CONCLUSION

The decision to make any or all of the Mueller report public, as well as how to react to its recommendations, fell to Barr, the new attorney general, and Rosenstein. Rosenstein was no longer overseeing the investigation, but had remained immersed in it.

The report’s conclusions didn’t come as much of a surprise to them: in a top secret meeting on March 5, 2019, Mueller had briefed them on his conclusions and explained his reasoning behind them. Forty-eight hours after receiving it, on Sunday, March 24, Barr summarized Mueller’s findings in a letter to congressional leadership.

The “investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” Barr stated.

As for obstruction of justice, Mueller hadn’t reached any conclusion. Instead, “the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as ‘difficult issues’ of law and fact concerning whether the President’s actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction,” Barr stated. He added that Mueller stated, “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

“Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense,” Barr continued. “In making this determination, we noted that the Special Counsel recognized that ‘the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference,’ and that, while not determinative, the absence of such evidence bears upon the President’s intent with respect to obstruction.”

Barr seemed to be suggesting that absent an underlying crime—in this case, collusion with Russia—Trump’s intent couldn’t be to obstruct.

For the first time in years—since the summer before the election—Trump was out from under the “cloud” of potential criminal prosecution. But the president seemed more angry than relieved and made clear that the Mueller report was likely to be just the opening salvo in a renewed attack on the people he blamed for the investigation.

As he was boarding Air Force One that Sunday for his return from a weekend at Mar-a-Lago, Trump made a brief statement to reporters:

So, after a long look, after a long investigation, after so many people have been so badly hurt, after not looking at the other side where a lot of bad things happened, a lot of horrible things happened, a lot of very bad things happened for our country—it was just announced there was no collusion with Russia. The most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.

There was no collusion with Russia. There was no obstruction, and—none whatsoever. And it was a complete and total exoneration. It’s a shame that our country had to go through this. To be honest, it’s a shame that your President has had to go through this for—before I even got elected, it began. And it began illegally. And hopefully, somebody is going to look at the other side. This was an illegal takedown that failed. And hopefully, somebody is going to be looking at the other side.

So it’s complete exoneration. No collusion. No obstruction.

Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow, Trump’s primary lawyers, called the CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer that afternoon. The Mueller report “completely exonerated the president, it is quite clear, no collusion of any kind, including the entire Trump campaign, which raises the question, why did this ever start in the first place?” Giuliani said.

As to the obstruction, “the key there is that the attorney general and the deputy attorney general made the conclusion that you don’t have obstruction when there’s no underlying crime,” Sekulow continued. “I think that we’ve said from the outset that this was a situation where there was no collusion, there was no obstruction, and now we have the weight of the Department of Justice agreeing with us.”

Citing the fact that Mueller stated explicitly that the report did not “exonerate” Trump, Blitzer asked, “What’s your reaction to that?”

“If you go on to the next two paragraphs, Wolf, the attorney general does kind of a brilliant analysis of it,” Giuliani answered. “He says that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein have concluded that the evidence is not sufficient to establish the president committed obstruction of justice. Then he goes even further and points out that basically under settled law, it’s almost impossible to have obstruction of justice if there’s no underlying crime. A brilliant lawyer-like analysis. Then he concludes with a very strong statement, ‘in cataloging the president’s actions, many of which took place in public view, the report identifies no actions that in our judgment,’ that’s Rosenstein and Barr, ‘constitute obstructive conduct.’

“That is a complete exoneration by the attorney general and Rod Rosenstein.”

The reality was far more complex, as became clear from a letter Mueller sent to Barr on March 27 and elaborated on in a phone call. For the tight-lipped Mueller to criticize Barr, someone he’d known for thirty years, and in writing, was an extraordinary step and came as a shock to lawyers at the Justice Department.

As we stated in our meeting of March 5 and reiterated to the Department early in the afternoon of March 24, the introductions and executive summaries of our two-volume report accurately summarize this Office’s work and conclusions. The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions. . . . There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.*

On April 18, Barr addressed the nation from the Justice Department, with Rosenstein standing impassively just behind him. “I am committed to ensuring the greatest possible degree of transparency concerning the Special Counsel’s investigation, consistent with the law,” Barr stated, announcing the release of a redacted version of the report.

