This is something that Donald Trump has demonstrated a remarkable knack for avoiding throughout his public life. Trump has gone bankrupt and bounced back, been investigated more times than anyone can count, and has learned what it takes to win. As President, he has deployed the same tactics that helped him survive allegations of mob ties and tax fraud in his private life. He has hired aggressive lawyers, he has stalled, he has threatened. It has worked.
Late on Wednesday, many, many hours into the Mueller testimony, Representative Sean Maloney, of New York, helped to clarify just how successfully President Trump had played the prosecutor. Mueller had told Trump’s lawyers that his testimony was “vital” to resolving the investigation, Maloney pointed out, so why had Mueller finished his probe without getting it? “We understood we could subpoena the President,” Mueller allowed, but he also acknowledged that Trump would fight the subpoena all the way through the courts. And that would have taken too long, Mueller said, “because of the necessity of expediting the end of the investigation.” Running out the clock, refusing to participate, stonewalling: the Trump playbook worked. This, in the end, is the lesson of the Mueller investigation. That may not be what the Democrats who run the House of Representatives expected us to learn at Wednesday’s hearing, but it was the day’s inescapable conclusion.
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