Watch your step. The bar is so damn low you just might trip over it.
The bar is so low that a four-page “summary of principal conclusions” of an investigation that took nearly two full years to complete, written by President Trump’s brand new hand-picked Attorney General, is being flailed and flaunted in the face of the American people by Trump and many in the Republican party as “total exoneration” of wrongdoing before a sniff of evidence from the report has been publicly disclosed.
The bar is so low that this new development will soon enable Trump’s lawyers to shift their energy from an investigation of whether Trump or his team conspired with a hostile foreign power, to the investigations into Trump’s alleged $130,000 and $150,000 hush-money payments to a pornstar and a Playboy model, the Donald J. Trump Foundation—forced to dissolve due to a “shocking pattern of illegality” and self-dealings—Trump’s taxes (The New York Times found Trump to be the beneficiary of $400m+ in tax schemes), an explicitly covered-up plot during the presidential campaign to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, and several other iminent investigations into alleged criminality.
The bar is so low that the exposure of at least six of Trump’s associates as criminals, including his long-time lawyer, his national security advisor, and his presidential campaign manager, is getting lost in the news cycle.
Whew… are you still following?
Importantly, if—and this is a huge if, because we have not seen the report—the investigation did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, that is a finding the American people must accept.
Robert S. Mueller III, the Special Counsel assigned to investigate Russian interference and Trump-Russia ties, has dedicated nearly his entire life to serving his country. He joined the Marine Corps in 1968 at the age of 24, serving as an officer in the Vietnam War and earning a Bronze Star—with valor— and a Purple Heart award.
After returning from Vietnam in 1971, Mueller pursued further education at the University of Virginia School of Law and earned a law degree. He served in U.S. Attorney offices over the next three decades and served as FBI director from 2001-2013. There may have been literally nobody more qualified for this job than Mueller. If he was able to clear Trump and his team from criminal conspiracy, the American people must accept his assessment.
What we must aggressively refuse to accept is that the actions taken and the provable lies told by Trump, his family, and his associates concerning undisclosed contacts with the same hostile country that launched a massive cyber warfare and disinformation campaign to help elect Trump president are not acceptable and do not deserve to be treated as normal or okay. If wrongdoing can only be established via criminal conviction, the bar is too low.
We must continue to ask the important questions moving forward. We must keep asking why. Why did Trump try to end the Mueller investigation several times? Why have Trump and his associates been so shamefully untruthful about contacts with Russia? Why has Trump publicly accepted Putin’s denial of election interference while 17 U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded the opposite? Why did Trump call the Russia investigation a “witch hunt” more than 180 times on Twitter and repeatedly defame Mueller—a lifelong Republican—and his prosecutors as “13 Angry Democrats” desperate to find something on Trump? Why is it that Trump, following the release of the four-page “summary,” now agrees that Mueller “acted honorably”? Why did Trump’s campaign manager share voter polling data with a Russian associate? What did the president know, and when did he know it?
Do not take Attorney General Bill Barr’s “summary” at face value. Question why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is blocking resolutions to release the full Mueller report despite a 420-0 vote in the House to do so. When the report comes, read it for yourself. Think for yourself. Apply your own standards of propriety and impropriety. Refuse to allow your own thoughts to be circumvented by brutal disinformation campaigns from Trump and his allies about contacts with Russia. Call out wrongdoing when and where you see it. Hold your elected leaders accountable. Most importantly, learn the facts that have been reported over the past two years, study them, understand them, and apply them in your sovereign assessment of the Mueller report. Do the same for every other investigation into the most powerful man in the world.
Trump’s claim of “Total EXONERATION” before the report has been published is nothing but a smokescreen that will continue to make waves until we see the report for ourselves.
If criminal conspiracy is not established by Mueller, accept that. But do not merge the legal definition of criminality with your personal definition of wrongdoing. Hold your standards for the United States president higher than the bar that is hacking at our ankles.
