No, not those of Messrs. Lennon and McCartney; rather, those of John McCain and Paul Ryan.

Mr. Ryan first. In an item otherwise not widely reported (at least I didn’t see it mentioned elsewhere), the Wall Street Journal reported in late March that the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, whom I have asserted in earlier notes did precious little to protect the sanctity of this nation or maintain a Congressional balance of power in the face of President Trump’s aberrant excesses … has been named to the Board of Directors of Fox Corp., the newly formed corporation spun off from 21^st Century Fox when Walt Disney Co. purchased 21^st Century Fox’ entertainment assets. Fox Corp. owns, amongst other assets, Fox News and the Fox broadcast network and television stations. Lachlan Murdoch, the son of Rupert Murdoch, is the chairman and chief executive of Fox Corp. In its piece, the Journal circumspectly noted — as all who care are aware – that the Murdoch family is a significant shareholder in Fox Corp. and the Journal’s own parent, News Corp.

Mr. Ryan is undoubtedly making more money today than he ever made in his public career. Thus, perhaps the final meaningful entry to Mr. Ryan’s legacy: If you’re a good boy, keep your head down, follow the party line, smile respectfully and dutifully … you’ll ultimately be taken care of.

Mr. McCain last … but certainly not least. At about the same time that Fox Corp. was announcing the appointment of Mr. Ryan to its Board of Directors, President Trump renewed his virulent criticism of the late Sen. John McCain. Although those that read these pages are probably well aware of the President’s recent attacks on Sen. McCain – then seven months deceased — a link to a New York Times piece setting forth the litany of Mr. Trump’s comments is included below. The article also recounts the vigorous defenses of Mr. McCain and vociferous denunciations of the President that followed Mr. Trump’s declarations regarding Mr. McCain. A huge number of commentators decried the President’s castigation of a deceased war hero who could no longer defend himself.

Although worth reading in its entirety, two passages in the Times piece seem to me particularly noteworthy:

The paragraph citing UT Sen. Mitt Romney, who tweeted: “I can’t understand why the President would, once again, disparage a man as exemplary as my friend John McCain: heroic, courageous, patriotic, honorable, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, empathetic, and driven by duty to family, country, and God.”

And to me the most notable: the comment of Sen. McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, included near the article’s conclusion: “I think if I had told my dad, ‘Seven months after you’re dead, you’re going to be dominating the news and all over Twitter,’ he would think it’s hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death as well.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/20/us/politics/trump-john-mccain.html

Even before reading Ms. McCain’s comments, and while fully sympathizing with and understanding the McCain family’s vehement defense of Sen. McCain and the widespread denunciations of the President’s churlish attacks on a dead man, it had occurred to me that in whatever consciousness exists after death, as tough minded as he was, Mr. McCain would be thinking: “Trump can’t stand it. He can’t stand manifestations of honor, of guts, of sacrifice, of duty, of fidelity to something greater than himself. I’ve gotten in his head. Even when I’m dead, he can’t let it go. Even from the grave, I’ve won …”

That’s … a legacy …

Although exhaustion if nothing else indicates that it is time to address one of the many matters facing us in addition to the contents of the Mueller Report – at least until we Americans get a chance to see what is actually in the report – I feel a postscript is in order to last week’s note suggesting that House of Representatives’ Speaker Nancy Pelosi was the only major political figure that seemed to recognize the Report’s potential political dangers. I think there could be another major political figure that might at least intuitively recognize, and is working to soften the snares of, the Report’s potential political trap: the President of the United States.

Attorney General William Barr has indicated that among the Mueller Report’s passages to be redacted before the Report is publicly released are those containing “… information that would unduly infringe on the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties [My emphasis].” Democrats and the media have raised concerns that Mr. Barr was signaling that redactions could cover Report sections describing interactions that Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, and other Trump Campaign principals had with Russian operatives during and following the campaign. (Whether there is any basis to these concerns remains to be seen; it seems unlikely to me that Mr. Barr believes that he can with a straight face maintain that Messrs. Trump, Jr., and Kushner were peripheral to the campaign.)

