Robert Mueller’s investigation will no doubt conclude before the 2020 election. Many anti-Trumpers assume that Mueller’s report will be the end of Trump, but regardless of its contents we need to be prepared for the likely possibility that its impact on Trump’s future and the 2020 election will not be clear cut or conclusive.
Consider the following possible scenario:
Mueller submits his summary report to Attorney General Barr in the late spring, and Barr releases it to the public. (It’s not at all certain that he will in fact release such a report, but for the purposes of this scenario, let’s assume that he does.) Meuller’s report focuses on collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, and the effort to obstruct justice and interfere with Mueller’s investigation.
In the report, Mueller follows Justice Department policy and does not make the case that Trump should be indicted. Neither does he name Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator (as Jaworski did with Nixon). Importantly, Meuller does not map Trump’s actions against the impeachment bar of “high crimes or misdemeanors” in his report, believing that the Constitution clearly gives this task to Congress.
Mueller’s report does, however, include compelling evidence that Trump allowed Russians to launder money by investing in Trump properties prior to the election, that Trump was personally aware of the partnership between his campaign and the Russians to influence the election, that Trump violated campaign-finance and fraud laws in directing that payments be made to former lovers in return for their silence, and that Trump personally took several actions that amounted to obstruction of justice in regards to the Mueller investigation.
In the days following the release of the report, the vast majority of Republicans in Congress, including nearly all the Republicans in the Senate, make it clear that, in their view, the evidence of treason and obstruction of justice is not compelling enough to warrant impeachment. They continue to insist that Mueller’s investigation was tainted by anti-Trump bias in the FBI, that there is no proof that Russian interference actually had an impact on the 2016 election, and that the Democrats are using this contaminated, one-sided investigation to engineer a coup designed to undo the will of the voters as expressed in that election.
The Trump administration, Republican Party leadership, Congressional Republicans, and Fox News—who have already convinced their base that the Mueller investigation is a partisan witch hunt and that news reports about it are fake—successfully whips the GOP base into a frenzy over the prospect of Trump’s possible impeachment by the Democrats. They use this fury to raise enormous sums of money for Trump’s reelection, and support for Trump among Republican voters soars once again.
Within weeks the Democrats face an unprecedented decision.
Given the details of Trump’s crimes in the Mueller report, it is inconceivable to the Democrats that they would not draft a bill of impeachment, pass it, and send it on to the Senate for a trial. To not impeach Trump would be an unconscionable dereliction of their duty and would make a mockery of the Constitution.
Given the reaction of the Senate Republicans, however, the Democrats understand that, if they impeach Trump, he will certainly be acquitted in the Senate.
And given the reaction of Republican voters, the Democrats also understand that if they impeach Trump in the House and he is acquitted in the Senate, that Trump will use his victory in the Senate as a powerful message in his reelection campaign.
“I told you,” he will tell voters, “that it was a total witch hunt cooked up by the deep state and the Democrats. I won fair and square in 2016 and I proved all the experts wrong. They came after me anyway and fought for two years and spent millions of dollars to undo the 2016 election, but once again I have proven the elitist Democrats and the experts wrong. Not only that, I have been found completely innocent, just as I always said I would be. And believe you me, I will prove them wrong A THIRD TIME in 2020.”
So the Democrats also understand that if they do their sworn duty and impeach Trump, they may be helping a treasonous, criminal, and mentally unstable President be reelected in 2020.
This hypothetical scenario is not impossible. Don’t argue with me about the details as I’ve given them. Accept them for the sake of discussion.
What should Democrats do if they found themselves in this situation?