/GOP effort to keep the report from the public view.  Here are excerpts:

The Mueller investigation is over, and the only people close to Donald Trump who have been criminally charged are his former campaign chairman, former deputy campaign chairman, former personal lawyer, former national security adviser, former campaign foreign policy adviser and Roger Stone, the president’s longtime friend and strategist. The report written by the special counsel Robert Mueller, according to a quotation in a brief summary issued by Attorney General William Barr, says that “while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Naturally, [Trump] the president and his allies are claiming, as one of Trump’s tweets said, “Complete and Total EXONERATION.”

Whatever else is in the Mueller report, it says, according to Barr, that the investigation “did not establish” that anyone from the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its 2016 election interference. . . . There will be no deus ex Mueller bringing this wretched presidency to an early end. On the contrary, Trump is emboldened, and his foes momentarily defensive.

Until the Mueller report is publicly released, however, it’s impossible to tell how much of Trump’s victory is substantive and how much is spin. The report, evidently, leaves open the question of whether Trump obstructed justice. In his letter to Congress about the report, Barr said that he and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, made the determination that no obstruction of justice occurred. . . . There is no reason for anyone to take his finding seriously.

Even some of the underlying questions about Trump’s relationship with Russia remain open. . . . As we parse Barr’s letter, we should be aware of the human tendency toward motivated reasoning.

But we should be equally aware of the media tendency to capitulate in the face of Trumpian triumphalism. (Recall the pressure to give Trump credit after his first meeting with Kim Jong-un, despite the emptiness of the resulting agreement.) So we shouldn’t overlook the fact that when it comes to Trump’s relationship with Russia, Barr’s letter speaks only to very narrow questions about Trump campaign involvement in Russian information warfare operations in 2016.

Still, assuming Barr’s summary is accurate, it means that while Trump was installed with Russia’s help, neither he nor his campaign assisted Russia in committing the crimes that aided his ascent. (If he cheated his way to victory, it was through more pedestrian alleged violations of campaign finance law.) We’re still in the dark, however, about all the steps Trump took to thwart the investigation and about the extent of his vulnerability to compromise.