Like everyone else, I would have loved it if the Barr memo inculpated Trump in serious wrongdoing. I would have loved it if he had the stones to recommend prosecution or, at a minimum, impeachment and conviction. But that wasn't very likely and all of us (at least the ones paying attention) knew that.

It was almost a forgone conclusion that DOJ wasn't going to indict a sitting President.

It was also almost a forgone conclusion that the Republican Senate wasn't going to convict Trump, regardless of whether or not the House impeached him.


So, all that bad aside, here is what I think makes this actually not too bad:

The Barr memo, and the conclusion of the Mueller investigation, is the high point for Trump. It is only downhill from here for him. That memo was his get-out-of-jail-free card and he played it too early. If that memo was released in the days leading up to the 2020 election, it would have deflated our sails and could have helped him coast to a second term. But that isn't what happened and by 2020 the sting from the memo will have long faded.

What wont have faded is Trump's callous response to recent events, as he is sure to do, between now and then. There will be right wing terrorist attacks and he will blame "both sides." There will be major foreign policy blunders. There will be major domestic policy blunders, an economic slowdown, tax issues, unpopular trade wars, and many other major issues that will cast stink on Trump and his administration.

Not only that, but the longer the Republicans fight to withhold the actual report, the closer we will be to election day, and the fresher the true findings in that report will be in voters' minds. We know there are damaging details in the report - if there were not, Mueller would have cleared Trump. Barr's memo says as much - that Mueller couldn't exonerate Trump. There MUST be things in the report that are, at a minimum, severely concerning.

Let the Republicans delay. Let them bury the report completely. I can't think of a bigger motivating factor to get out the vote in a year and a half than if Republicans are STILL blocking the Mueller report, or substantial portions of it.

And lets not forget about all the other current investigations in SDNY, in NYS, etc. A lot more bad is going to come out about Trump before 2020.

TLDR; Trump peaked too early. It's only downhill from here for him.

I would expect him to have been tweeting a storm. Instead all we got was one bare bones “NO COLLUSION” tweet.

Something is going on behind the scenes.

Could Trump have pardoned Jr behind closed doors? Or pardoned him preemptively, without that information being made public?

I’m just curious about the process.

It is, apparently, against DOJ policy to indict a President and publicly disparage unindicted individuals. That will make it impossible for the report that Barr releases publicly to list any of Trump’s wrongdoing.

That said, is the private report that Mueller gives to Barr bound by any such policies? Do we expect THAT report to have all the details about Trump’s complicity? And if that report does contain such information, is it likely to be made public by officials not bound by DOJ policies?