Time for the Democrats to refocus

The Mueller report was supposed to give us that gotcha moment when Donald Trump’s dirty deeds would be laid bare for all the world to see. It almost happened, too.

Mueller got indictments, convictions or guilty pleas from 34 people and three companies, including Trump’s former lawyer, Trump’s former campaign manager, and Trump’s former national security advisor. Mueller even bagged a Russian spy and hackers with ties to the Kremlin.

In the time-honored vernacular of the ‘hood, it seemed that Mueller convicted everybody and their mama. But alas, when Mueller handed over his report to Trump’s handpicked Attorney General, William Barr, the newly minted AG sent a summary to Congress. In that summary, Barr claimed that Mueller’s report didn’t prove Trump colluded with the Russians, and that on the question of Trump obstructing justice, Mueller’s report was inconclusive.

Trump tweeted that Barr’s summary of the report delivered complete and total vindication, but in my view, it only meant that Mueller couldn’t pin a crime on Teflon Don. Just like the late mob boss John Gotti, Donald Trump is a tube of cheap glue. Nothing sticks.

That’s a shame, because anyone watching saw circumstances indicating that the Trump campaign had extensive ties to the Russians.

Sixteen Trump associates were in contact with Russians during the campaign. Donald Trump Jr., said in an email that he would “love it” if the Russians could deliver dirt on Hillary Clinton. After that, Trump Jr., Campaign Manager Paul Manafort, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Russians in Trump Tower. But that’s not all.

Trump stood up in front of the world and said, “Russia If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 [Clinton] emails that are missing.”

That same day, hackers working with Russian intelligence attempted to break into email accounts connected to Clinton’s personal office.

Later, a hacker affiliated with Russian intelligence began forwarding emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee to Wikileaks. The emails had a devastating affect on Clinton’s campaign.

Once Trump was in office, and FBI director James Comey tried to investigate Trump’s suspicious ties to Russia, Trump fired Comey, and told NBC’s Lester Holt that he did it because of the Russia thing.

As if that wasn’t enough, every US spy agency said Russia interfered in the election to help Trump and hurt Clinton.

And when Trump was face-to-face with Russia’s president and had a chance to say something about it, Trump punked out.

Now, I don’t know what all that means to you, but to me, it’s pretty obvious Trump and his cronies worked with the Russians. I also think Trump probably obstructed justice. I’m sure all that was obvious to Mueller too. However, Mueller couldn’t prove it in court, so he did the only thing he could. He got a boatload of convictions, farmed out investigations to other prosecutors, handed his report to the Attorney General, and rode off into the sunset.

For Democrats, this is a gut punch, because many of them thought the Mueller report would give them all they needed to beat Trump. But in truth, we might never see the whole Mueller report—just a summary from Trump’s hand-picked Attorney General.

So if the Democrats know what’s best for them, they should probably stop trying to beat Trump in a courtroom, and focus on beating him in the only place that matters—at the ballot box.

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