After nearly two years of Mueller's Grand Jury, the report was finally released to the public today, reaching the conclusion that they were unable to determine whether or not the president had obstructed justice. One of the main points of the investigation was to explore why Trump's Campaign took such an interest in the hack DNC emails released by the Russians. Overall, they were able to determine that the Russians did conspire to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, but they did not find that Trump or his associates were involved in the scheme. In addition, Mueller was unable to say that Trump obstructed justice when he fired James Comey, the FBI Director appointed by Obama, over the investigation. In the past week, Trump has declared this a victory for himself and has claimed full exoneration from all of the charges brought upon him. "This should've never happened ... I say this in front of my friends, this should never happen to another president again. This hoax -- it should never happen again. Thank you." Although no collusion was found by the special counsel, he made it clear that Congress could still investigate Trump.https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/18/politics/mueller-report-release/index.html
Questions:
1. Has Trump earned total exoneration as he so claims?
2. Is it worth Congress's time to continue investigating Trump on their own time?
3. If Congress were to continue investigations, what should they focus on?
Although this matter is important, it is not worth Congress's time to continue investigating Trump on their own time. Congress has many other issues to accomplish on the political agenda such as dealing with the budget and immigration. This result can be counted as a loss for the Democrats against Trump, and so they should focus on fighting against Trump's policies through a different method. However, if Congress were to continue investigations, they should focus on Trump's relations to Russia and Putin. Maybe in doing so, they will be able to find a relation that occured before the events of the hacking.
ReplyDeleteI believe that while Trump has been exonerated of the accusations of collusion with Russia, the fact that he had been adamant about not having the matter investigated could mean that Trump has other things to hide. Additionally, I do not believe that he should be cleared his charges of obstruction of justice entirely, because he had been completely resistant to the investigation. At the same time, it is not worth Congress's time to continue investigating Trump on this matter as it had been thoroughly dealt with, and has taken a lot of time and resources already. It is unlikely that further investigation will uncover anything new, and resources and personnel should be used on more important issues.
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