Despite the warning in Mueller’s letter, Barr seemed even more intent on clearing the president. This time he didn’t mention that Mueller had declined to exonerate Trump on the issue of obstruction. And, without the benefit of any testimony by the president (because Trump had refused to testify about obstruction), Barr leaped to what seemed extremely sympathetic conclusions about the president’s cooperation and state of mind.

“President Trump faced an unprecedented situation,” Barr said. “As he entered into office, and sought to perform his responsibilities as President, federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct before and after taking office, and the conduct of some of his associates. At the same time, there was relentless speculation in the news media about the President’s personal culpability. Yet, as he said from the beginning, there was in fact no collusion. And as the Special Counsel’s report acknowledges, there is substantial evidence to show that the President was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks.” Barr continued, “This evidence of non-corrupt motives weighs heavily against any allegation that the President had a corrupt intent to obstruct the investigation.”

Barr had now had two occasions on which to promote his view of Trump’s innocence before the public had a chance to actually read the Mueller report. His views of Trump’s innocence were magnified by the media echo chamber dedicated to the Trump cause. Just how far apart Barr’s views were from Mueller’s—as well as why Mueller would have felt compelled to write his letter complaining about Barr’s characterizations—was abundantly clear once the Mueller report itself was available.

Mueller demolished the notion propounded by Barr and the president’s lawyers that proving obstruction requires the existence of an underlying crime—the heart of the president’s defense.

Quoting a series of controlling Supreme Court cases, Mueller laid out precisely the opposite: that “an improper motive can render an actor’s conduct criminal even when the conduct would otherwise be lawful and within the actor’s authority.”

For good measure, Mueller added, “Obstruction-of-justice law ‘reaches all corrupt conduct capable of producing an effect that prevents justice from being duly administered, regardless of the means employed.’”

“An ‘effort to influence’ a proceeding can qualify as an endeavor to obstruct justice even if the effort was ‘subtle or circuitous’ and ‘however cleverly or with whatever cloaking of purpose’ it was made.” “The verbs ‘“obstruct or impede” are broad’ and ‘can refer to anything that blocks, makes difficult, or hinders.’”

Mueller’s position makes perfect sense: the legal system can only function if it operates unimpeded by the myriad ways a defendant might seek to improperly influence the outcome. That’s as true for the innocent as for the guilty. Subjects of investigations may have many motives to conceal behavior that, while it may not be criminal, is nonetheless embarrassing, dishonest, or greedy. Countless defendants have been prosecuted for and convicted of obstructing justice where there was no underlying criminal activity.

Trump would seem a textbook case, because the ways his campaign benefited from Russian interference undermined the legitimacy of his election victory, giving him a motive to conceal it.

Because Trump refused to testify except through limited written answers to questions, he had minimal risk of committing perjury. Not only is perjury a crime, but lying is often evidence of a guilty state of mind. Trump’s sworn, written answer about Trump Tower Moscow was hardly candid, and hard to square with Cohen’s testimony. At best, Trump’s statement could be deemed misleading.

And apart from that sworn statement, Mueller’s report documented scores of false public statements by Trump bearing on aspects of the investigation, from denying that he’d ever told Comey that he wanted “loyalty” or asked him to “let . . . go” of the Flynn case, to claiming that he fired Comey over his handling of the Clinton email case, to denying that he tried to have Mueller fired—to name just a few examples. While not perjury, they indicate Trump was determined to conceal embarrassing and potentially damaging truths.

Besides what is in Mueller’s voluminous report, there remain questions about what Mueller did not include, especially any mention of the tumultuous days after Comey was fired, when Rosenstein proposed secretly recording the president. Mueller heard testimony about those events. Yet the report makes no mention of them. It is silent about what transpired between Rosenstein and Trump in their one-on-one meetings, including the flight to Florida. Each time, against seemingly long odds, Rosenstein emerged with his job intact. What did he offer Trump in return? What threats, explicit or implied, did Trump bring to bear? Rosenstein’s interactions with the president might well have constituted yet another potential obstruction count.

