Day by day it is becoming more and more obvious that Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team of intrepid investigators have been unable to find any proof of the crime of Trump-Russia collusion (even though such collusion is not legally a crime). So what to do? Well, as Vanity Fair's Chris Smith has suggested, look for a cover-up for a crime that does not exist. ...Huh?
About Watergate it was said that the cover-up was worse than the crime. However, in that case there was an underlying crime. So what happens when people are prosecuted for a cover-up in which there is no crime? Smith wonders if Mueller should risk becoming a national laughingstock by asking:
"SHOULD HE PROSECUTE THE COVER-UP BEFORE HE’S CERTAIN THERE’S A CRIME?"
Of all the avenues in the sprawling Russia investigation, Robert Mueller appears to have advanced the furthest toward assembling an argument that Donald Trump obstructed justice. And in the coming weeks, the special counsel’s team will interview a former top White House aide who could verify key pieces of the puzzle. Then Mueller would confront the thorniest question yet: does he prosecute the cover-up or hold out to try to nail possible underlying crimes?
Go for the crimeless cover-up, Bob! We could use the bellylaughs when the crime for the cover-up you are prosecuting never appears.
The Mueller strategy now appears to be just to prosecute a bunch of people ("plant a few flags") and hope a crime somehow makes an appearance as a former Enron federal prosecutor, Sam Buell, suggested:
“If Mueller leads with obstruction, it’s like saying he doesn’t have the underlying case,” Buell said. “There’s always the complaint, ‘Why should someone get prosecuted for a cover-up when there’s no crime?’ Then the prosecutor has to justify bringing the obstruction case. So if Mueller thinks he has a case against Flynn or Paul Manafort that he can indict, that’s probably enough to make it much harder for Trump or anybody else to shut him down. Plant a few flags and you’ve bought yourself some time to dig deeper and put it all together into one story, especially if you think there could be alarming criminality involving offshore people.”
"Why should someone get prosecuted for a cover-up when there’s no crime?" Print that out, laminate it, and put it in your wallet. It is the most apt observation about the state of this investigation to nowhere.
