Trump Never Had Anything to Fear from an Insider Like Robert Mueller
By David Dayen. Mar 27 2019, 3:09pm
I’ll be honest: I didn’t follow every twist and turn of Robert Mueller’s investigation into foreign meddling in the 2016 election. Granted, it was easier to pull this off if you never watch cable TV, which I don’t. But my lack of interest wasn’t the product of indifference toward Donald Trump’s presidency or the integrity of America’s democracy. No, I had a pretty good reason for sitting this whole saga out, one borne out not only by the lack of charges on top Trump officials for conspiring with Russia, but Mueller’s punting on whether President Trump obstructed justice, which appeared to be carried out in plain view.
The truth is that America’s justice system is incapable of challenging real power, and I was not about to invest time, effort, or expectation into a doomed investigation mediated through a broken mechanism for accountability. It was irresponsible for pundits and media figures to pour hope into the idea of Robert Mueller—a decorated career law-enforcement official and corporate lawyer—reversing an institutional bias he has marinated in his entire professional life.
This is a serious policy problem, whether Donald Trump coordinated with Russians or not. We have effectively written white-collar crime and public corruption out of the US code. The resulting two-tiered system of justice frustrates and disillusions the public, and breaks faith in government and its institutions. It’s something we must put actual effort into remedying, if not under Donald Trump, then under whoever comes next.
Not so long ago, I did obsessively follow a white-collar crime investigation that, if successful, would have rocked one of the most dominant industries in America. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, virtually every major US bank was caught verifiably producing fabricated, forged, and bogus documents to foreclosure courts and county offices, facilitating the largest eviction crisis since the 1930s with false evidence.
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https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3bmaj/trump-never-had-anything-to-fear-from-an-insider-like-robert-mueller
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