Thread by @usacsmret

Byron York: Mueller changed everything washex.am/2M9b3IL

Before Mueller's findings were made public, the president's adversaries were on the offensive. Now, they are playing defense.
The change is due to one simple fact: Mueller could not establish that there was a conspiracy or coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign

The special counsel's office interviewed 500 witnesses, issued 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search-and-seizure warrants, and obtained nearly 300 records of electronic communications, and still could not establish the one thing that mattered most in the investigation.

Allegations that the president obstructed justice to cover up a conspiracy were transformed into allegations that he obstructed an investigation into a crime that prosecutors could not say actually occurred.

Of course, TV talking heads are still arguing over obstruction. But with the report's release, the investigation moved from the legal realm to the political realm.

And in the political realm, the president has a simple and effective case to make to the 99.6% of Americans who are not lawyers: They say I obstructed an investigation into something that didn't happen? And they want to impeach me for that?

The ground has shifted in the month since the report became public. Before the release, many Democrats adopted a "wait for Mueller" stance, basing their anti-Trump strategy on the hope that Mueller would find the much-anticipated conspiracy.

Then Mueller did not deliver. Not only that, Mueller's report stretched to 448 pages, with long stretches of minutia and arcane legal argument the public would never read. Democrats searched for a way to convince Americans that the president was still guilty of something serious.

They devised a plan to turn the Mueller report into a TV show, accessible to millions of viewers who have not read even a page of the report itself. They would call key witnesses to give dramatic testimony in televised hearings that would build support for possible impeachment.

At the same time, they would insist that AG William Barr, who has allowed top lawmakers to see the full Mueller report with the exception of a small amount of grand jury material, was hiding something, and that the hidden material might reveal presidential wrongdoing.

So far, the strategy has not worked. The White House, which provided Mueller testimony and documents that might easily have been withheld as privileged, has not been so forthcoming with Congress. We gave the criminal investigator, Mueller, what he needed, the White House said,

House Democrats have been reduced to stunts to try to grab the public's attention. At the Capitol, they enlisted actor John Cusack to take part in a public reading of the entire Mueller report, it took 12 hours. The event did not exactly captivate the nation.

Now, Republicans have turned the tables on Democrats by pumping new energy into their long-held desire to "investigate the investigation." Barr, who set off enormous controversy with his statement that "spying did occur" against the Trump campaign, has taken up the cause,

Barr assigned U.S. attorney John Durham to look into the origins of the probe, and anticipation is also building for the release of Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz's report on the department's handling of the case.

Some Obama-era intelligence figures are now pointing fingers at each other over their reliance on the so-called Steele dossier, a collection of unsubstantiated allegations against the president compiled by a former British spy on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

None of this would have happened without the Mueller report's conclusion. If Democrats could still claim that Trump and Russia conspired in 2016, they would still have the upper hand. But after Mueller, that claim is no longer possible, and Democratic hopes are dwindling.