The Barr summary

So according to everyone in the know, sometime today A.G. William Barr will send another letter to the ranking members of Congress, and one would assume allow for a public release of the same letter that will summarize the "conclusions" of Special Counsel.

Since the special counsel was tasked to look into Russian influence individually as well as look for coordination from any Americans the report will not necessarily focus as much on what people are interested in (even if they probably should be interested in other things).

Keep in mind that this letter will be heavy on what Mueller found, and I suspect that it will focus much on the 30 some people who "were" indicted.  Since any foreign influence of our elections is illegal, it's unlikely that there are other Russians to be named that were not part of the two sets of indictments that Mueller brought before the Grand Jury.

Those indictments, of course, would of the group of hackers who Mueller determined hacked the DNC and Podesta email servers, as well as the trolling farm who were illegally using our social media platforms to run political ads.

Had Mueller found the behavior of Natalia Veselnitskaya (for instance) at the Trump Tower meeting to be within the scope of a foreign agent manipulating our elections, then there is no reason to believe that she would have been indicted. The fact that she was never indicted suggests that Mueller did not find the meeting to rise to the level of election assistance, much less a criminal conspiracy.

So what we know is what is in the indictments. There are no more indictments coming. There are no sealed indictment that Mueller has been holding back and even if there had been, he would have unsealed them at the end of his investigations.

The two indictments that covered the Russian agents both made clear that there was no known coordination with any Americans. To the degree that Americans were involved, they were said to have been "unwittingly" involved. None of these Americans had any association with Trump or his campaign. People who know Mueller have suggested that his indictments are very comprehensive and would not leave anything out (certainly not earth shattering information). Had there been coordination between either Russian groups with known Trump associates we would have known.  This would also be criminal and would have led to more indictments.

To the degree that Mueller looked at obstruction is anyone's guess. It was no part of his original task, and much of what was talked about was purely speculative. One has to assume that if Mueller took a serious interest in "obstruction" that he would have at least attempted to subpoena the President. It would be blatant misconduct for him to suggest obstruction (having never talked to the President) and derelict for him not to have tried had he otherwise thought there was a strong case.

I suspect that Mueller may have been more in the Alan Dershowitz camp on the issue of obstruction. Possibly just too much of an old school straight shooter to attempt to get clever and cute with a new definition of obstruction (that would likely be seen as highly dubious and political). Better to err on the side of caution and look more strictly at whether or not the President obstructed in any traditional manner (lying, witness tampering, destruction of evidence).  The fact is that Mueller completed his investigation suggesting that he was not hampered in any manner. Similarly the President never sought to shut down the FBI investigation even though it was in his power to do so.

Should someone who had authority to shut this whole thing down two years ago, but chose to let it run its course be charged with obstruction? Objectively it makes almost no sense.

We'll see what the report says. I suspect that it will fall well short of what liberals are hoping for (even today as they have reenergized themselves after the shock of hearing there were no new indictments). But I wouldn't be surprised if Mueller had something negative to say about Trump. Just not anything that rises to the level of a criminal action (high crime or misdemeanor).