The Geometry of Politics
In tenth grade, I transferred to Wyoming High School in Cincinnati, Ohio. Wyoming was a “top tiered” public school, still rated highly (US Newsnumber two in Ohio.) And while I got a top education there, I was never, ever, going to be a good math student. The agony of sophomore year was sitting in the back of Mr. Parker’s geometry class, trying to memorize theorems and postulates, and watching Mr. Parker dust his fingers in the chalk tray and then lick the chalk off. The basketball team must have given him a sour stomach.
But I did learn the definition of an axiom: a statement that is self-evidently true. And the axiom of politics today is this: Special Counsel Robert Mueller is an honorable man, who pursued and honest and serious investigation into the election of 2016 and the Trump campaign. As his former FBI Counsel and later Director of the Drug Enforcement Agency Chuck Rosenberg said; “Robert Mueller is a Marine, if you tell him to take the hill in front of him, he’ll take it, but not the hill to the right or the left.”
As we await whatever Attorney General Barr is doing to Mueller’s report, we can take as “axioms” a few things about how that report was prepared. We can assume that Mueller prepared the report properly, including sections that needed to be protected due to Grand Jury testimony or classified information. We can assume that Mueller was well aware that there would be a Congressional version and a “public” version of the report, and prepared his work for both.
Knowing those things, it’s an open question what the Attorney General is doing to the Report.
But there are a couple of additional “axioms” that we can be sure Mueller followed. The Department of Justice operates on internal regulations, and one of those regulations states that you cannot bring charges against the serving President of the United States. If the regulations say that Mueller couldn’t bring charges, he wouldn’t bring charges against the President. He also wouldn’t say that there “should” be charges against the President; such a statement would have the same impact as actually bringing the charges.
What Mueller would do is present the evidence of what he found, organized in a way that would draw them to the conclusion that Mr. Mueller reached. If that conclusion was that, if Mr. Trump wasn’t President, he would be charged, then the Report will show that. Robert Mueller was well aware that the Constitutional alternative to a President committing crimes is the Congressional impeachment process; it is to them that the evidence presented in his Report would be directed. He would then allow Congress to reach its own conclusions.
Robert Mueller knew his job well. He was the FBI Director who, with less than a week on the job, confronted the 9-11 attacks and completely reshaped the FBI from domestic crime fighting to counter-terrorism. He was not afraid to set priorities and make decisions. Given that, clearly Mueller was not afraid to reach a conclusion about the President’s possible actions to obstruct justice. He chose not to reach a conclusion, because he wanted the Congress to do so.
Instead, the most recent political appointee to the Justice Department, William Barr, chose to intervene and announce a conclusion. Not only did that immediately politicize the Report, but it re-opened the original controversy about how Barr got the Attorney General appointment in the first place.
In June of 2018, then private attorney Barr sent an unsolicited twenty-page opinionto the Justice Department and the White House specifically stating his views on the limits of Presidential obstruction. That opinion, made without any specific knowledge of what evidence the Mueller investigation had, attracted the attention of the White House, and was clearly one of the reasons Barr was tapped to return to the Attorney General’s job.
That creates a conflict of interest, and the appearance of bias on the part of the Attorney General. For him to intervene and reach conclusions that Mueller specifically did not, immediately raises a cloud of suspicion over his actions. It’s the last thing that Robert Mueller would want.
Like geometry, there will be an eventual proof of what the Mueller Report states. Whether it is fully released soon, or held for history scholars later, we will all find out what Mueller knew. “History has its eyes on you” Attorney General Barr (yep – another Hamilton reference) and if what you’re doing is trying to obscure the evidence in the Mueller Report, history will not look kindly on you.
Barr has promised a report to Congress by mid-April. The House of Representatives has demanded the entire report, in order to reach their own conclusions about the actions of the President, and to determine how best to protect the electoral process from further foreign intervention. Congress and all Americans need to know what happened, in order to move past 2016 and onto 2020. A truncated document will only prolong the fight, and extend our “long national nightmare.” Mr. Barr needs to “finish the proof” and release the Report.
” He chose not to reach a conclusion, because he wanted the Congress to do so.”
I’m not sure why Mueller chose not to reach a conclusion. Maybe the report will tell us. The last thing I would expect, though, that was that he wanted Congress to do so, unless you are referring to impeachment. And of course, that’s still on the table, regardless of what Barr says. Congress can certainly choose to bring impeachment hearings against the President, but, as you’ve observed, the American people are common sense enough to find it hard to fathom obstructing justice as to a crime that the prosecutor himself says that his lengthy investigation “did not establish that the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.”
Also, Mueller has CERTAINLY taken hills to the left & right of the hill to which he was directed. Most of the convictions or guilty pleas his office can take credit for, directly or indirectly, are NOT related to his central charge of collusion w Russia. e.g, Manafort. I’m not saying there is anything wrong w that, or that other Special Prosecutors haven’t done the same. See Ken Starr.