We begin today’s roundup with Donna Edward’s piece on the need for Democrats to push out the facts of the Mueller Report:
[A}t the moment, Democrats seem to be forgetting the power of live television. More people will grasp the import of the special counsel’s work if they see sworn witnesses answering questions on their screens than if they try to digest 448 pages of fairly dense legal analysis.
Even Robert S. Mueller III’s nine-minute statement Wednesday underscored this. If his office “had had the confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime,” he said, “we would have said so.” With his Marine bearing, prosecutorial voice and measured words, Mueller ended his chapter as special counsel but highlighted the systematic Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the challenges of proving a criminal conspiracy and his inability to charge the president with obstruction because of a Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president. This was Mueller’s silver platter, and he handed it to Congress.
It’s time for Democratic leaders to repackage Mueller’s findings in a form that will be more readily digested by the American people. Unfortunately, the current approach of investigations in no fewer than six committees, multiple subpoenas, innumerable court proceedings and White House delay tactics just creates more confusion. How can the United States focus on the findings if a Democratic House will not singularly focus its investigations? From the cheap seats, it appears that there may be too many balls in the air.
And Eugene Robinson asks the big question:
What would a president have to do, hypothetically, to get this Congress to impeach him?
Obstruct a Justice Department investigation, perhaps? No, apparently that’s not enough. What about playing footsie with a hostile foreign power? Abusing his office to settle personal grievances? Using instruments of the state, including the justice system, to attack his perceived political opponents? Aligning the nation with murderous foreign dictators while forsaking democracy and human rights? Violating campaign-finance laws with disguised hush-money payments to alleged paramours? Giving aid and comfort to neo-Nazis and white supremacists? Defying requests and subpoenas from congressional committees charged with oversight? Refusing to protect our electoral system from malign foreign interference? Cruelly ripping young children away from their asylum-seeking parents? Lying constantly and shamelessly to the American people, to the point where not a single word he says or writes can be believed?
President Trump has done all of this and more. If he doesn’t warrant the opening of an impeachment inquiry, what president ever would?