Let’s imagine for a moment a hypothetical situation in which a president shoots someone on the White House lawn. A two-year, $34 million special counsel investigation ensues. As a result of the investigation, the special counsel finds that there is sufficient evidence to conclude that the president committed murder.
Now does anyone honestly believe the special counsel, in announcing his findings, would refrain from stating a clear conclusion and instead of announcing that simply say, “Charging the president with a crime was not an option we could consider”? Of course not because that would be ludicrous. If the evidence were there, the special counsel would say he found sufficient evidence to conclude that the president committed murder.
Whether the special counsel could “charge” the president with that crime would be totally irrelevant to the inquiry because charging him is not his role and responsibility. The House would initiate impeachment proceedings, the president would be tried in the Senate, and the president would be removed from office. That’s the way it should and would work.
The hypothetical above shows that the blessed “Saint” Robert Mueller is playing games. On the collusion and conspiracy issue, Mueller stated pretty clearly that “there was insufficient evidence to charge.”
Yet on the obstruction of justice allegation, Mueller would not say his team found obstruction but then offered weasel words to the effect that they didn’t find that the president did not commit a crime, noting that charging him was not an option.
Well, that conveniently leaves it wide open, doesn’t it? Which seems to be exactly as Mueller intended.
Mueller could have said there was insufficient evidence to charge. He also could have said there was sufficient evidence to charge but that he had no authority to charge. Or he could have left out the verb “charge” altogether, since his ability to charge is irrelevant, and simply stated his conclusions. As in the murder hypothetical above, he might have said our investigation has led us to the conclusion that the president obstructed the investigation.
But he didn’t say any of those things. Instead, dropping all pretense about his motivations, the partisan political hack played cute. He winked and nodded to Congress without stating a clear conclusion.
Mueller’s equivocation and inconsistency tell you all you need to know. This was always a political hit job with two alternatively acceptable goals in mind: either they were going to impeach the president or damage and undermine him going into the 2020 elections. To be clear, I don’t think Democrats truly care which one it is so long as Donald Trump does not win reelection next year.
There are several sickening aspects to yesterday. First, as Sean Davis at The Federalist noted, we had Robert Mueller trying to propose a new legal theory that an uncharged person was not innocent. Not only does that flip the presumption of innocence on its head—positing now that someone is guilty until that person can prove himself or herself innocent—it also shows that Mueller intended to muddy the waters and wants to undercut this president.
Mueller’s was not the only major investigation over the past two years. We had one underway with the House Intelligence Committee, another with the Senate Intelligence Committee, and yet another with the Senate Judiciary Committee. In addition to the 500 witnesses Mueller interviewed, there were likely hundreds more with those concurrent investigations. Yet all of those people, under oath, didn’t give even one piece of evidence for “collusion” or criminal conspiracy, nor did they give any definitive proof that there was any obstruction of justice—because there wasn’t any.
Now Mueller and the Left are signaling to the country that a political opponent can help instigate an investigation based on false premises through partisan propaganda or through illegally leaked memos, without proof of any wrongdoing, and that such an attempt by someone to defend oneself against such actions will now be construed as obstruction of justice.
Have we completely lost our minds?
If we accept these innovations suggested by Mueller’s actions, we will now be saying that due process and the presumption of innocence are dead. For what? We would destroy the foundations of our republic for a short term and purely partisan gain, to our eternal shame. If we remove those principles and eviscerate the rule of law, all bets on the longevity of our political society are off.
The fact is, Democrats have always wanted to impeach Donald Trump. From day one, unable to accept the results of the 2016 elections, they have sought to nullify them.
Now, with a strong economic tailwind at his back and a collection of Democratic Lilliputians clamoring to be the nominee against him, all of their election models are showing Trump winning re-election in 2020. Democrats, in defiance of common sense, knowing that a Republican Senate won’t remove him, want to impeach him because they think that might be the only way they can cripple him and keep him for winning again in 2020.
They keep blabbering about principle and a supposed constitutional crisis, to which I say: it’s hardly principle to launch oneself off a political cliff, but by all means, stop talking, find the nerve and do it—and be prepared to accept the political consequences for your actions at the ballot box in 2020.
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Photo credit: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call