“The only commitment I made to President Trump about the Russia investigation is the same commitment I made to the Congress: so long as I was in charge, it would be conducted appropriately and as expeditiously as possible,” Rosenstein told The Washington Post. “Everyone who actually participated in the investigation knows that.”

Many of Trump’s reckless efforts to thwart the investigation were unsuccessful, thanks to the determination of Priebus, McGahn, and others. But in Rosenstein’s case, the argument can be made that Trump got the result he wanted: exoneration on collusion with Russia and a swift verdict of not guilty on obstruction—a verdict delivered in tandem by Barr, a longtime apologist for and defender of Trump, and Rosenstein.

Failure to reach a decision on obstruction was no doubt the most controversial aspect of Mueller’s report. Barr himself said he was taken aback when he learned of Mueller’s position during their March 5 meeting.

Because the Justice Department has ruled that indicting a sitting president is unconstitutional, Mueller explained, “Fairness concerns counseled against potentially reaching that judgment when no charges can be brought. The ordinary means for an individual to respond to an accusation is through a speedy and public trial, with all the procedural protections that surround a criminal case. An individual who believes he was wrongly accused can use that process to seek to clear his name. In contrast, a prosecutor’s judgment that crimes were committed, but that no charges will be brought, affords no such adversarial opportunity for public name-clearing before an impartial adjudicator.”

Mueller might not have concluded that Trump committed a crime. But the conclusions he did reach, set forth in the introduction to his 448-page report, are devastating in their own right:

Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations. The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels. These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General’s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.

The report continues, “The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”

In considering the full scope of the conduct we investigated, the President’s actions can be divided into two distinct phases reflecting a possible shift in the President’s motives. In the first phase, before the President fired Comey, the President had been assured that the FBI had not opened an investigation of him personally. The President deemed it critically important to make public that he was not under investigation, and he included that information in his termination letter to Comey after other efforts to have that information disclosed were unsuccessful. Soon after he fired Comey, however, the President became aware that investigators were conducting an obstruction-of-justice inquiry into his own conduct. That awareness marked a significant change in the President’s conduct and the start of a second phase of action. The President launched public attacks on the investigation and individuals involved in it who could possess evidence adverse to the President, while in private, the President engaged in a series of targeted efforts to control the investigation. For instance, the President attempted to remove the Special Counsel; he sought to have Attorney General Sessions unrecuse himself and limit the investigation; . . . and he used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and to praise witnesses who declined to cooperate with the government.

Quoting Supreme Court precedent, the report concluded that no person “in this country is so high that he is above the law.”

Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President’s conduct. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

Mueller left it to Congress and ultimately the American people to resolve those “difficult issues.”

MAY 29, 2019, was Robert Mueller’s last day as special counsel. He marked the occasion with a televised statement that lasted less than ten minutes. He read from a prepared script and provided a succinct synopsis of his report. He reiterated that “if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.” Despite burning public curiosity, he said he would have nothing further to say about the matter. “The report is my testimony,” he said. “I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress.” He declined to take any questions: “I do not believe it is appropriate for me to speak further about the investigation or to comment on the actions of the Justice Department or Congress.”

By then, it had dawned on Trump that the Mueller report was not the complete exoneration he’d claimed but rather a devastating and detailed critique. “I think Mueller is a true Never Trumper,” Trump said while on the South Lawn of the White House before leaving on the Marine One helicopter. As for Mueller’s team of lawyers, they are “some of the worst human beings on Earth.”

WHETHER TRUMP COMMITTED a crime or an impeachable offense or engaged in conduct unfitting for a president pledged to uphold the law and Constitution are serious questions. But others, too, remain subjects of intense public debate and interest. With the delivery of the Mueller report, the inspector general’s various investigations into conduct by the FBI and the Justice Department, and multiple investigations by both branches of Congress, there’s ample evidence to answer many of these:

The FBI did an exhaustive investigation, as did the inspector general. Classified information was transmitted over Clinton’s personal email accounts and through her servers, although there’s no evidence it was obtained by foreign powers. But there wasn’t any evidence that that was Clinton’s intent, or even that she knew about it.

