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The first debate was whether the Russians intervened in the election to tip the results to Trump. Mueller is the latest to confirm they did. The next debate was whether the Trump team encouraged or sought to take advantage of the Russian intervention.
That is a matter of public record. The next question was whether the Trump organization in any way conspired to work with the Russians to intervene in the election. Mueller says he could not legally find that was the case.
Nonetheless there were scores of Team Trump interactions with Russians, Trump instigated an unprecedented tilt toward Russia, handed classified information to the Russians, capitulated publicly to Putin and sought to keep his actions private.
Further many top Trump officials and family members lied about their interactions with Russia...and the depth of the family's financial ties to Russia the degree to which they were beholden to them or sought to gain from the relationship remains not just an open question...
...but an area in which there is a massive degree of evidence to suggest Trump was compromised. The next question was whether there was a cover-up, an effort to obstruct justice. Mueller left that question open. Barr has attempted to close it.
He has done so with convoluted logic and precipitously in a way that is likely to damage his credibility for the remainder of his tenure. It was his first big call and he blew it, placing partisanship above justice and the law.
To the degree the president did not break any laws conspiring with the Russians we should be pleased. But we cannot be content with that. Collusion was never the central issue despite the self-serving Trump attempts to cast it as such.
The central issue was never a political or legal one, in fact. It was always a national security question. And the Russian attack has been met the president with serial denials and a concerted effort to resist constructive responses that might protect us in the future.
The Russian attack was embraced and defended by the president and those close to him. It was encouraged and rewarded with a new kind of US-Russia relationship unwarranted by Russia's behavior and grossly contrary to US national interests.
The president's lies and obstructions only compound the wrongs cited above. The fact that he and his family were compromised by their interests remains an area open to further investigation (and many other investigations are continuing in this area.)
In short, the issue we are grappling with tonight is that it is clear the president has betrayed the country and yet we are being asked to accept the conclusion that he did so without breaking the law. That is frustrating and hard to stomach.
But it is something more than that. It is a threat to our national security. The idea that a foreign enemy could intervene to help a candidate in the US election and receive the endorsement and protection of that candidate and even be rewarded for it...
...and then that candidate could deliberately leave the country to open to future attacks should be repellant to anyone who cares about America and our future. The notion that heavy thumb of partisanship can be prematurely placed on the scales of justice...
...to keep a president above the law should be anathema to us all. That the tool the founder's provided to protect us in such cases--impeachment and conviction--is not really available to us is appalling and would disgust the men who first conceived the country.
But they left us another tool. They left us the tool of elections. We must ensure above all else that the public knows the full facts of the Mueller investigation. We must ensure Congressional investigations reveal the compromises and crimes Mueller was not mandated to explore.
We must ensure that each &every voting member of the public has the ability to vote & we must ensure they know they have a better alternative-not just a president and party that would never betray the country but one that also eschews the other repulsive traits of this president.
Racism, misogyny, corruption, incompetence, attacks on our allies, the embrace of our enemies, contempt for our values...these are reasons far beyond the purview of Mueller of the Department of Justice that should ensure Donald Trump's term of office ends in January 2021.
A better future for Americans, an end to inequality, an effort to end the corruption of money politics in America, investments in our future, in fairness, in compassion, in our health, in the dignity of a job for all who want it, these are also reasons to end Trump's term.
Because just as he has fought tooth and nail the truth coming out about the 2016 election, he will want to suppress it in 2020. Because it is in the end, the truth, not the law that will ultimately offer the final verdict about this serial liar and despicable man.
Truth will provide the evidence needed for the verdict first of the voters and later that of history. And it will not be subject to self-interested perversions or obstructions of justice offered up by Trump, his appointees or his fellow members of the GOP.
We learned a little more today about Trump. We may have resolved one or two legal issues. But the case against Donald Trump was long ago made by Donald Trump and those closest to him, the conclusions are damning and incontrovertible...
...and it is up to us that the next election reconfirms that the majority of Americans accept that judgment and place truth, our national security and our values ahead of the law narrowly written or improperly denied.
