In May 2017, the U.S. Attorney General’s office authorized a sweeping counterintelligence investigation into Russian government interference in the 2016 presidential election. At its heart was the charge, widely touted by opponents of President Trump, that the latter’s presidential campaign, and perhaps even the president himself, colluded with Russia to win.
Nearly two years later, the investigation — dubbed the “Mueller probe,” after its special counsel, former FBI chief Robert Mueller — has concluded with a finding of no collusion. The Special Counsel also declined to accuse the president of obstruction of justice, an allegation that had been anticipated by the president’s critics — but asserting that the decision was not an exoneration.
This outcome has raised questions about next steps for the president and the opposition, as well as a measure of soul searching among media and the public at large.
TRUMP’S OPPONENTS SHOW A MIX OF OUTRAGE AND UNCERTAINTY
Several leading Democrats, blindsided by the report’s apparent vindication of President Trump’s repeated claims that there had been “no collusion” with the Russian government, channeled their energy into calls to release Mueller’s full report.
Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi took the lead: “Attorney General Barr’s letter raises as many questions as it answers,” she stated. “The fact that Special Counsel Mueller’s report does not exonerate the president on a charge as serious as obstruction of justice demonstrates how urgent it is that the full report and underlying documentation be made public without any further delay.”
Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren swiftly echoed Pelosi’s call, tweeting that “Congress voted 420-0 to release the full Mueller report. Not a ‘summary’ from his handpicked Attorney General. AG Barr, make the full report public. Immediately.”
Other Democratic officials, such as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler of New York, took a different tack. Citing “very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department following the Special Counsel report, where Mueller did not exonerate the President,” Nadler called on Attorney-General Barr to testify before Congressional committee.
Numerous leading Democrats and progressives expressed incredulity at the report’s findings, or rejected them outright. Presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, on the day following the Mueller report’s release, told a crowd that President Trump had “beyond the shadow of a doubt… sought to collude with the Russian government.” He later added that he was “looking forward to reading” the Mueller report in its entirety, and expressed hope that “every American who so chooses [will] be able to read it as well.”
Progressive media outlets voiced outrage. MSNBC host Chris Matthews remarked, “We were told for weeks by experts you cannot deal with an obstruction of justice charge without getting to motive. You can’t get to motive unless you hear from the person himself who’s the target of the investigation…how can they let Trump off the hook?” The same night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow appeared to verge on tears during her broadcast, before shifting to criticism of past dishonesty on the part of President Trump and his associates: “if everything was on the up and up, why lie? What should we read into the fact that the President was lying about his efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the campaign?”
TRUMP AND HIS SUPPORTERS: JUBILATION AND CALLS FOR REVENGE
Among conservatives and Republicans, the President Trump’s vindication of charges of collusion prompted widespread celebration. Trump supporters across the country held impromptu celebrations, including a “No Collusion Day” rally in mid-town Manhattan.
Republican congressman Mark Meadows tweeted that “after 22 months of a special counsel and 2 years of congressional investigations, it’s over. The clock has finally struck midnight on the ‘Russian collusion’ fantasy.” In a similar vein, Senator Lindsey Graham called it a “Good day for the rule of law [and a] great day for President Trump and his team. No collusion and no obstruction. The cloud hanging over President Trump has been removed by this report.”
Editor of the influential conservative National Review magazine Rich Lowry, heralded the news as a rebuke to anti-Trump forces in American media, tweeting that “the three biggest losers from the Mueller report in order—the media, the media, the media. It was obsessed & hysterical for two years, constantly suggesting the smoking-gun Russia revelation was just over the horizon, sometimes supporting its wished-for conclusion with erroneous reporting.”
Numerous leading voices took the occasion to demand renewed investigations into Senator Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama’s role in setting in motion the Mueller probe. Conservative writer Michael Goodwin, writing in the New York Post, asked, “Was the initial decision to investigate Trump’s campaign an honest mistake by the Obama administration? Or was it an attempt to rig the election in favor of Clinton, and when that failed, overthrow a duly elected president? Those outstanding issues are as worthy of complete answers as those that Mueller investigated.”
Senator Graham, giving a press conference on Capitol Hill, proposed a counter-investigation by a “Mueller-like figure’’ tasked with investigating attempts by senior FBI officials to harm the Trump campaign in 2016. “When it comes to the FISA warrant, the Clinton campaign, the counterintelligence investigation, it’s pretty much been swept under the rug. Those days are over,” Graham said. “I’m going to get answers to this.”
Presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway issued a more pointed critique, calling for several Democratic officeholders to resign. Speaking on Fox News this Monday, she demanded that "those who let this lie fly for two years, haranguing and harassing and trying to embarrass, and worse, those of us who worked on the 2016 campaign, beginning with the president and his family, really do owe America an apology." She took specific aim at Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee: "He ought to resign today,” she said. “He’s been on every TV show fifty times a day for the last two years promising Americans that this president would be impeached or indicted."
THE ROAD TO 2020: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE NEXT ELECTIONS
The implications of the Mueller probe outcome for the 2020 Presidential elections are not yet clear, owing partially to the fact that the report in its entirety has not yet been released. As noted by Yuvan Levin, a prominent but Trump-skeptical conservative author, “We are not at the end of the Mueller drama. We are in an interlude created by the Attorney General’s decision to summarize the report for the public before releasing it.” Levin argues that Mueller’s tentative exoneration of President Trump will make it “harder to revive the passion of the partisans” but that “depending on the details and arguments in the report, it may turn out to be harder to revive one side’s passion than the other’s—and it isn’t obvious right now which that would be.”
Barring any new revelations from the fuller contents of Mueller’s report, Washington remains locked in a stalemate that gives every sign of persisting until 2020. Since January, the White House has focused its energies on a policy agenda item — building a wall on the US-Mexico border — which is mired in legal challenges and budgetary battles. On the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Congress remains bitterly divided. The Republican-held Senate is occupied chiefly with appointing conservative judges anathema to liberals, while the Democratic-held House of Representatives exerted considerable effort over the past three months pursuing Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s “Green New Deal” agenda, despite little chance of its enactment into law.
In this environment, political analysts are uncertain how salient the effect of the Mueller report will ultimately be on the 2020 elections, though few doubt it redounds to Trump’s benefit. Prominent statistician and elections analyst Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight contends that “where this will help Trump the most is not with traditional swing voters but with Trump-skeptical Republicans. Even Republicans who don’t love Trump tend to be critical of the news media, and they’d already thought that the media was devoting too much attention to Russia-related matters.... While this isn’t a huge group of voters, every little bit helps in an election that could shape up as another 50-50 affair.”
Democratic strategists largely concur, and have taken the occasion to argue that Trump’s opponents should seek new avenues to critique Trump. Hank Sheinkopf, in an interview with The Hill, argues that “beating the Mueller drum is not going to work unless there is new information.” Julie Roginsky, another Democratic strategist, notes that March 22 “was a good day for the White House, in the sense that it got to define the narrative early. It’s not necessarily a long-term victory. … I don’t know we have all the information yet.”
