When𒊎 the smoke from the midterm election clears, one thing is certain: You will be seeing the name of R🃏obert Mueller a lot more than you have for the past two months, no matter whether the Democrats manage to take the US House or not.
For one thing, Mueller has kept himself and his investigation into Donald Trump’s campaign deliberately out of the headlines by observing the Justice Department custom of noཧt issuing indictments connected to politics in the 60 days ꧃leading up to an election.
Just about the only real news related to the special counsel’s office has been a slow drip of information about the connections between Trump adviser Roger Stone and WikiLeaks. And that seems to have leaked from Stone and those around him, not Mueller’s team. (There was also some outrageous fake news designed to impugn Mueller’s credibility, but that faded fast.)
With the election over, Mueller will be back in action. His te🍸am will likely have more iꦿndictments to make.
Mueller will also have to decide how to communicate the information he has gathered to Congress. Last week, a federal judge ordered the release of a 1974 grand jury report that was part of special prosecutor Leon Jaworski’s report to Congress about President Richard Nixon. The docum𝔉ent could have lessons for Muellﷺer.
Of course, Mueller’s investigation has worked quietly andಌ methodically so far, and we don’t know how quickly he might act after the election — only that he is free to do🥂 so.
If the Democrats win Congress, they will be able to initiate extensive oversight investigations into areas of Trump’s career and possible ties with Russia. That would certainly overlap with Mueller’s work, and add a further element of overt partisanship to the saga of the special counsel’s investigatioꦗn and Trump’s efforts to discredit or end it.
More dramatic still, a Democratic House would have the ability to impeach Trump — 🔯even if it knew for sure that Republicans in the Senate would acquit Trump after a trial there.
That would raise the stakes considerably for whatever recommendation or report Mueller makes to Congress. Most Democrats played down the impeachment idea in the midterm campaign, j꧃udging (rightly or wrongly) that it would be more likely to turn🅰 out angry Republican voters than supportive Democratic ones.
That calculus could change with presidential elections still two years away. Impeachment would distract Trump from his agenda. It might weak🌠en him to have to spend months or even yea๊rs defending himself against detailed charges.
Mueller’s evidence would be a𓆉t the center of any impeachment effort. His investigation, cleverly farmed out to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, already got Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen to testify under oath in open court that the president directed him to commit an election law felony. That would be a significant 🍒piece of any impeachment effort.
Mueller’s findings still need to be pinned down more precis🦂ely around the question of Trump campaign coordination with Russia, the very issue with which the investiꦉgation began.
With respect to the firing of FBI Director James Comey, it seems highly unlikely that there will be any ꧒more concrete information than what the public already knows. There’s ample evidence for the Democrats to claim that Trump obstructed justice, but there’s also room for Trump and his Republican defenders to say that the president had no corrupt intent when he fired Comey.
Therefore, Mueller’s findings on the Russia connection will be hugely consequential. The investigation has already uncovered compelling evidence that Russian intelligence operatives were involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee during the election. If Trum🍸p’s campaign was knowingly involved, then the whole setup begins to look much more like Watergate, in which Republican-hired operatives broke into the Democratic National Committee offices.
The key question would then become, as it was in Watergate, what the president knew and when he knew it.ཧ The possibility of a cover-up would loom large. More information about such a potential cover-up could change public perception of the Comey firing.
The strongest potential connection of which we are n🃏ow aware is Stone. Recently released email indicates that he told officials in the Trump ca🍬mpaign about upcoming WikiLeaks leaks before they were made public.
Because the Russians were the ultimate source of the emails released by WikiLeaks, that brings the chain between Russia ꦐand the Trump campaign one link closer to being es♋tablished. To be sure, the chain is not complete, much less solid.
© 2018, Bloomberg Opinion