If Mueller, or the federal office in New York that just implicated Trump in a conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws, knew that in the end of this saga Trump would be “cleared” (as he laughably and desperately claimed he has been), they absolutely would at least be giving the establishment some sort of warning signs that they were grossly overplaying all of this. For them not to do so would be both morally unconscionable, as well as just plain idiotic.

These prosecutors are not dumb people. They know that the flurry of activity involving Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, and Paul Manafort has created a very strong expectation that there is an extremely incriminating — currently private — puzzle about the president, for which we the public just don’t yet have all the pieces. If, by now, they know those missing pieces still don’t exist, they would be insane to set themselves to look like total morons if, at the end of the investigations, there is nothing substantial against Trump.