The Lesson We Haven’t Learned From The Mueller Investigation
As usual, our partisanship has kept us for recognizing what’s truly important.
Recently, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller made headlines by appearing in front of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees to testify about his investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Unsurprisingly, his testimony was surrounded by drama. There was intense fighting in Congress over if the testimony was even necessary, and during it, many Republicans tried to discredit Mueller and claimed we were wasting the country’s time.
Afterward, a lot of focus went towards who “won”, or managed to score the most political points, but there wasn’t much discussion of the actual substance of the testimony.
While Mueller didn’t unveil anything new, he did manage to reaffirm a lot of existing evidence in his investigation, and he laid out a clear narrative surrounding what he discovered during his time as Special Counsel. That narrative has a lot of implications for our country, but it was practically forgotten thanks to the one thing that infects all of our political debates: party politics.
It’s undeniable that throughout the Russia probe, the country has been clouded by partisanship, and that’s mostly thanks to President Trump. Once Trump was named as one of its main subjects, the entire thing became about him.
Republicans became defensive, and resorted to denialism. They constantly attacked the investigation, claiming it was a hoax to take down Trump, and they tried to get it shut down. They rejected that interference occurred (or that Trump was involved), and once the results were released, they went along with Trump’s claim that it exonerated him without a second thought.
With Democrats, once Trump became a target, they started seeing the investigation as their chance to get him. They acknowledged that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, but they did so with partisan motivations. If there was meddling, it meant that Trump’s presidency was illegitimate, and if there was collusion, it gave them grounds to look into impeachment.
Both of these sides received the investigation vastly differently, and both missed the real takeaway: Russia interfered in our election. While Trump was certainly part of the investigation, he wasn’t the point. The point was to examine how Russia interfered in our election.
The Mueller report outlined, in plain language, Russian meddling in the 2016 election. While the evidence on Trump’s involvement is grey, the evidence on Russia’s interference is black and white: it happened, it was widespread and it was systematic.
The question a lot of people have focused on is whether the investigations in Congress should continue, and whether Democrats should consider impeachment, but those are the wrong questions.
Continuing investigations is beating a dead horse. Mueller was appointed to investigate Russian interference, and on that front, it’s closed. He’s proven it.
On impeachment, that is not a feasible approach. Impeachment is inherently a political process, and that means it will reignite the partisanship we’ve seen throughout the investigation. Democrats are the only ones who support it, so while it might get through the House, it will certainly fail in the Republican-controlled Senate, and once it fails, we will be left with nothing and everyone will be more bitter.
Impeachment is not something we should worry about, because it’s not possible and it’s not important. What is important is how we respond to Russia’s interference.
Democrats have talked about how Russia tried to influence the 2018 midterms and will likely try again in 2020, and that’s true. Russia is benefitting from having Trump as President, and they are likely to come back to support him or illegally or support other candidates whose actions in office will benefit them.
Now we know they influenced the election in 2016, instead of squabbling over what to do with Trump, why don’t we do something to stop it from happening again?
There are many weaknesses in our democracy that made Russia’s interference in our election possible, and we should do something to address them. There’s no clear cut answer — we all have to come together to find a solution, but that can only happen when we deactivate our partisanship and stop looking at the investigation from the lense of Trump.
