Mueller Has Questions for Trump, as Republicans Prepare Impeachment Papers for Rosenstein

While Donald Trump, Mike Pence, their deplorable administration, and the Republican Congressional majority hurriedly dismantle the federal government, obliterate democratic institutions and norms, and empower bigotry and corruption on a vast scale, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation continues.

I do not know when we can expect the investigation to wrap up, nor what the outcome will be. I do know that the length of the investigation has effectively, even if not intentionally, created loads of time and space for Republicans to so thoroughly consolidate power that they likely won't have any reason at all to regard his conclusions with any more seriousness than they regard their duty to check and balance the executive branch — and we won't have any power to persuade them otherwise.

It has always been a race to a fuzzy finish line.

Here's where we are at the moment: "A person outside Mr. Trump's legal team" provided the New York Times with a list of dozens of questions Mueller wants to ask Trump. So, once again, for no evident good reason, the Times is concealing an anonymous source, which is very likely to be Trump himself.

(In which case the reason for the concealment is a very bad one.)

Following the anonymous leaking of the questions, Trump naturally took to Twitter to blatantly lie about them.

So disgraceful that the questions concerning the Russian Witch Hunt were “leaked” to the media. No questions on Collusion. Oh, I see...you have a made up, phony crime, Collusion, that never existed, and an investigation begun with illegally leaked classified information. Nice!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 1, 2018

There are, in fact, a number of questions about collusion — and Benjamin Wittes tweeted them one-by-one.

Despite Trump's previous contention that he would totally definitely for sure sit down for an interview with Mueller (while leaving himself a clear "out" with a caveat about his attorneys), he's now backpedaling, as anyone with sense always expected he surely would.

Not only is he trying to discredit the questions themselves, but again is attempting to discredit the entire investigation.

It would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened! Witch Hunt!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 1, 2018

That doesn't even make any sense, but let's all take a moment to appreciate the irony that the tweet itself could reasonably be viewed itself as another attempt to obstruct justice.

So Trump is being Trump, with the typical amount of projection and dishonesty as he tries to wriggle away even from proximity to something that might resemble the possibility of accountability someday — and Congressional Republicans are doing the most, as usual, to have their authoritarian's back, by drafting articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

The document, which was obtained by The Washington Post, underscores the growing chasm between congressional Republican leaders, who have maintained for months that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III should be allowed to proceed, and rank-and-file GOP lawmakers who have repeatedly battled the Justice Department during the past year.

The draft articles, which one of its authors called a "last resort," would be unlikely to garner significant support in Congress. But the document could serve as a provocative political weapon for conservatives in their standoff with Mueller and the Justice Department.

Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus — led by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a Trump confidant — finalized the draft in recent days. It came after weeks of disputes with Rosenstein over the Justice Department's response to congressional requests for documents about the decisions and behavior of federal law enforcement officials working on the Russia investigation and other federal probes, including the investigation into 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's email server.

Yep, that sounds about right.

Something I and others, including and especially my friend Sarah Kendzior, have noted is that Jared Kushner is a litmus test both for how effectively the nation's checks and balances are keeping kleptocracy at bay and also for the urgency and efficacy of Mueller's investigation. As long as Kushner, who has demonstrably broken federal law by lying on disclosure forms, retains a job in the White House, we should all be very concerned about the potential for meaningful accountability, from any source.

As of today, despite the fact that Mueller's questions seem to presume Kushner's guilt and that he appears to be a target of the investigation, Kushner remains employed by his father-in-law, the president.