That said, President Trump – while loudly, repeatedly, and incorrectly claiming that the Report completely exonerates him – has indicated that he has confidence in Mr. Barr, and that the full Report should be released. Although I am no fan of Mr. Trump, his position seems to me to be pretty savvy.

The Trump Cake is baked. I am confident that the President recognizes that perceptions of him, pro or con, are seared into the psyches of the vast majority of Americans. Since he knows that Mr. Mueller’s team did not find sufficient evidence of Russia-related criminality to convict him or his family members, and since he knows – we all know — that since that threshold wasn’t crossed, there aren’t 20 Senate Republicans brave enough to risk their careers by voting to impeach him no matter how unethical and unsavory the nature of his and his cohort’s behavior described in the Report … why not publish the whole thing? Is there anything of a noncriminal nature that Mr. Mueller could have found that will change any voter’s opinion of Trump Campaign principals? Trump supporters won’t care what’s reported. Trump adversaries can’t be any more adamantly opposed to him than they are (additional revelations might even entice wildly-wet-behind-the-ears young Democrats to force impeachment proceedings Mr. Trump will win). The centrists that will decide the 2020 election already understand that the President is unprincipled, but if they are still open to voting for him, their votes will be determined not by their knowledge of his character but by their assessment of the Democratic nominee and his/her positions.

If I was Mr. Trump, I’d be all for getting the full Report out as soon as possible; the longer disputes about redactions go on, the more that those few doubtful but persuadable centrists that he needs to win a second term might conclude that he does have something more to hide …

I hope Mr. Barr and the Special Counsel do take a couple of weeks to get the Report out. I’m ready to reflect on something else  ;).

Immediately below is a link to a segment of today’s Morning Joe broadcast which aired in its entirety yesterday’s statement by the Chairman of the House of Representatives’ Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Adam Schiff, in which Mr. Schiff responded to the Republican Committee members’ call for his resignation from the Committee Chairmanship. Only the first six and a half minutes are worthy of note. Rep. Schiff was clearly aware that the call was coming, and was prepared with his response. He set forth a litany of undisputed facts demonstrating – there is no other way to say it – the Trump Campaign’s collusion with the Russian Government during the 2016 campaign. (You will find that Mr. Schiff was careful to distinguish his claim of collusion between the Trump Campaign and the Russians from the crime of conspiracy, for which Mr. Schiff specifically accepted Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s determination that there was insufficient evidence to obtain a verdict of Guilty Beyond a Reasonable Doubt against President Trump or other campaign principals.) There is no purpose to repeating here the facts Mr. Schiff covered; it can’t be said any better than he said it. You will note that near the conclusion of his statement, he used yet another “C” word to go with “collusion” and “conspiracy” in describing the effects of the Trump Campaign’s activities: compromise – a reference to the fact that the Campaign’s activities clearly made it vulnerable to pressure from the Russian Government.

https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/joe-gop-has-overreached-in-calling-for-schiff-to-resign-1467539523775

I would offer that there are two more “C” words Rep. Schiff could have employed: as to the President, his family, and his staff: a complete lack of conscience; and as to the Republicans who have failed to stand up to the President despite the revelation of these undisputed facts: abject cowardice. How many of the Republican Intelligence Committee members that have called upon Rep. Schiff to resign would have supported Donald Trump’s run for the presidency at any point during the 2016 campaign had they known then what is undisputed now?

As I suspect is true of most that read these pages, I have read Attorney General William Barr’s advice to Congress regarding Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Elections.” Assuming that the Attorney General is reporting accurately (which I think can be assumed, if for no other reason than large parts or all of the Report will, in some way or other, ultimately be made public), Mr. Mueller’s Report provides:

1. A reaffirmation that the Russian Government sought to influence the 2016 election through (1) “disinformation and social media operations … designed to sow social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election” and (2) “computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election … including [through] Wikileaks.”

 

2. That the Special Counsel’s investigation “did not establish” that the Trump Campaign “conspired or coordinated” – expressly or tacitly – “with the Russian government in its interference activities.” (Given this finding, it is understandable that no indictments have been issued against Messrs. Donald Trump, Jr., or Jared Kushner.)

