The aftermath of the Mueller report

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On the night of Mar. 22, Special Counsel Robert Mueller finally handed in his over 300 page report on his investigation into the Russian collusion with the 2016 election. Two days later on Mar. 24, Attorney General William Barr released a four page summary basically saying there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

After Trump heard this news, he had a field day with it. For the last two weeks, he tweeted that he was “totally exonerated” and that the investigation was a “complete waste of time.” 

Even Fox News had banners and reports going up siding with the president. Clearly Fox News and Trump have forgotten what has happened in the last two years.

Thanks to the Mueller Report, 34 people have been indicted or plead guilty, it was confirmed that Russia did intervene in the 2016 election and that Trump may have committed campaign finance laws by paying off a porn star he slept with shortly after his son Barron was born.

This investigation needed to happen. The democracy of the US was tested and manipulated by a foreign country. The fact that the report doesn’t say that Trump or his team had colluded with Russia doesn’t mean there was rigging in the election. 

Furthermore, the report said that it cannot exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice. In his report Mueller notes “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

For the last two years, Trump and his associates have done everything they could to trash Mueller and his investigation, even going so far as saying “Mueller and his team of Democrats” were doing this because the Democrats lost the election. 

In November, I wrote an article after the midterm elections saying that if the Democrats wanted to impeach Trump it would have to be now. One of the big pieces that would help with that is the Mueller Report. Now that it’s summary is out, it doesn’t look good for impeachment.

This is completely ridiculous. Robert S Mueller the 3rd is a former homicide prosecutor in Washington D.C and was the director of the FBI from 2001 to 2013 under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He is also a Republican and enjoys catching bad guys and putting them in jail.

When Mueller made his team, he was searching for the best lawyers in the world. A PBS Frontline report on the Mueller Report noted the lawyers he recruited “may be the A-team of prosecutors for a generation.” 

This included Aaron Zebley, a former FBI agent, Michael Dreeben, who had argued over 100 Supreme Court cases, Jeannie Rhee, a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Andrew Weissmann and Greg Andres, a former mob prosecutor from New York. If this team were to find anything damaging against Trump, they would have found it.

In November, I wrote an article after the midterm elections saying that if the Democrats wanted to impeach Trump it would have to be now. One of the big pieces that would help with that is the Mueller Report. Now that it’s summary is out, it doesn’t look good for impeachment. 

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, last month made it clear that impeachment is “not worth it,” according to the New York Times.

Now what needs to happen is that Attorney General Barr has to release the full report. 

On Monday, multiple news outlets like CNN, CBC and MSNBC reported that subpoenas are being prepared to have the full report released. While Mueller’s investigation is over, the debate on what the report means is far from over and could carry on like a dark cloud into the 2020 election. 

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