Although a “gross negligence” standard might have enabled a prosecution with a lesser standard than criminal intent—and the FBI’s Jim Baker argued that position initially—no case had ever been brought in such circumstances. Multiple FBI lawyers and agents and career Justice Department officials, including the much-revered and independent David Margolis, thought charging Clinton would amount to “celebrity hunting,” in Margolis’s words.

As the inspector general noted, the former attorney general Alberto Gonzales was not charged in similar circumstances. It might not have been necessary to go quite so far as to say “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring such a charge, as Comey did. But it’s hard to imagine a jury would convict Clinton under such circumstances. And bringing a charge on such flimsy grounds would likely have ended her candidacy when she was the front-runner, sowing electoral chaos and possibly handing the nomination to her rival Bernie Sanders. The FBI could rightly have been criticized for a near-unthinkable intrusion into the democratic process.

Once the Weiner laptop surfaced, Comey had little choice but to reopen the investigation. The FBI had to obtain a search warrant, a step that might well have become public. Given how many people knew about the existence of the newly discovered emails—including many people in the leak-prone New York office—their existence was almost certain to become public. That not only would have damaged Clinton even more but would have seriously harmed the reputation of the FBI. Even Loretta Lynch recognized that, no doubt one of the reasons she gave Comey a hug.

Moreover, the fact that Comey reopened the Clinton investigation just days before the election and notified Congress, thereby making it public, is utterly inconsistent with any bias against Trump and in favor of Clinton. Many still blame Comey for Clinton’s loss.

Comey’s October 28 letter to Congress reopening the email investigation can only have damaged Clinton’s campaign. But there’s no way of knowing how many, if any, votes it actually cost her. However persuasive Nate Silver’s analysis, it was Clinton herself who decided to use her private email account for State Department business. It was Bill Clinton who barged in on Loretta Lynch on the Phoenix tarmac. And it was decades of obfuscation—about her cattle futures trading, about her Whitewater investment, and about her husband’s infidelities and sexual misconduct—that led some voters to doubt Clinton’s integrity and truthfulness, including her claims about the emails.

After all, Comey cleared Clinton a few days later after a massive, round-the-clock effort by FBI agents. Perhaps, as Trump maintained, Clinton “misplayed” that good news. If so, Comey can hardly be blamed. And for anyone but Clinton, that final exoneration should have laid the matter to rest.

Comey was well aware that he was departing from FBI and Justice Department policy, as were his advisers and the FBI leadership. Comey did it for one reason: to protect public confidence in the FBI as an independent, nonpartisan, and trustworthy agency. After Obama’s public statement, after Lynch’s comment about “matters,” and especially after Bill Clinton’s ill-timed visit on the tarmac, Comey became convinced that any decision to exonerate Clinton would be tainted as partisan.

To criticize her actions as “extremely careless” while declining to recommend charges was also a departure from Justice Department policy. The description—especially in the initial draft, when it was “grossly negligent”—came perilously close to the language of the Espionage Act. But Comey felt some characterization was important to ward off criticism that the FBI was favoring her and ignoring what was an inappropriately risky handling of state secrets.

Appointing a special counsel—a step Comey weighed at several junctures—would have avoided the appearance of a conflict and thus any need for Comey to intervene. The last special counsel, Kenneth Starr (whose title was independent counsel), had led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment and all but ended his presidency. With that precedent in mind, naming a special counsel for Clinton would surely have seriously damaged her candidacy, no matter the outcome. Once Comey knew she was unlikely to be charged, naming a special counsel would likely have done irreparable damage to the FBI. In any event, it was up to the Justice Department to name a special counsel.

As Comey said many times, there were no good choices and certainly no perfect ones. At the time—after July 5, but before he reopened the investigation in October—Comey drew bipartisan praise for his decision, even from Nancy Pelosi. Loretta Lynch, whose authority Comey arguably usurped, seemed content to have Comey bear the burden and the controversy of making the decision.

