Here’s pretty much all you need to know about former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Wednesday testimony before two congressional committees about his now-completed investigation into Russian election interference and the Trump campaign: It was a battle between a town, Washington, ravening for new news and a man, Mueller, determined not to give them any. In the end, Mueller won.
When Mueller submitted his long-anticipated report in April, he announced that he had not established that any member of the Trump campaign had conspired with Russia to interfere in the election. He had, however, unearthed 10 instances in which the president had deliberately worked to obstruct the probe into him and his campaign, potentially a criminal act itself. Long-standing Justice Department policy prevented a president from being indicted while in office; for that reason and others, Mueller declined to make “a traditional prosecutorial judgment” about whether Trump was criminally guilty of obstruction. He had laid out the facts; now it was up to Congress and the American people to draw their own conclusions.
And then—there was nothing. After two years of frenzy and speculation, the Mueller report came, and went, and things were much the same as before.
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