 

3. That the Special Counsel elected not to make a traditional prosecutorial decision regarding any obstruction of justice by President Trump, instead listing incriminating and exonerating evidence related to the suitability of such charges. Mr. Barr did note the Special Counsel’s statement, “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Mr. Barr stated that given Mr. Mueller’s failure to reach a conclusion regarding obstruction of justice charges against Mr. Trump, it was for Mr. Barr himself, as Attorney General, to decide whether there was sufficient evidence to establish that the President had obstructed justice, and further indicated that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (no fan of Mr. Trump) concluded that the grounds to proceed were insufficient.

 

(Given the seemingly oddly circumspect approach that the Special Counsel took to addressing the obstruction of justice issues – and in admittedly the type of pure speculation that I generally try to avoid in these notes — one might wonder whether the final weeks’ delay in the issuance of the Special Counsel report following Mr. Barr’s confirmation as Attorney General arose from a decision to significantly recast the Report’s obstruction of justice sections; Mr. Mueller is obviously acutely aware that Mr. Barr, in his lengthy memo that constituted a de facto application for the A.G. position, had challenged the premise that a President, absent evidence of illegal collusion, could be found guilty of obstruction of justice, due to an allegedly “improper motive,” for performing what Mr. Barr called “facially-lawful” acts. It would be interesting to see copies of Report drafts existing before Mr. Barr was nominated.)

Since I am no fan of President Trump, in the last weeks I have wondered whether I would feel a bit despondent if Mr. Mueller’s team failed to uncover sufficiently incriminating evidence to indict Mr. Trump (even if such indictment wasn’t sought, due to Department of Justice guidelines) and his family members; but I don’t. If we have learned anything during the Trump presidency, it’s that having honesty in government, having procedures that don’t predetermine a result, is what matters. The strength, rigor, and fairness of our processes is what separates us from Russia, China, and much of the rest of the world – allies and adversaries alike. Despite the unwarranted and despicable personal attacks on the Special Counsel by Mr. Trump and his cohort, Mr. Mueller demonstrated why he is widely acclaimed for his integrity, competence, courage, and thoroughness. No one can credibly claim that the Mueller Team was biased for or against the President. It was never a “Witch Hunt.” The system worked.

I would suggest that there are at least two benefits arising from this result that should encourage even the President’s harshest critics. First, the entire process – to employ what has admittedly become an overused phrase – moved the goalposts regarding the public’s understanding of Russian meddling in our elections. Two years ago, the President scoffed at the notion of Russian meddling, concerned that it would undermine the legitimacy of his presidency. As the threat of an election-related criminal prosecution seemingly loomed against himself and his family, he became less focused on defending the sanctity of his victory and more focused on disclaiming any relationship with Russian actors. At this point, the fact that the Russians meddled in the 2016 election on Mr. Trump’s behalf is seemingly accepted (albeit grudgingly in some quarters) across the political spectrum. Perhaps now, on the eve of the next election, Republicans if not Mr. Trump himself will collaborate more enthusiastically with Democrats to shore up our electoral processes. The President clearly isn’t going anywhere during the next two years; the key is to do what we can to limit the extent to which our people are manipulated by malign foreign actors in the next election.

Second, although a number of Democrats and liberal pundits are now undoubtedly licking their wounds, I suspect that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is to some extent relieved by the outcome. Absent “smoking gun” evidence demonstrating that Mr. Trump had consciously colluded with Russia or sought to obstruct justice, there has never been a chance that the President’s opponents would muster 20 Senate Republican votes (even assuming all Senate Democrats stayed in line) to remove him from office; any attempt at impeachment would have yet further roiled the country and very likely resulted in an embarrassing defeat and attendant backlash much closer to the 2020 election – a result that would have significantly enhanced Mr. Trump’s reelection prospects.

That said, I would like to see the entire Mueller Report; I would wager that most other Americans would as well; but although there will undoubtedly be sections that Democrats will pounce upon to demonstrate untoward behavior by the President and his associates, I hope that liberals don’t expend undue energy on pointless quibbling. Aside from using the fruits of the Special Counsel investigation to gather Republican support to enact measures and controls to better guard against foreign meddling in the next election, it’s time to move on.