Nice try, GOP Senator Richard Burr, but Donald Trump is going down
Reports are that the Senate Intelligence Committee is nearing the end of its investigation into the 2016 election and, despite the claims of how thorough the Senate was in its investigation and how long it continued, we should not be surprised that Senator Richard “Nothing Burr-ger” has stated, “If we write a report based upon the facts that we have, then we don’t have anything that would suggest there was collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia.” Burr has hinted at this recently, including in a CBS interview.
However, nobody should panic or get disheartened. First, the investigations that matter are the ones that Special Counsel Robert Mueller and other prosecutors, including the Southern District of New York and many state Attorneys General, are conducting. They are real prosecutors whose only job is to investigate and prosecute those crimes that they find. Second, as NBC News pointed out in the story above, there have been at least a hundred contacts between Trump and his orbit and the Russians, not to mention Saudi Arabia, China, and name your country. These are not coincidences, and the indictments, pleas and convictions to date (with many remaining sealed) continue to pile up.
Finally, as one Democratic aide was quoted, “We were never going find a contract signed in blood saying, ‘Hey Vlad, we’re going to collude.’”
Another key to this whole statement by Richard Nothing Burr-ger is that it refers to collusion. As Rudy Giuliani, Trump and others remind us regularly, “collusion” itself is not a crime or even a legal term. But there are many other crimes and justice will be done.
We don’t know when Mueller’s probe and other investigations will end. Don’t pay any attention to these kinds of partisan reports as the real probes are finishing up. Recall that Mueller recently was granted an up to six-month extension for his grand jury, and sealed indictments continue to get filed in his favorite jurisdiction, so there likely are “many miles to go before” Trump sleeps – in prison.
Daniel is a lawyer writing and teaching about SCOTUS, and is the author of the book “The Chief Justices” about the SCOTUS as seen through the center seat.