Robert Mueller has handed Donald Trump a powerful weapon for his re-election campaign
- Robert Mueller found no evidence the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election
- The findings were an unmistakable political victory for Trump
Mueller’s conclusion that neither Trump nor his aides conspired with Russia in 2016 takes away a central charge that Democrats have flung at Trump for two years – that he did not win the presidency fairly or cleanly.
The allegations have played out on an endless loop on cable TV news shows, overshadowing Trump’s presidency from day one.
Democrats have vowed to continue congressional investigations into the 2016 election campaign and Trump’s business practices.
But without the solid foundation of a Mueller report that found evidence of any crimes by the president, they now risk seeming to overplay their hand.
“This is a gold star day for Donald Trump,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley.
“Now the shackles are off. He’s able to demonise the news media and Democrats as perpetuating what he calls a hoax. And he’ll be able to use his innocence as fodder for the campaign trail.”
The question for Trump now is whether he will be able to bring a minimum of discipline to his campaign messaging and to the presidency itself.
History suggests he will have trouble with self-discipline. Just last week, he was immersed in a strange fight with a dead man, sharply criticising the late Republican Senator John McCain and falsely accusing him of being at the root of some of the collusion allegations against him.
Despite the Mueller report’s conclusions, Trump remains an intemperate president, eager to lash out at any and all critics and perceived slights.
“This was an illegal takedown that failed,” Trump said on Sunday, even though Mueller left open the question of whether the former real estate magnate had attempted to obstruct the Russia probe, which did find extensive evidence that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.
“Now is the time to get back on the offence on the economy and growth,” said Republican strategist Scott Reed.
“This is a good time to get back to a real healthy dose of message discipline for the entire administration, departmentwide and the White House. That’s what you do when something like this happens.”
Trump, on a golfing weekend in Palm Beach, Florida, got the news in his private quarters at his Mar-a-Lago retreat from White House counsel Emmett Flood, and watched TV coverage of the Mueller report in his cabin on Air Force One.
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Trump’s initial comments in reacting to the Mueller conclusion suggests he is not inclined to move past the investigation.
Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One for the flight back to Washington, Trump called for Democrats to be investigated, expanding on his often repeated assertion that the Mueller probe was Democrat-inspired.
“It’s a shame that our country had to go through this. To be honest it’s a shame that your president has had to go through this,” Trump said.
“Before I even got elected it began, and it began illegally.”
Trump’s comments could foreshadow an effort by his supporters to seek payback for the cloud that has hung over his time in the White House.
“I’m interested in moving on and trying to get this behind us, but people have to pay for what they’ve done for the past two years,” said former Trump campaign aide David Bossie.
“We must investigate the investigators.”
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said Trump had no plans to request that his attorney general open an investigation into the president’s political opponents.
Trump’s path to re-election remains a perilous one. Analysts say he will probably need to win the Midwestern states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, just as he did in his improbable 2016 victory, and Democrats are already pouring resources into those states.
Trump will foreshadow his campaign message on Thursday night when he headlines a “Make America Great Again” rally in Michigan.
Mueller’s findings absolve Trump on the question of colluding with Russia but don’t entirely remove the legal threats the president and associates are facing.
Federal prosecutors in New York, for instance, are investigating hush-money payments made to two women during the campaign who say they had sex with the president.
Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, implicated Trump in campaign finance violations when he pleaded guilty last year.
The special counsel’s investigation did not come up empty-handed. It ensnared nearly three dozen people, senior Trump campaign operatives among them.
The probe illuminated Russia’s assault on the American political system, painted the Trump campaign as eager to exploit the release of hacked Democratic emails to hurt Hillary Clinton and exposed lies by Trump aides aimed at covering up their Russia-related contacts.
Thirty-four people, including six Trump aides and advisers, were charged in the investigation. Twenty-five are Russians accused of election interference either through hacking into Democratic accounts or orchestrating a social media campaign to spread disinformation on the internet.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
