Attention to the Unseen

The Washington Post reports: When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg turns reporter, reporters and lawyers start searching for clues. In a purportedly just-the-facts speech Friday to the judicial conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York, Ginsburg gave plenty to dissect. She teased pending decisions in cases about whether the census may contain a question on citizenship, and if the court would for the first time decide that a state’s electoral maps are…

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William Saletan writes: The final report on the Russia investigation, submitted on March 22 by special counsel Robert Mueller, documents multiple attempts by President Donald Trump to obstruct justice. So why hasn’t Trump been indicted? Because one man stands in the way: Attorney General William Barr. Two days after receiving Mueller’s 448-page report, Barr declared Mueller’s evidence insufficient. Since then, Barr has offered no detailed analysis to support his conclusions. Instead, in hearings and interviews, the attorney general has based…

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Renato Mariotti writes: With Congress enmeshed in a fraught debate over whether to impeach President Donald Trump, Robert Mueller’s brief and dramatic news conference provided a sharp reminder that impeachment is not the only option for addressing the president’s alleged misdeeds. The outlines of a potential civilian prosecution of a former president Trump are already emerging. While there are reports of tax dodges, illegal campaign contributions, and improper foreign contributions to his inaugural committee—among other things—investigations into those claims are…

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The Washington Post reports: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was just moments into her speech Saturday when a man shouted out from the back of a convention hall stuffed with thousands of delegates to the state Democratic Party convention. “Impeach Donald Trump!” he screamed, uttering a battle cry Pelosi has rebuffed, despite growing demands from her party’s activist wing. “President Trump will be held accountable for his actions,” she said. The I-word never left her lips. Less than an hour…

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Elizabeth Warren writes: When Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report was released on April 18, I sat down and read it. All 448 pages of it. I started reading it that afternoon, and I read all through the night and into the next morning. And when I got to page 448, three things were clear to me. First, a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 election to help candidate Donald Trump get elected. Second, candidate Donald Trump welcomed that help. Third,…

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Andrew Prokop writes: Robert Mueller’s report makes the stirring claim that “a fundamental principle of our government” is that no person, not even the president, “is above the law.” But the special counsel’s ultimate legacy may well be the exact opposite — because of his controversial decision not to say whether Trump committed criminal obstruction of justice. “We concluded that we would not reach a determination, one way or the other, about whether the president committed a crime,” Mueller said…

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Announcing his resignation, Robert Mueller said: The order appointing me special counsel authorized us to investigate actions that could obstruct the investigation. We conducted that investigation, and we kept the office of the acting attorney general apprised of the progress of our work. And as set forth in the report, after that investigation, if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not, however, make a determination as to…

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David Frum writes: Robert Mueller has advised Americans to go back and actually read his report if we want to understand what happened in 2016. “We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself,” he said on Wednesday morning, speaking publicly for the first time since his appointment. But the words of the report are damning. “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion,” Mueller wrote. This help “favored presidential candidate Donald…

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NPR reports: President Hillary Clinton? That would have been the result of the 2016 presidential election — if the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact were in effect. With a state Senate vote Tuesday, Nevada is close to becoming the latest state to sidestep the Electoral College when it comes to electing presidents. According to the National Popular Vote organization, which oversees efforts to persuade states to join the compact, 14 states and the District of Columbia have agreed to pledge…

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