Hawaii is a long way from Washington, D.C., but the topic that has consumed the American political class — the 22-months-long investigation into potential conspiracy with Russian operatives to interfere in the 2016 election — has resonated even here.
Now it’s time for a calm confirmation of facts from a report that Congress still hasn’t seen, as well as a commitment to forge ahead with other issues of public interest. Achieving that balance should be top priority, although the voters haven’t seen enough of it yet.
It’s been all but impossible to avoid hearing about Robert Mueller, the special counsel tapped to head the probe, seeking in particular to find any evidence that the campaign of Donald Trump colluded with Russians for their backing to have him elected president.
Now, at last, there is at least this assurance from William Barr, the U.S. attorney general: Mueller did not recommend pursuing any criminal case of conspiracy against the president or his campaign.
On the related question — whether the president attempted to obstruct justice through actions taken or threatened against individuals connected to the investigation — the answer is inconclusive. According to the 3-1/2-page summation letter from Barr, Mueller basically punted. Mueller was quoted as saying the evidence of obstruction was “not sufficient” for him to recommend criminal prosecution but “it also does not exonerate him,” meaning Trump.
Along its way, the investigation did result in indictments of about three dozen people for charges such as tax fraud and lying; Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, former campaign manager Paul Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn are among those already convicted.
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a resolution, by a rare unanimous bipartisan vote of 420-0, favoring release of the Mueller report. Trump himself also said the report should be released to the public. Within the House, Hawaii’s congressional delegates represent the range of appropriate reactions.
U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who has sought to distinguish herself as the “peace candidate” in her early presidential nomination campaign, applied that general attitude in her reaction to Mueller’s report.
“Now we must stand together and move beyond this divisive issue that has taken up enough of the national conversation,” Gabbard said in her statement. She pressed for passage of the bill she sponsored last year to require systems to produce an auditable paper-ballot trail, the Securing America’s Elections Act.
It would indeed make sense to get past political rhetoric and take concrete actions in support of election security, rather than continuing to second-guess the Mueller probe solely due to political pique. There are pocketbook issues, too, that must not get lost in all the haze.
But Hawaii’s other House delegate, U.S. Rep. Ed Case, is also right that there is unfinished business on the Mueller report to attend to: namely, reading as much of the document as possible. There are enough unanswered questions to merit a closer look, even if legal constraints might mandate some redaction.
What was the evidence found, even if it did not pass the test of being persuasive “beyond all reasonable doubt”? What was the special counsel’s intent with the inconclusiveness on the obstruction-of-justice matter? Was he leaving it to Congress to evaluate, as some have suggested?
“I don’t want anybody standing between me and what the special counsel actually found,” Case said in an online interview with Gray TV’s Washington News Bureau.
“I’m completely supportive of the request to the attorney general to immediately release the full report to Congress, and to the American people, for that matter. I think the American people deserve to know what the SC did find.”
That’s wholly reasonable. What is less reasonable is the invective coming from both sides — retaliatory probes, investigations to the exclusion of all else. None of that is why anyone was sent to Capitol Hill in the first place.