Had Huma Abedin kept Clinton’s emails off her husband’s laptop, no one would have second-guessed Comey’s decision to make the announcement.

The Russia investigation began after George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser, told Australia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Alexander Downer, that Russia had damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Downer passed that information to Canberra, which initially did nothing. Only after WikiLeaks published the first of the hacked Clinton campaign emails did it forward the information to the Americans.

Australia is one of the United States’ closest allies, and Downer was a respected and reliable source.

The subsequent arrival of the Steele dossier, in mid-September, reinforced the FBI’s concerns but had only marginal value. The FBI—Strzok in particular—distrusted anything with a Russian provenance. He was immediately concerned that so little of it could be either verified or disproven. Most of it was not, in his words, “actionable intelligence.” He knew as well that while Putin and Russia might well have preferred Trump over Clinton, Russia’s true objective wasn’t to elect any particular candidate but something much more profound and disturbing: to undermine America’s democracy and sow chaos in its electoral system. The dossier was perfectly designed to do that.

At the same time, much of the dossier was accurate and corroborated other facts known to the FBI. The FBI had every reason to mention it in its FISA application on Carter Page, even though the application by no means rested on it. Even now, most of the dossier remains neither proven nor disproven, including its salacious account of Trump’s visit to the Ritz-Carlton.

Most compelling, the FBI in fact opened a case file not on Trump but only on four of his campaign associates who had direct ties to Russia. The bureau had every reason to do so, and three of the four (Papadopoulos, Flynn, and Manafort) ended up being indicted or pleading guilty to crimes.

Had the FBI been motivated by animus to Trump, it could have opened a file in the summer or fall of 2016, and there were those inside the bureau who argued that it should have. Yet Comey held off.

Even after Trump asked for Comey’s “loyalty” and to “let . . . go” of the Flynn investigation, Comey delayed out of an abundance of caution. Only after Comey was fired, and McCabe’s job seemed to be hanging by a thread, did the FBI open a file on Trump. McCabe went to the Justice Department, where he sought and obtained Rosenstein’s approval. McCabe and Rosenstein then briefed the congressional leadership, including the Republican Speaker of the House and majority leader of the Senate. No one raised any objections.

For the fact that he fired Comey and thus became the subject of an FBI investigation into collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice, Trump has no one to blame but himself. As Bannon said, firing Comey was the biggest mistake “maybe in modern political history.”

Trump is hardly the first president to face resistance from, and to express hostility toward, elements of the federal bureaucracy. As the New Yorker editor David Remnick wrote in a 2017 essay (even before Trump had begun using the phrase), “Eisenhower warned of the ‘military-industrial complex’; L.B.J. felt pressure from the Pentagon; Obama’s Syria policy was rebuked by the State Department through its ‘dissent channel.’ But to use the term as it is used in Turkey, Pakistan, or Egypt is to assume that all these institutions constitute part of a subterranean web of common and nefarious purpose.”

“The problem in Washington is not a Deep State; the problem is a shallow man—an untruthful, vain, vindictive, alarmingly erratic President,” Remnick concluded.

Even Mike Lofgren, whose essay propelled the phrase into the current national conversation, has been alarmed by the way it’s been weaponized by Trump and his chorus of supporters. “There is something about Trump that senior operatives, either within the Beltway or in their corporate bastions, don’t like,” Lofgren wrote in a 2017 essay for the Lobe Log website. “His disgusting vulgarity and unhinged ranting embarrasses people who like to think of themselves as professionals. And, of course, the caterwauling about the Deep State by White House trolls may deceive people into thinking that the Deep State, however one defines it, and Donald Trump are in mortal combat.”

Yet “a glance at Trump’s policy choices shows that this theory is nonsense. His cabinet, filled with moguls from Big Oil, mega-banking, investment, and retail, makes George W. Bush’s cabinet look like a Bolshevik workers’ council.”

