Interesting.
Back to Trump, I think even the stuff we know is going to look fairly damaging when repackaged by Mueller and joined with the public evidence of obstruction, as well as whatever Mueller learns from his interviews:
This email exchange:
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/07/politics/donald-trump-jr-full-emails/When read chronologically, clearly shows the Trump campaign trying to collaborate with the Russian government for damaging information on Hillary. Whether you call it collusion, or a conspiracy, or chatting s bit with a hostile foreign government. If there is enough evidence to prove that a crime is committed, I’m not sure. I’m also not sure how much it will matter in the end.
The report will either say they committed a crime and tried to cover it up, OR they did something unsavory that was not technically criminal, but was embarrassing, and tried to cover it up by obstructing Justice
(Or committing actions that are technically not illegal because the President did them, but would be Obstruction if done by anybody else). I don’t see how any other outcome is possible and these are all just different flavors of shit sandwich for the Trump administration.
What I don’t expect to happenis a report that says, “everything they did was 100% on the up and up.”
The GOP will obfuscate and deflect but they will do that no matter what the outcome is. It will be either “no crime committed, so we’re in the clear” or “the only crime committed was Obstruction, but it doesn’t count because what they were Obstructing wasn’t a real crime” or “is collusion REALLY a crime? Hillary has done worse!”
But none of these are going to move Public perception much either way or change what Congress will do. That much is clear.
There is also the off-chance that the report will actually not finger Trunp directly, but take down a number of campaign surrogates, and donators that we’re funnelling Russian money into the campaign illegally (NRA folks and so on).