The report is in; the work begins

The Mueller report, or at least an interpretive summary of it, landed in a hostile landscape Sunday. Democrats had hoped for more than they got. Republicans are proclaiming not-quite-justified victory in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and associated issues.

According the Attorney General William Barr (who had already declared the president innocent of any wrongdoing), Mueller's report found no evidence of collusion or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russians. As to any potential obstruction by the president or his associates, Mueller did not find enough evidence to warrant an indictment. Barr, in his summary to Congress, claims prosecutorial discretion to decide that no indictments are justified. That is, he sees insufficient evidence to convict anyone of obstruction.

President Trump was quick to proclaim victory and vindication, saying there was "no collusion" and he was fully exonerated. That second conclusion exaggerates the situation. Not finding enough evidence to convict is not the same as being fully exonerated.

Regardless, Trump has much to cheer about. The "no collusion" he has been proclaiming for months appears to be accurate, but few people have seen the evidence on which Mueller based his conclusion. Several points should be remembered:
1. The letter to Congress was not Mueller's full report. Democrats in the House are pushing for a full release of the report and substantiating evidence. A different conclusion or a more nuanced conclusion could be forthcoming.
2. Trump has spent two years declaring that Mueller was biased, politicized and unfair in his investigation, which the president repeatedly called a "witch hunt." How can he now hold up Mueller's report as evidence of his own vindication?
3. The Democratic majority in the House will conduct its own investigation of what happened in the 2016 election and how Trump has presided over the Executive Branch of government. That investigation will have more impact on Trump's future than Mueller's report. Trump's troubles are not over yet.
4. Conspiracy, the crime sometimes referred to as collusion, is notoriously difficult to prove. A conspiracy takes place in the minds of its partners; prosecutors must persuade jurors of what the defendants were thinking, which is a difficult step.
5. Even if there was no collusion in the 2016 election, there clearly was Russian interference. Mueller's team has indicted a number of Russians for interfering in the U.S. election. We will never know whether that interference swayed election results, but there was clearly a Russian effort to aid Trump's election chances. Vladimir Putin himself (Trump's BFF) acknowledged that he wanted Trump to win the election.
6. Mueller's report isn't the final statement about possible criminal conduct in the Trump circle. Trump's lawyer, his former campaign manager, several campaign advisers and others have been indicted, convicted or pleaded guilty as a result of the Mueller probe. Investigations into Trump-related crimes in the Southern District of New York.

Where does all this leave Democrats and others who would like to see Trump impeached? They are going to have to find additional evidence of "high crimes and misdemeanors" in order to get enough votes in Congress to impeach and remove from office. But Yoni Applebaum in an article in the March Atlantic magazine, makes the case for impeachment not based on criminal offenses but on misconduct/misbehavior in office. Applebaum says the Founding Fathers provided impeachment as a means of correcting an electoral mistake, removing a president who is incompetent, embarrassing, or a detriment to American democracy. By that standard, Applebaum says, Congress already has enough evidence, much of it from Trump's own mouth (or his fingers on his phone keyboard) to impeach him. He has berated grieving parents of American soldiers killed in action; he has insulted American heroes such as John McCain; he has embraced authoritarian dictators such as Kim Jong Un and Putin while castigating American allies; his administration has been chaotic and contradictory; he has worked to weaken or destroy NATO; he has sought to scuttle the post-World War II alliances that have prevented another world war; and he has profited from his office by accepting payments from foreign governments through his real estate properties.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of un-presidential behavior by Trump, it will be difficult to pass an impeachment bill. Democrats' best hope for getting rid of Trump will be the old-fashioned way: vote him out of office in 2020. Because Trump has such an enthusiastic, motivated, he-can-do-no-wrong following, even that won't be easy.

Living in the middle of a spy novel

Here's the plot: a foreign power, a rival or enemy of the United States, finds a way to infiltrate a "mole" or spy into America's government. This is a long-term strategy, and its implementation consumes years of grooming and training the "plant" and prepping the political system and the public for the plant, so that he/she can win the public's trust while keeping his/her loyalty to the foreign power secret.

Sounds far-fetched but barely plausible. As the plot for a mystery/thriller novel, it could sell well. As a thriller movie, it could go gangbusters at the box office. The novel would be like John Le Carre's or Tom Clancy's best. As a movie, well, think of "The Manchurian Candidate."

That's the basic plot, but here's the scary part: The plot may be playing out in real time. The New York Times has revealed that the FBI began an investigation to determine whether President Donald Trump was actually working for the Russian government. Trump's inexplicable cozying up to foreign dictators, his praise of Vladimir Putin (a former KGB agent and current dictator of Russia) raised questions about Trump's loyalty to the United States. 

Adding to these odd behaviors, The Washington Post has reported that Trump went to extraordinary lengths to keep secret, even from his closest aides, the content of talks he engaged in during a meeting in Hamburg in 2017. First, he met with Putin with no advisers present. The only people in the room were translators, and Trump made sure that the translators' notes were destroyed. So no one — not top administration staff and advisers, not members of Congress and not the American people — knows what went on behind closed doors with Putin. It's not that the notes were classified and unavailable to those without clearance; the notes do not exist at all! We do know that Trump was just as effusive as ever in praising Putin after their secret conversation. Trump has not denied the report about the meeting notes.

These strange events come in the wake of a widely reported campaign by Russia to sow distrust among American voters and to help elect in 2016. Putin has fairly proudly admitted that he favored Trump in the 2016 campaign. Almost daily, Trump attacks the work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is charged with investigating links between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia.

No one has proven that a duly elected president of the United States is a Russian agent, but suspicions are piling up.