Mueller stepped back

Apr 21, 2019 Editorial

It is now clear from this revealing report that Independent Counsel Robert Mueller himself was guilty of several things that only leave matters in a more disturbed and divisive place.
Since he doggedly refused to arrive at that hard place where there was strong evidence of obstruction of justice, then the Independent Counsel could be branded with the stigma of gross dereliction of duty; and palpable abrogation of responsibility.
As can now be gathered from his report, at very critical junctures in his investigation, he did more than blink; he fell all over himself in abject surrender.
It would be the height of generosity to compare Mr. Mueller to those sightless, earless, speechless lemurs of Japanese fable, for that assumes the presence of a head; a weighing, thinking, deciding one.
The evidence is clear-cut: by some counts, the incumbent Chief Executive interfered and undertook specific actions that were aimed at more than stonewalling: they were indicative of a powerful officeholder in a most trusted place hell-bent on thwarting the discovery of truth and the exposures that come from them.
Mr. Mueller failed at the worst possible moment and in a number of different ways, all searing and damning.
He failed at honest leadership; he failed at true independence; he failed by perpetuating injustice through heaping his own brand of injustice on what was already a tawdry affair involving a leader, who operates by no rules, seemingly no law, and is a law unto himself, as he determines arbitrarily as to what applicable law and limit is or is not.
Mr. Mueller can be rightly accused of a studied indifferent independence. His own report stands in condemnation of him for insistence on refusing to stand in any kind of judgment as to the facts and situations that stared in the face and begged for a reasonable connecting of the dots, to lead towards the obvious and undeniable.
Though Independent Counsel Mueller went to great lengths to seek refuge in the shelters of self-imprisonment through indecision, he has his own probe waiting in the wings of the Congress. The roof of the report stands over his head; it weighs jarringly, but that is not all. There are no walls under that canopy to shield his increasing nakedness.
How could he? How could Mr. Mueller vacillate at the crossroads of crucial charges? How could he engage in the cerebral and legal flip-flop of using one standard to exonerate when the facts and circumstances clearly support, as in the issue of collusion; and then another standard when other very applicable facts and circumstances point just as heavily to the issue of obstruction?
It is at this particular moment, that the Independent Counsel turned out to be a most sympathetic ally, and one who simply lost the fortitude to have and demonstrate any conviction. The man in 1600 Pennsylvania is, of course, delirious with joy, as he has just been presented with a second lease on life, by an investigating friend of priceless convenience at a most sensitive hour.
However looked at, one fact registers immovably: the President of the United States hands are not clean; that is clear.
Now in characteristic fashion, the man in the White House takes to the air to boast about innocence and witch hunt and the like.
Controversies and questions will now rage in and out of Congress for a long time to come. It might have been better if this probe was never launched. Not only has it produced more questions; it will now lead to more controversies and, when all are exhausted, more bitter partisanship.

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