The Gospel of Mueller

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Last Thursday Attorney General William Barr released a redacted version of the Mueller Report.  While everyone knew much of the report would be blacked out, each camp hoped that what was left would definitively support their point of view.  Liberal pundits & lawmakers licked their chops in eager anticipation of that one “GOTCHA” paragraph which would make an indictment of the president inevitable, while Trump loyalists hoped that the document would completely exonerate him.  Oddly enough, both sides got what they wanted.

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Representative Jim Jordan (R - Ohio) and White House spokesperson Kellyanne Conway point to passages such as, “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”  For them, this a-ha moment is only strengthened by the statement, “the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference.”

Meanwhile, Senator Chuck Schumer (D - New York) and progressively leaning newscaster Rachel Maddow cite the following quotes as if Paul Drake had just entered the court room and handed Perry Mason the key piece of evidence which would blow the case wide open.

“While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

“You gotta do this. You gotta call Rod ...,” Trump told former White House Counsel Donald McGahn during a June 17, 2017, phone call.  “Call Rod, tell Rod that Mueller has conflicts and can’t be the Special Counsel, Mueller has to go. ... Call me back when you do it.”

Personally, I believe we have a crime boss in the White House.  I only have to point to the following snippet to support this belief.

“According to notes written by Hunt, when Sessions told the President that a Special Counsel had been appointed, the President slumped back in his chair and said, ‘Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked.’"

I can't speak for anybody else, but I read that and think, “If he had nothing to hide, why did the prospect of an investigation frighten him?”

According to PolitiFact.com, Mueller's investigation, "...netted indictments against 34 people and three entities on nearly 200 separate criminal charges. Five associates of Trump have been convicted, and another, Roger Stone, is awaiting trial."  In my opinion, saying they busted James Cohen, Paul Manafort, & Roger Stone, but Donald Trump is clean is like saying Silvio Dante, Paulie Gualtieri, & Big Pussy are dirty, but Tony Soprano is a choir boy.

Of course, I believe Trump to be a criminal, so I’m going to gravitate toward excerpts which reinforce such a belief.  In the end, nothing has been settled by this report.  To paraphrase William Shakespeare, the Mueller Report may prove to be much ado about nothing.

We don't know what kind of picture is painted by the full report.  However, the redacted version reads like the Bible; it can be used to support whatever the reader already believes.  Staunch conservatives aren't going to come away from this report convinced of Donald Trump’s guilt.  Likewise, determined liberals aren't going to read the report and say, “Oh, he didn't do it.  Well, what do you know?”  We're each going to continue to believe what we believe regarding the guilt, or innocence of President Donald J. Trump.
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