FIRST THING YOU LEARN IS THAT YOU ALWAYS GOTTA WAIT

The autumn of 1942 brought the first good news in months for the Allied war effort in Europe.  Russia had stopped the German army at Stalingrad, and General Bernard Montgomery had Rommel’s troops on the run in North Africa.   

One of Winston Churchill’s advisors suggested that it might be the time for a celebratory speech.  Churchill, who always seemed to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em, disagreed.  Instead, he uttered these famous lines: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

That’s kind of where I am with the news that Robert Mueller has submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr.  Now we wait and see what’s in it.  That may take a while, and the devil will be in the details.

What can we expect in the meantime?  At least up until independent reviewers get a look at Mueller’s report, Trump and his enablers will do their best to convince you that the report proves Trump was as pure as the driven snow.  Pay no attention to the fact that his campaign was up to its ears in Russians.  Ignore the dozens of indictments already handed down, many of which have already resulted in convictions and guilty pleas from some of Trump’s closest advisors.  The fact that Trump’s National Security Advisor, his campaign manager, and his personal attorney are already behind bars as a result of their Trump-related crimes is purely coincidental.   

We’re also hearing various sources say that there’ll be no further indictments.  Color me skeptical.  I’m not surprised that Mueller didn’t indict Trump himself.  Right or wrong, Department of Justice policy says don’t indict a sitting president, and Mueller is a good soldier.  As for the loose ends (Jared, Don Jr., and the rest of the immediate family), while Mueller himself may be past the indictment stage of his work, don’t forget that the Special Counsel’s Office has handed off aspects of the case to prosecutors in other jurisdictions.  I expect new indictments to come out of those investigations, and it wouldn’t shock me if there were criminal charges waiting for Donald Trump when he leaves office.  Waiting is the hard part, but we don’t have much alternative.

The White House will now launch the “deny and distort” counterattack they’ve been preparing for months.  During the period when the contents of the report remain confidential, Trump and his minions are free to spin it anyway they want.  I expect them to claim that the report completely exonerates Donald Trump.  Once Congressional Democrats and the press get their hands on the report (as I assume they both will sooner or later), the Republicans’ fallback position will be that any part of the report that does NOT completely exonerate Donald Trump is fake news.

George Orwell anticipated the strategy in his novel 1984: “In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense.”