It’s not that no “Deep State” exists, in Lofgren’s view, but that Trump himself is a willing part of it. Legislation like Trump’s tax code—one of his few major accomplishments—was largely designed and implemented by a Treasury secretary (Steven Mnuchin) and the top White House economic adviser (Gary Cohn) who are both alumni of Goldman Sachs—a linchpin of the “Deep State.”

Steve Bannon told me that the “deep state conspiracy theory is for nut cases. America isn’t Turkey or Egypt.” There is an entrenched bureaucracy, but “there’s nothing ‘deep’ about it,” he said. “It’s right in your face.”

James Comey, the ostensible high mandarin of the Deep State, told me he’d never heard the phrase until after he was fired. Trump’s idea of a Deep State “is both dead wrong and dead right,” he said. “There’s no Deep State looking to bring down elected officials and political leaders that represents some deep-seated center of power,” Comey said. “But it’s true in a way that should cause Americans to sleep better at night. There’s a culture in the military, in the intelligence agencies, and in law enforcement that’s rooted in the rule of law and reverence for the Constitution. It’s very deeply rooted and, thank God, I think it would take generations to destroy.”

AFTER RESIGNING AS attorney general, Jeff Sessions consulted with friends and advisers about whether to run for his old Senate seat from Alabama. Charles Cooper, Sessions’s lawyer, said the FBI closed its investigation of Sessions without recommending any charges, and did so even before Sessions knew such an investigation existed. The FBI has made no public comment.

Donald McGahn, the White House counsel who defied Trump’s directive to get rid of Mueller and refused his requests to publicly dispute accounts of the incident, left the White House on October 17, after cooperating extensively with the special counsel. More than anyone else in the White House, McGahn saved Trump from his most reckless impulses and what would have been an even more damning report and greater likelihood of impeachment.

For that he received no gratitude from the president. “I was NOT going to fire Bob Mueller, and did not fire Bob Mueller,” Trump tweeted after the Mueller report was released. “In fact, he was allowed to finish his Report with unprecedented help from the Trump Administration. Actually, lawyer Don McGahn had a much better chance of being fired than Mueller. Never a big fan!”

Trump replaced McGahn with Pat Cipollone, a Washington lawyer who was an adviser and speechwriter for Barr when he was attorney general in the 1990s.

Rod Rosenstein announced his resignation on April 29, 2019, effective May 11. In a letter to Trump he praised the president while professing faith in the rule of law: “I am grateful to you for the opportunity to serve; for the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations; and for the goals you set in your inaugural address: patriotism, unity, safety, education, and prosperity, because ‘a nation exists to serve its citizens.’ The Department of Justice pursues those goals while operating in accordance with the rule of law. The rule of law is the foundation of America. It secures our freedom, allows our citizens to flourish, and enables our nation to serve as a model of liberty and justice for all.”

In a speech in New York on April 25, Rosenstein again pointedly stressed the rule of law and quoted the president (as he had on multiple occasions) saying, “We govern ourselves in accordance with the rule of law rather than the whims of an elite few or the dictates of collective will.” But the statement was actually less than a full-throated endorsement of the proposition by Trump. The president made the comment in prepared remarks commemorating Law Day, and Rosenstein omitted the first words of the full quotation: “Law Day recognizes that we govern ourselves in accordance with the rule of law.” Trump didn’t explicitly say he embraces the proposition.

After leaving office, Rosenstein dropped any pretense of cordial relations with Comey, let alone admiration. “The former director is a partisan pundit, selling books and earning speaking fees while speculating about the strength of my character and the fate of my immortal soul,” Rosenstein told a Baltimore audience on May 13. “That is disappointing.”

Rosenstein’s supporters have said the former deputy attorney general deserves credit for seeing the Mueller investigation through to its conclusion even if that meant denying accounts of his post–May 9 behavior, capitulating to Trump by writing the letter justifying Comey’s firing, and delivering the scalps of McCabe and Strzok—in essence, that the end justified whatever means were necessary.

