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As a former adviser to Hillary Clinton, I worried Democrats would walk right into this Mueller mess — and they did

This outcome is a disaster for US democracy

Peter Daou
New York
Tuesday 26 March 2019 17:56 GMT
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Trump on Mueller Decision: People Have Done Evil, Treasonous Things

The writing was on the wall early in the Mueller investigation: the special counsel was targeting figures in Donald Trump’s orbit like Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, but not necessarily Trump and his immediate family.

As far back as 2017, I shared my concerns publicly, arguing that too much hope was being placed in the Mueller probe. In November 2017, I tweeted, “I've been saying it for months and it's just my personal take, but from all outward signs, it appears the people going down over #TrumpRussia are Manafort, Flynn, Page, etc. Not Trump himself.”

I wasn’t alone in my skepticism. Author and journalist Sarah Kendzior cautioned repeatedly not to place too many eggs in the Mueller basket. “I've been blunt about my concerns about the efficacy of the Mueller probe from the start. This outcome was unfortunately what I predicted,” Kendzior tweeted after the investigation concluded.

The warning signs were flashing early in 2017. When Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May of that year, he admitted to NBC’s Lester Holt that it was because of the Russia probe, and bragged about the firing to Russian operatives in the Oval Office, Robert Mueller had all he needed to vigorously pursue obstruction of justice charges. And Congress had all it needed to impeach Trump.

But it soon became clear that the Republican Party would protect Trump at all costs, and that the Russia probe would focus on Trump’s associates, allowing Trump to continue to flout the nation’s norms and principles. At that point, anyone with a modicum of political experience should have seen where the interminable “waiting for Mueller” exercise was headed: to an anti-climax of historic proportions.

Those warning signs continued to pile up. When Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions and installed a replacement who had expressed open skepticism of the special counsel’s investigation, the fix was clearly in. During AG William Barr’s confirmation hearings, I wrote that Barr “has revealed himself to be a perfect fit for Trumpworld. And I don't mean that as a compliment.” It was glaringly obvious by then that Trump and his GOP enablers had positioned themselves to squelch the Russia probe. Which is exactly what they ended up doing.

But instead of tamping down expectations as the Mueller probe dragged on, Democratic leaders and the pundit class doubled down, many of them anticipating—and in some cases breathlessly predicting—that Mueller would indict Trump and his family, that he would set the stage for impeachment, and that his report would bring a swift end to the Trump presidency.

When Speaker Pelosi threw cold water on talk of impeachment and argued that she was waiting for Mueller, I tweeted, “EPIC FAIL. If Donald Trump, who has made a mockery of the US presidency, who has obstructed justice in plain sight, cannot be held accountable, the system has failed miserably. That includes Republicans AND Democrats. And I anticipate Mueller as well.”

In putting so much emphasis on Mueller, the Democratic leadership, whose power was bolstered by the blue wave election of 2018, committed a colossal strategic blunder. A Democratic president would long ago have been impeached by the Republican Party for a fraction of Trump’s transgressions, many of them unrelated to Russia. But rather than make that case to the American people, Democratic leaders led the public to believe that everything hinged on Mueller’s findings, despite the relatively narrow scope of his investigation.

If they had concluded that impeachment was the wrong course of action at the time, they simply could have said that their investigations were ongoing and that Trump would be held accountable, rather than tether their oversight to Mueller.

The predictable result is that Trump’s offenses to date have now effectively been normalized and legitimate calls for the full Mueller report to be released are being portrayed by the GOP (and echoed by some sections of the mainstream media) as Democratic sour grapes, as desperate attempts to squirm out of a humiliating political defeat. This outcome is a disaster for US democracy.

That Russia undertook a massive and sophisticated cyberattack on America’s free elections is incontrovertible. That they did it to elect Donald Trump and were successful in helping him is also clear as day. That Trump has shown nothing but subservience to Russian president Vladimir Putin is undeniable. But those disturbing facts are now being obscured by the GOP’s victory lap over the Mueller report (or, more precisely, AG Barr’s spin on it).

The gloating “patriots” on the right are conveniently forgetting what the intelligence community and law enforcement concluded: that America was subjected to a massive cyberattack by the Kremlin intended to tilt a US election to the Republican candidate. And Trump and his GOP apologists like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham are giving the attackers a pass. Unfortunately, by hyping the Mueller report, Democratic lawmakers and strategists have given the GOP fodder to obfuscate and spin.

None of this is to impugn Robert Mueller’s integrity. Rather, it is to suggest that Democratic voters must demand more of their party leaders. Most citizens don’t have the same depth of political experience as elected officials, and it was the responsibility of Democratic lawmakers not to set Trump up for "victory." One can only hope that lessons are learned from this fiasco. And that beyond the spin, the public gets to see what misdeeds Mueller actually uncovered.

Peter Daou is a digital media strategist who has advised major political figures, including Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. He is the author of Digital Civil War: Confronting the Far-Right Menace

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