“Obstruction of Nothing”, The Wall Street Journal

The report exposes some Trumpian excesses and lies, but it also shows that, on the most important issue and the charge that started it all, Mr. Trump has been telling the truth. He and his campaign did not conspire or coordinate with Russians to steal the 2016 election. Try as he did to find a crime regarding Russia or obstruction of justice, Mr. Mueller found nothing to prosecute.

The details validate the four-page public summary of the report’s conclusions that Attorney General William Barr released last month. The AG issued the full report with limited redactions related to grand-jury testimony and intelligence sources and methods. Democrats will claim secrets are hidden in the redactions, but Mr. Barr says he’ll let senior Members of Congress see most of those too. Claims of a coverup are spin for the anti-Trump media.

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Mr. Mueller devotes some 200 pages to the Russia tale, and the news is how little is new beyond what we already know from leaks and court filings. The special counsel’s biggest public service is laying out in detail how Russia sought to meddle in the election. The Kremlin endorsed a social-media campaign to plant lies and confuse voters, and it hacked Democratic emails and then used cutouts like WikiLeaks to release them to the public.

There’s no evidence that any of this influenced the election result, but it should concern Americans about Vladimir Putin’s bad intentions for 2020. Anyone who still calls Julian Assange a hero after reading the report is guilty of willful ignorance.

Yet the report is definitive in concluding that “the investigation did not establish that the Trump Campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” The report is extraordinary for tracking down the details of every Russian contact with Trump campaign officials. Mr. Mueller examined whether Trump advisers violated conspiracy statutes, campaign-finance laws, lobbying registration laws, and any other statute he could find on the shelf.

Yet the Trump-Russian contacts that were supposed to be proof of treason end up as unconnected anecdotes. Carter Page and George Papadopoulos aren’t collusion masters but low-level advisers on the make who can’t get senior advisers to agree to their advice. Jeff Sessions’s meetings with the Russian ambassador are routine courtesy gestures. The change to the GOP platform on Ukraine in 2016 had nothing to do with Russian lobbying, and there’s no evidence Mr. Trump knew about it.

Mr. Mueller devotes pages to the famous meeting in June 2016 at Trump Tower between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr. that was the subject of so much breathless reporting. Don Jr. showed lousy judgment as ever in taking the meeting. But the event was nothing more than a Russian attempt to lobby about Magnitsky Act sanctions.

Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager, is exposed for having shared campaign polling data with his Ukrainian employee Konstantin Kilimnik. The report says the FBI believes Mr. Kilimnik has ties to Russian intelligence. But the polling data can’t have been more informative than a hundred public polls, and Mr. Mueller turns up no evidence of collusion via that channel either.

Arguably the worst contact with Russia occurred after the election, during the presidential transition, when Michael Flynn asked Russia’s ambassador not to escalate after Barack Obama imposed sanctions for Russia’s campaign meddling. Mr. Flynn was undermining U.S. policy, and the former national security adviser has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about what he told the Russian. But Mr. Trump also fired Mr. Flynn for that lie.

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This non-collusion is the backdrop for the other half of Mr. Mueller’s report, which concerns whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice by interfering in the Russia probe as President. The special counsel devotes another 182 pages to rehearsing every detail of Mr. Trump’s decision to fire James Comey as FBI director, his well publicized comments (thanks to Mr. Comey’s leaks) to Mr. Comey in private, and his raging about the Mueller probe.

Mr. Mueller makes no “prosecutorial judgment” about obstruction, though he conspicuously says that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

This is Mr. Mueller’s cheapest shot because the standard for a special prosecutor is not exoneration, whether or not Mr. Trump claims it. The standard is whether there is sufficient evidence to charge a crime. Mr. Mueller concedes he lacks enough evidence to know what Mr. Trump’s motives were in firing Mr. Comey or asking him to go easy on Mr. Flynn, so he should have left it there.

The factual “analysis” about obstruction that Mr. Mueller does offer is hardly persuasive, even if Mr. Trump often behaves badly. Were his public and private comments praising Messrs. Flynn and Manafort and (for a while) Michael Cohen attempts to dangle pardons so they wouldn’t cooperate? Well, all three have been convicted of crimes and no pardons have been offered.

Mr. Trump was dumb to ask White House counsel Don McGahn to ask Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to fire Mr. Mueller. But Mr. McGahn refused to do it and was prepared to resign over the matter before the President dropped the subject.

Mr. Mueller essentially reveals a President behaving in predictable Trumpian fashion at being investigated for a crime he didn’t believe he committed—and which even Mr. Mueller now concedes he didn’t commit. There was no underlying crime, and the investigation continued with full White House cooperation. Mr. Mueller knows about these Trumpian eruptions because the White House turned over mountains of documents and allowed him to interview anyone he wanted except the President.

Nothing in the end was obstructed. The FBI probe continued after Mr. Comey was fired, and Mr. Mueller wasn’t interfered with. Mr. Mueller prosecuted those he could find enough evidence to try to turn for state’s evidence, but there was no coverup because there was no collusion with Russia to cover up.

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None of this will placate Mr. Trump’s adversaries who will take Mr. Mueller’s Hamlet act on obstruction and perhaps try to turn it into an impeachable offense. Democrats have the constitutional power to try, and the media will be their handmaiden. But if even Robert Mueller and his relentless prosecutors couldn’t prove their case, we doubt the American public will look well on the effort.