New York: After being hounded for over two years by accusations that he treasonously colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election, US President Donald Trump has won an exoneration after an arduous investigation and his opposition has received a setback.
But any reprieve is only temporary and the Democratic Party’s leaders were unmoved by the summary of the finding of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe released by Attorney General William Barr on Sunday afternoon and vowed to continue their own Congressional investigations of Trump.
After Barr released the summary in letters to Congressional leaders, Trump told the media that the probe and the Russian collusion charges were “an illegal take-down that failed” and called for a probe of “the other side”. With the Russia probe behind him, Trump may see an opportunity to navigate the treacherous political waters without the dark cloud of impeachment dogging him in the 20 months before the presidential election.
The Democratic Party’s Congressional leader Hakeem Jeffries said earlier on Sunday on a CBS TV talk show: “We are not focused on impeachment”. And the Mueller findings did not rise to the bar set by Speaker Nancy Pelosi that there should be “something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan” for an impeachment.
Trump may be able to regain some his standing to focus on pressing issues like the China trade negotiations and the North Korean nuclear stalemate. He can claim a victory and the Democrats appear to have suffered a setback because of their singular over-reliance on the Russia-Trump collusion theory to bring him down in their rage after Hillary Clinton’s stunning defeat in the 2016 elections.
After 22 months of investigations involving 500 witnesses, examination of thousands of pages of documents, and 500 search warrants, Mueller has ruled out Trump’s or his campaign’s involvement with Moscow. Trump gloated in an email to supporters: “NO COLLUSION, NO OBSTRUCTION – COMPLETE EXONERATION”.
But most Democrats are unconvinced about the clean chit and have demanded the release of the full report hoping to find material to continue their pursuit of Trump. “A short letter from Trump’s hand-picked Attorney General is not sufficient,” Senator Kamala Harris tweeted.
Mueller has given them ammunition to continue their attacks on another front: Trump did not get an exoneration on a key allegation that he had tried to obstruct the investigations into Russian interference, which would be a crime. With a note of ambiguity, Barr said that in this regard Mueller’s “report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him”.
The Mueller investigation also produced collateral damage to Trump’s reputation by association as five key members of his team have been convicted – but only on charges like lying during investigations and tax and financial fraud unrelated to the Russian link– as result of information unearthed during the probe.