Despite what Comey (and possibly some House Democrats) piously wishes to believe, Mueller will not, if pressed in questioning, “reach a decision that there is sufficient basis to charge the president.” If Mueller thought he could do that, he would have done so in the report.

So much for legalities. When it comes to politics, Democrats seem at first to be on firmer ground. Impeachment, not indictment, is the way for them to bring Trump down, and impeachment is fundamentally a political act, not a legal one. Moreover, Mueller has already implied that his report contains more than enough material to justify political action.

Yet nothing Mueller says on Capitol Hill is likely to build momentum toward that end. If the past two and a half years have taught us anything, it is that in a time of intense partisan polarization, political neutrality is the empty set. In order to maintain his aura of objectivity and impartiality, Mueller needs to say nothing that can be construed as an attack on the president. The moment he says something that appears to be partisan — with partisanship defined as anything that helps or hurts one party or the other, quite apart from its truth or falsity — he becomes another political player, another political operator out to advance his interests and agenda.