In his Baltimore speech, Rosenstein assessed his tenure: “I took a few hits and made some enemies during my time in the arena, but I held my ground and made a lot of friends. And thanks to them, I think I made the right calls on the things that mattered.”

Since publishing his book, Comey has taught a course in ethical leadership at the College of William & Mary, his alma mater. He has lectured at law schools, including Chicago, Stanford, and Yale. Still, Comey’s friends are dismayed that his career in public service was cut short and is unlikely to resume anytime soon, if ever.

Comey’s emergence as a writer and his position as a firsthand witness to Trump’s methods have earned him a prominent place on the nation’s editorial pages. Writing in The New York Times on May 1, 2019, Comey said he was baffled by how Barr and Rosenstein handled the Mueller report.

How could Barr “start channeling the president in using words like ‘no collusion’ and FBI ‘spying’”? Comey asked. “And downplaying acts of obstruction of justice as products of the president’s being ‘frustrated and angry,’ something he would never say to justify the thousands of crimes prosecuted every day that are the product of frustration and anger?”

And how could Rosenstein “give a speech quoting the president on the importance of the rule of law? Or on resigning, thank a president who relentlessly attacked both him and the Department of Justice he led for ‘the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations’?”

Comey’s answer: “Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from.”

On May 28, in The Washington Post, Comey took on the “Deep State” conspiracy theorists. “The conspiracy theory makes no sense. The FBI wasn’t out to get Donald Trump. It also wasn’t out to get Hillary Clinton. It was out to do its best to investigate serious matters while walking through a vicious political minefield.

“But go ahead, investigate the investigators, if you must. When those investigations are over, you will find the work was done appropriately and focused only on discerning the truth of very serious allegations. There was no corruption. There was no treason. There was no attempted coup. Those are lies, and dumb lies at that. There were just good people trying to figure out what was true, under unprecedented circumstances.”

FOLLOWING IN COMEY’S footsteps, in February 2019 McCabe published a memoir, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump. McCabe also had a star turn on national television, in his case 60 Minutes, where he was courageous (or foolish) to so publicly criticize Trump and the Justice Department while he was under criminal investigation, and therefore still at their mercy.

The Threat shot to the top of national bestseller lists. McCabe will no doubt need whatever royalties the book earns, for his ordeal didn’t stop with his being fired and denied his retirement benefits. The Justice Department referred the inspector general’s report to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. McCabe remains under criminal investigation for perjury (and perhaps other crimes), as a result of his statements about the source of the Wall Street Journal article.

McCabe has said he is constrained by the ongoing investigation about what he can say in his defense. In his book, he said, “I had done my best to answer the questions accurately—and when I realized I needed to clarify and correct what I had said, I did so voluntarily, without being prompted.” He added that he was filing a lawsuit to challenge his firing and how it was handled, as well as the inspector general’s conclusions.

With the ongoing attacks by Trump and the unresolved issue of criminal charges, McCabe hasn’t found a job in the private sector.

ON APRIL 25, 2019, President Trump launched a renewed attack on Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. Appearing on his preferred news program, Hannity on Fox, Trump said, “These two were beauties. There is no doubt about it. They were going hog wild to find something about the administration which obviously wasn’t there.”

He continued, “These were the two that talked about the insurance policy just in case Hillary Clinton loses. If she loses, we’ve got an insurance policy. Well, that was the insurance policy.

“Now, she lost and now they are trying to infiltrate the administration to—really, it’s a coup. It’s spying. It’s everything that you can imagine. It’s hard to believe in this country that we would have had that.”

Page and Strzok haven’t had the national platform available to Comey and McCabe. While it hasn’t been easy, given the harsh public spotlight cast on their affair, they’ve both managed to preserve their marriages. They’ve had little choice but to be more open and honest with their spouses. Page has been working at a Washington law firm. Strzok hasn’t found a job in the private sector, but he, too, is working on a book. Both testified under oath in congressional hearings, which gave them an opportunity to address their critics.

“What would you say to those who allege that the special counsel’s probe has become irredeemably tainted because you and Lisa Page were once a part of the Russia investigation,” the Democrat Jerrold Nadler of New York asked Strzok.

