Byron York: Mueller changed everything
by Byron York | May 19, 2019 05:00 PM
From now on, the Trump-Russia affair, the investigation that dominated the first years of Donald Trump's presidency, will be divided into two parts: before and after the release of the Mueller report. Before the special counsel's findings were made public last month, the president's adversaries were on the offensive. Now, they are playing defense.
The change is due to one simple fact: Mueller could not establish that there was a conspiracy or coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign to fix the 2016 election. The special counsel's office interviewed 500 witnesses, issued 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search-and-seizure warrants, and obtained nearly 300 records of electronic communications, and still could not establish the one thing that mattered most in the investigation.
Without a judgment that a conspiracy — or collusion, in the popular phrase — took place, everything else in the Trump-Russia affair began to shrink in significance.
In particular, allegations that the president obstructed justice to cover up a conspiracy were transformed into allegations that he obstructed an investigation into a crime that prosecutors could not say actually occurred. Although it is legally possible to pursue an obstruction case without an underlying crime, a critical element of obstruction — knowledge of guilt — disappeared the moment Mueller's report was released.
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READ MORE: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-mueller-changed-everything
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Now, Republicans have turned the tables on Democrats by pumping new energy into their long-held desire to "investigate the investigation." Barr, who set off enormous controversy with his statement that "spying did occur" against the Trump campaign, has taken up the cause, assigning U.S. attorney John Durham to look into the origins of the probe.
Anticipation is also building for the release of Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz's report on the department's handling of the case. It is probably not a coincidence that some Obama-era intelligence figures are now pointing fingers at each other over their reliance on the so-called Steele dossier, a collection of unsubstantiated allegations against the president compiled by a former British spy on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign.
None of this would have happened without the Mueller report's conclusion that the evidence did not establish conspiracy or coordination. If Democrats could still claim that Trump and Russia conspired in 2016, they would still have the upper hand. But after Mueller, that claim is no longer possible, and Democratic hopes are dwindling.
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