pancakes3 wrote:re: Mueller. I'm increasingly convinced that Mueller is going to punt on any meaningful indictments on the Administration. He does not have enough evidence to confidently indict on collusion before DJT taking office, but does have a mountain of evidence of obstructing justice after DJT taking office. Mueller may believe that since the scope of his investigation is spawned by collusion, that if he doesn't bring charges on collusion, then it doesn't authorize him to bring charges on obstruction after the fact.
The problem with this high-minded reasoning is that it will be construed by Trump's voting base as a blanket endorsement that DJT has done nothing wrong, which is absolutely not the case. It sets horrible precedent that the President may openly obstruct justice without consequence. This will be a point of contention in law school classrooms and law review articles for decades to come, at the price of emboldening the office of the President; the emboldening message being - so long as you're good enough at covering up the underlying crime, obstructing ensuing investigations into the underlying crime will be tolerated.
I should add that special counsels, especially a traditional republican such as Mueller, are very mindful of the scope of the investigation. it's THE strongest argument against having special counsels to begin with - that an unsupervised counsel will have carte blanc to run rampant and investigate to unlimited ends, which will inevitably produce some sort of misdeed. that or run on forever.
I think this re: Mueller bc his written requests to Trump do not contain questions about obstruction. His initial request for an interview to Trump did include questions about obstruction but Trump balked (back in January) and delayed the responses until just now (11 months, which flies in the face of traditional factfinding). Of course, I could be wrong, and that Mueller knows that he has all the information he needs and doesn't need to entrap Trump's positions on the record, so he's punting on the obstruction re: Trump as a way to get him to agree to answering questions instead of flat stonewalling all requests for interviews/responses.
Mueller will not come up empty.
If he is super cautious, there is the possibility he doesn't indict or endorse impeachment for Trump directly. However what happens in that scenario is that a bunch of cases have been farmed out to numerous other parts of the DOJ and probably state AGs.
I don't see how the Trump family(including Kushner) escapes unscathed in that scenario. The Trump Foundation shenanigans are likely to expose at least Ivanka and Junior to criminal liability in NY State.
If Russian doesn't have the "smoking gun", there may be one with Saudi Arabia and MBS.
I think the best case for Trump is he is able to "run out the clock" with delays and serves out his term until 2020 as a "lame duck". Either not running for re-election or being headed to near certain electoral disaster for him and his party.
The biggest vulnerability for Trump is if a wedge opens politically between him and Pence. If conservatives have to choose between Pence and Trump they may go with Pence. Pence may also fold - resign or not run for re-election, but there is a chance that Pence could damage him in a way that the Democrats or even the Special Counsel can not.