“I’d say that is utterly nonsense,” Strzok answered.

He went on, “I never, ever considered or let alone did any act which was based on my personal belief. My actions were always guided by the pursuit of the truth, and moreover, anything I did was done in the context of a much broader organization.” He continued, “When you look at the totality of what occurred, the procedures that were followed, demonstrably followed and followed in accordance with law and our procedures, they were complete. They were thorough. They were absolutely done with no motive other than a pursuit of the truth.”

The Illinois Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi asked Strzok if he was aware of any FBI or Justice Department investigations motivated by political bias, and he answered no. “That’s not who we are,” he said. “What distresses me the most are people’s suggestion that the FBI is the sort of place where that even could possibly occur is destructive to the rule of law and the mission of the FBI to protect the United States.”

When it was Page’s turn, Elijah Cummings asked, “Do you agree with the President’s statement that the FBI’s reputation is in tatters and is the worst in history?”

“Well, it is now,” Page answered.

“And why do you say that?”

“Because we continue to be a political punching bag. Because some private texts about our personal opinions continue to be used as a broad brush to describe the entire activity of 36,500 individuals. Because we have been caught up in a place that we never could have possibly imagined, because all of us did the job that was asked of us.”

“Is that painful?”

“It’s horrendous, sir.”

BY MID-2019, PRESIDENT Trump appeared to have the White House counsel, attorney general, and FBI director he wanted. Certainly none is a Roy Cohn, Trump’s model for the ideal lawyer. But the Justice Department’s release of the Strzok-Page texts, its publicizing of their affair, the handling of Strzok’s termination, the demotion of Ohr, and the harsh treatment of McCabe raise disturbing questions about their willingness to stand up to a president and preserve the long tradition of independent law enforcement and the rule of law.

Rosenstein prided himself on seeing Mueller over the finish line. But at what cost? Who emerged the victor in this epic contest? Trump was exonerated of collusion with the Russians, and Barr and Rosenstein moved swiftly to free him from any threat of obstruction of justice charges. More broadly, Trump appears to have gained considerable sway over the institutions that dared to investigate him and thwarted his repeated demands that Hillary Clinton be prosecuted.

On May 13, Barr assigned John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to lead a probe into the origins of the Russia investigation and the roles of the FBI and the Justice Department. In an interview on 60 Minutes, Barr said that “if foreign elements can come in and affect it,” referring to the presidential election, “that’s bad for the republic. But by the same token, it’s just as dangerous to the continuation of self-government and our republican system, that we not allow government power, law enforcement or intelligence power, to play a role in politics, to intrude into politics, and affect elections.”

Sounding every bit the “Deep State” convert, Barr continued, “Republics have fallen because of a Praetorian Guard* mentality where government officials get very arrogant, they identify the national interest with their own political preferences and they feel that anyone who has a different opinion is somehow an enemy of the state. And there is that tendency that they know better and that they’re there to protect as guardians of the people. That can easily translate into essentially supervening the will of the majority and getting your own way as a government official.”

“And you are concerned that that may have happened in 2016?” asked CBS’s chief legal correspondent, Jan Crawford.

“Well, I just think it has to be carefully looked at because the use of foreign intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign to me is unprecedented and it’s a serious red line that’s been crossed,” Barr replied.

THE ULTIMATE TEST of their independence will be the willingness of the FBI and the Justice Department to satisfy Trump’s seemingly insatiable thirst for vengeance. For the president hasn’t simply declared victory.

At a White House press conference on May 23, the NBC White House correspondent Peter Alexander pointed out, “Sir, the Constitution says treason is punishable by death. You’ve accused your adversaries of treason,” and asked, “Who specifically are you accusing of treason?”

“Well, I think a number of people.”

“Who are you speaking of?”

“If you look at Comey; if you look at McCabe; if you look at probably people—people higher than that; if you look at Strzok; if you look at his lover, Lisa Page, his wonderful lover—the two lovers, they talked openly.”

Trump elaborated on their alleged misdeeds and concluded, “That’s treason.”