A Jefferson Hour listener wrote me a snarky letter last week after Attorney General William Barr released a four-page summary of the Mueller report,

apparently clearing President Trump and his closest aides of colluding with the Russians in the 2016 election.

After informing me that I have been embarrassing myself with what he called my anti-Trump rhetoric,

the writer asked me if I were going to apologize for presuming that President Trump

was guilty of crimes that would force us into a whopping impeachment ordeal.

So here goes. I confess that I did in fact think that more indictments were coming,

perhaps even within the Trump family, and I did think that Special Prosecutor Mueller

would conclude that the Trump organization conspired with the Russians to

influence the election. I was plainly wrong. I'm surprised by the findings as

outlined in Burr's summary, but I'm actually glad I was wrong. For the past year I have been living in

real dread, wake up in the middle of the night dread, that we were descending into a

prolonged and crippling constitutional crisis that would paralyze America

without ever resolving anything. I knew that if Mueller concluded that the

Trump administration was guilty, Trump partisans would reject the prosecutor's findings and declare without

evidence that this was proof positive that the Deep State was trying to remove a legitimately

elected president by Kudetah. Personally, I believe Mueller stopped short even on the question of obstruction

because he cares about America and its central national institutions more

than he cares about the shenanigans of this particular president.

I believe he took the long view and crafted his report with profound strategic precision

to buttress due process the rule of law and the sanctity of the FBI, the

Justice Department, and the courts.

We haven't seen the Mueller report yet. I expect that it will simultaneously confirm everyone's worst fears and yet in a technical legal sense exonerate the president.

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