NWA EDITORIAL: The report is out

Yes, we should be worried about Russian interference

Thursday's release of the "Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election" could easily have been mistaken for the debut of a new volume of the Harry Potter series.

The report by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III was everywhere and everyone was talking about it.

What’s the point?

Trump wasn’t exonerated or accused in the Mueller report, but what it says about Russian interference in our elections ought to unnerve the country.

Readers could find intrigue in its story of a powerful force -- Vladimir, rather than Voldemort -- using the "dark arts" of computer hacking and social media manipulation to become a great, mostly unseen influence at a critical moment in history.

Every page delivered answers and questions about a cast of characters and their entanglement in mysterious goings-on, with legitimate questions about whether a key leader was entirely forthcoming about his behaviors or his intentions.

Heck, both storylines even include a main character wearing round glasses who from time to time shows a penchant for covering for his friends.

Collusion of the president? There's no such legal term in U.S. law, Mueller wrote. The question is one of conspiracy. So did the report clear the president of conspiracy, as Trump's most avid supporters suggest? Mueller from the outset accepted the U.S. Department of Justice's stance that no sitting president should face criminal prosecution because of the burdens it would place on his capacity to govern. So, he wrote, "we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President's conduct." Further, Mueller wrote:

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[I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment. The evidence obtained about the President's actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

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How much more clearly can that be stated? We won't promote the opposite idea -- that the president committed a crime -- either, but his defenders are just plain wrong that the Mueller report acts to clear his name of any wrongdoing.

The president can say he's exonerated with every tweet he can muster, but it's not true. Likewise, no one can use Mueller's report to suggest the investigation found him to be engaged in criminal activity.

Read the report, though, and one should certainly find conduct unbecoming of the leader of this great nation, efforts to cajole, confront or control information he viewed as damaging to his presidency. The report is chock full of actions taken by the president that, had his aides carried them out rather than ignore or resist them, Trump very well might have gotten himself into legal trouble.

We continue to contend, however, that Mr. Trump's behavior is not the most serious threat to order or democracy.

Here's our bottom line, at least as we continue to read the report and undertake further deliberation about it: Donald Trump is president now, but he will (we hope) not be the last president of the United States. The longer-term and frankly more important matter is contained within the title of the report released Thursday. To borrow a phrase from the Bill Clinton campaign, it's the Russian interference, stupid.

Because he's so myopically focused on self-preservation beyond all other matters, President Trump has continually attempted to dismiss the influence of Russian interference in the 2016 election. He's fearful that any confirmation of that will diminish his rightful claim to the presidency. He is, however, the one sitting in the Oval Office. Hillary Clinton won't be handed the crown, as though she can claim the office like a character in Game of Thrones.

Here's what we'd like from our president of these United States: Get mad that a foreign nation has so aggressively engaged in attempts to manipulate the free and fair election process of our country. View Russia's actions as the behavior of an enemy. Rather than just using all of the office's political strength to advocate for a southern wall, how about marshalling the technological forces of the nation to protect its most cherished democratic mechanism from manipulation from beyond the borders.

Robert Mueller was appointed to determine the extent of Russian interference in the U.S. election. He has done that, and it's unnerving to anyone who values the nation's reliance on representative government.

We should all be at least as concerned, and probably more so, about some foreign influence attempting to take down our system of government than about whether Democrats will take down the president, or for that matter, whether the president will do that to himself.

It is clear from Mueller's report, and from the stance of the U.S. Department of Justice, that a sitting president will not be subject to a criminal indictment. It's not that the issue is unimportant. But the greater issue is foreign influence on our nation's elections and whether Americans can have faith that they aren't being manipulated by false or twisted information designed to produce the result a foreign government prefers.

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Let us encourage our readers -- particularly ones who want to characterize Mueller's report as all good or all bad for the president -- to read the full report at https://media.arkansasonline.com/news/documents/2019/04/18/report.pdf. It's pretty large, so be patient for the download. But read it. It's got a lot that should concern us all as Americans, and we're not talking about the redactions.

Commentary on 04/19/2019

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