The Mueller Report Drop: No collusion right?

By DAVID "DANIEL" BEILSTEIN

WAVERLY, Ohio — On Friday, amongst much anticipation and drooling, the Mueller Report ended up on the desk of William Barr, the attorney general of these United States, compiled of course by the Honorable Robert Mueller III; one-time FBI director, and his zestful prosecutorial team, on the job now for some two years and change.

News channel-surfing is always fun when these big wall-to-wall stories break.

Except for these horrid mass-shooting stories, there haven’t been big breaking news stories much of late, certainly not as big as theFriday’s news drop that Mueller, at a cost of some $20 million, delivered his report to Barr principally about Russian Collusion in the 2016 presidential election among other various investigations, and whether Trump colluded with Russia. Apparently, he did not.

Since I’ve been a little kid, I’ve loved switching between channels getting the various takes from the news media on any given big news story.

There was always the echo chamber, or group think - minus Fox, right? I’ve been surprised these last few years how group-think and repeat, repeat, repeat their coverage has become.

That’s disappointing, too. So, some take-aways.

Most, as it were, will have to wait until some form of the Mueller Report is available for public consumption, at the very least, a summary. Short of that, it’s difficult to analyze what the effect on the 2020 presidential election and our broader politics will be.

Let’s be honest, that’s all anyone who’s a political junkie cares about.

If you were someone who bought the MSNBC narrative for two and half years that the delivery of The Mueller Report might indeed end with President Donald J. Trump (our political pariah of the moment) being escorted out of the people’s house and Vice-President Mike Pence or someone worse taking the Oath of Office you sure were not on planet earth with the rest of us.

Certainly too, if you’re someone who thought the report would not have anything damning in it, that’s probably unlikely as well, even if you're Sean Hannity and his crowd of court jesters.

Politically, I try to be upfront about my biases one way or another. I’m on record for not being the biggest fan of this President, but as a self-described “Eisenhower Anarchist,” I’m certainly not hoping the president has committed high crimes and misdemeanors; likewise, my public policy preferences, and their direction, are being undertaken by President Trump more so than progressive Democrats.

I’m also the guy that’s been calling for the dismantling of the FBI since I was a kid, back in 1992. And I wasn’t a big fan of trying to criminalize political differences back in 1998, when President Clinton faced the political firing squad for his various indiscretions.

I’ve been wrong plenty of times before, but I’m not sure the weaponized Mueller Report will defeat Trump for the Democrats. I think they’re going to have to beat him like past political parties have to beat their opponents. That could be harder than progressives and Democrats think.

I’ve been wrong plenty of times before, but I’m not sure the weaponized Mueller Report will defeat Trump for the Democrats. I think they’re going to have to beat him like past political parties have to beat their opponents. That could be harder than progressives and Democrats think.

What I do know is I’m more fearful today than Friday of too much (far too much) federal power. The Constitution puts accountability of the president in the hands of Congress, not the FBI, or Honorable Robert Mueller III.

In the future, I hope all political persuasions will seek more constitutional means to investigate a president and air political disagreements.

So far, this Mueller charade (cough, there was no Russian collusion, no more than normal anyway) has looked quite partisan, if we’re being honest, and quite absurd and useless. If this president is so bad, the House should draw up Impeachment Articles; it should be prosecuted in the Senate, and the president should be removed from the Oval Office.

Beyond all the calls for transparency - all too numerous yesterday - and all the rabid media speculation about what exactly is inside the Mueller Report, the point of it all seems missed.

Ah, as if it were that simple, right?