The Washington Post reports tonight: “Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III informed President Trump’s attorneys last month that he is continuing to investigate the president but does not consider him a criminal target at this point, according to three people familiar with the discussions.” You’re going to hear a lot about this story, and much of what you hear is going to focus on its secondary details. Among them, that Mueller is reportedly thinking of writing separate reports about the various charges and those reports could be very damaging.
Do not be misled.
Yes, the story goes on to say that he might become a target later. But Mueller has been at this now for nine months with an aggressive staff. He has issued indictments of various figures and might be going after others. So telling Trump that he’s not a target is a very big deal.
Yes, in theory, Trump could testify before Mueller and perjure himself because of his highly problematic relationship to the truth. Yes, in theory, the probe could go on for years, and he could be indicted after his presidency—though, at this point, any such speculation is transparently absurd. The simple fact is this: Trump is not a target: “Prosecutors view someone as a subject when that person has engaged in conduct that is under investigation but there is not sufficient evidence to bring charges.”
If he’s not a “target,” then the reports Mueller will write about his investigation will not rise to the level of indictable offenses. Remember, the only real threat to Trump’s continuing tenure would come from Mueller writing a document that effectively refers the matter to Congress for impeachment. It would still be necessary for the House itself to draft a bill of impeachment and vote on it. At which point, the matter would then become the province of a Senate trial, requiring 67 senators to vote to remove him from office. It’s almost impossible to imagine that happening in the first place, let alone if Mueller isn’t finding anything after nine solid months of investigations.
I kind of like to read stories that tell me something I didn’t know. Reading that after 9 months of a pack of Hillary sycophants trying to compose a crime, in addition to a year of illegal surveillance, no crime has been revealed, even though all indications and evidence points in exactly the opposite direction, is not a big surprise. The surprise will come if the crybabies that have placed all their hopes, dreams and political fortunes on a fantasy about Trump colluding with Russians to accept the fact.
I must disagree, Trump has been and will continue to be the target. They are getting pressure from both sides to put up or shut up or find an impeachable offense.
The coup is out to overturn the election results by any means necessary. Mueller is but one piece, albeit their biggest one.
California wack job wannabe POTUS Kamala Harris is the latest lefty to joke about killing Trump. If they can’t do it “legally” they’ll try doing it by inspiring one of their left wing nut jobs to assassinate him just like they inspired the shooting of Scalise and company. The left has normalized violence against everyone who disagrees with them, including POTUS.
@another vet: Yeah, if they want to enshrine Trump as a martyr forever, promote that stupidity. That was my worst fear for Obama (thank God for Joe “assassination insurance” Biden). I would vomit myself to death if something like that covered up the fact that he was the worst, most disastrous excuse for a President in US history.
@Deplorable Me:
I have him ranked at number 3, quite possibly number 2. Wilson got us into a European driven war whereby he guaranteed a victor to what would have been a stalemate. Allowing a victor set the stage for what followed that being WWII, the most destructive war in history. Two is LBJ. He put the welfare society on steroids for the sole purpose of votes and it was racially motivated. That led to generations of dependency and the deficits to go along with it. Add in getting thousands of Americans killed and wounded in a war he wasn’t committed to winning and for that reason he barely squeaks past Obama.
Obama can certainly move up given the damage he caused by trying to turn America into a banana republic. He was definitely the only anti-American President we’ve ever had (which should probably put him at number 2). At least with the other Presidents, agree with them or not, they loved the country and didn’t attempt to purposely drag it down. For instance, Wilson didn’t purposely try to set the stage for WWII and LBJ didn’t purposely try to get all those Americans killed in order to wreck the country.
@another vet: Hard to argue your top 3 Wilson a venomous racist, segregating the service putting german-americans in camps, LB’s Johnson hanging out gave the elites their war, even if they really wanted Russia not Nam. The compliant Media pushing the RedMenace while sliding in socialism under the door. Roosevelt has to come in the top 5 with his imprisoning the Japanese and taking us off the gold standard.
@kitt:
Actually, I always believed the Media was in bed with the Red Menace. The NYT acted as their mouthpieces over here as early as the ’20’s and ’30’s.
Definitely the most overrated. His economic policies prolonged the Depression.
Britain came out of the Depression sooner than we did by using classical liberal economic principles as opposed to the neo-socialist Keynesian ones FDR employed. He was also clamoring for a war to get us out of the Depression. There were lots of similarities between him and Wilson. He claimed he wanted to stomp out tyranny and then gave half of Europe and parts of Asia to Stalin just like Wilson claimed he wanted to stomp out imperialism while backing Britain which was the most imperialist country at the time.