The Mueller Investigation Was Always an Impeachment Probe
Dirty Bob abdicated on obstruction in an attempt to bypass the Justice Department and bootleg it to Congress.
In a meeting over two weeks before Mueller submitted his final report, Dirty Bob emphatically denied that his refusal to render a prosecutorial judgment on obstruction hinged on the OLC guidance.
When we finally heard from him on Wednesday, Dirty Bob lauded Barr’s good faith, never claiming that the AG had misrepresented him. The conversation between them on the OLC guidance was was witnessed by other people in the room when Mueller denied that the OLC guidance was his rationale for abdicating his statutory responsibility.
Despite that, Dirty Bob wants Congress and the public to presume that if it were not for the OLC guidance, it is very likely that he would have charged the president with obstruction — maybe not an absolute certainty, but nearly so.
And then, just in case we were too dense to understand the nods and winks, Dirty Bob took pains to emphasize that, in our constitutional system, it is up to Congress, not federal prosecutors, to address alleged misconduct by a sitting president.
Dirty Bob's unstated point:
Impeachment is the only remedy, unless congressional Democrats are saying that Donald Trump is above the law. Good luck to Speaker Pelosi keeping the AOC caucus hinged after Dirty Bob's encore.
Mueller was appointed not to a collusion probe but an obstruction probe, and that
necessarily made it an impeachment probe.
The issue in impeachment cases is
abuse of power, not courtroom guilt. A counsel to a congressional impeachment committee does not need evidence strong enough to support a criminal indictment; just something reasonably close to that, enough to enable a president’s congressional opposition to find unfitness for high office.
Mueller’s staff of progressive activists, has conceptions of executive power and obstruction that are saliently different from Barr’s and from those of conservative legal analysts who subscribe to
Justice Scalia’s views on unitary executive power.
The attorney general believes that
(a) obstruction charges may not be based on exercises of a president’s constitutional prerogatives — only on obviously corrupt acts (e.g., evidence destruction, bribing witnesses);
(b) all executive power under the Constitution is reposed in the president; and thus,
(c) when the chief executive takes actions the Constitution empowers him to take (e.g., firing or threatening to fire subordinates), it is not the place of an inferior executive officer, such as a federal prosecutor, to second-guess them as “corruptly motivated.”
Recognizing how traumatic accusing a president of a crime is for the country, moreover, Barr thinks an obstruction offense would have to be crystal-clear and serious — you don’t tear the nation apart over something about which reasonable minds could differ.
Mueller’s staff believes that
(a) the executive bureaucracy is semi-autonomous in its areas of expertise, and thus Justice Department prosecutors are supreme, even over the president, in matters of law enforcement;
(b) Congress had the constitutional power to, in effect, transfer executive authority from the president to prosecutors by enacting obstruction laws that may be enforced against the president; and therefore,
(c) even if a presidential action is lawful in itself, a prosecutor may allege obstruction if the prosecutor believes the president’s motive was corrupt.
Furthermore, little or no consideration should be given to whether a president’s allegedly obstructive act is especially clear or serious because the president (at least if the president is a Republican) must be treated like anyone else — otherwise, the president is placed above the law. (Democratic presidents, to the contrary,
are the law — see, e.g., DACA, Obamacare decrees, IRS harassment of conservative groups, Fast and Furious stonewalling of Congress . . .)
Robert Mueller's Investigation Was Always Impeachment Probe | National Review