Still, after Mr. Mueller’s first extended discussion of his investigation since he was appointed two years ago, the threats to Mr. Trump’s presidency appeared distant. Just last week, federal prosecutors in New York signaled they were unlikely to file additional charges in the election year hush-money scheme to silence two women alleging sexual encounters with Mr. Trump. The week before that, a federal appeals court dismissed a lawsuit claiming that Mr. Trump had violated the Constitution by collecting money from government guests at his hotel in Washington.
Mr. Trump also asserted his executive power on Wednesday to dismiss threats to two cabinet officers referred for criminal contempt charges by the House for defying subpoenas for information about the census citizenship question dispute. The Justice Department said it would not prosecute Attorney General William P. Barr or Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, because Mr. Trump’s assertion of executive privilege over the information made it lawful for them to refuse to provide it…
For House Democrats, who have been debating among themselves the virtues and wisdom of impeaching Mr. Trump if a Republican-controlled Senate would most likely not convict him, the day made clear that Mr. Mueller would not resolve that question by himself. At the least, they concluded there would not be a huge popular groundswell absent new evidence or some other change in circumstance, meaning that lawmakers were left to make the difficult decision whether to proceed or not on their own.
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