Barely forty-eight hours after special prosecutor Robert Mueller turned over to the Attorney General the findings of his investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections, the “guessing game” has begun.
What precisely is in the report, all sides ask, and just what will be the political fallout in 2020?
Almost immediately after Attorney General William P. Barr issued his executive summary on Sunday, Republican spokesmen from the White House on down called the “sneak preview of the report” a vindication for President Trump himself.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters that the Mueller report was a “total and complete exoneration of the President of the United States.”
Sanders’ statement was echoed by Republican National Chairman Ronna McDaniel, who called on Democrats to “finally end their baseless investigations and political crusade against President Trump for the good of the country."
(In his summary, Barr diverged a little from this interpretation, concluding that while Mueller’s report “did not conclude the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him”—a not-so-subtle hint congressional Democrats may focus their investigations on possible obstruction of justice by Trump).
Taking his lead from that statement, Delaware Sen. Chris Coons spoke for numerous congressional Democrats when he told reporters that Barr’s comment that the Mueller report “did not exonerate him” means “much more context, oversight, and investigation.”
The question about how big an impact the report will have on the 2020 campaign remains unanswered.
“Unless there is extraordinarily damaging information in the report, it is almost certainly going to motivate Trump’s base,” Dan Schnur, former head of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, told Newsmax, “The variable is how much it motivates his opposition.”
Franklin and Marshall College Prof. G. Terry Madonna, considered the premier political pollster in Pennsylvania, differs and sees the Mueller report as a definite issue in 2020.
“The Democrats still will look for political damage,” said Madonna, “The report could show questionable behavior that might not be illegal but still hurt politically. There also are the House committees looking into many aspects of Trump’s life not to mention the investigation by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. It’s not over by a long shot, as the post-report TV interviews by Democratic House and Senate leaders clearly show.”
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.