Mueller’s Investigation Must Be Limited and Accountable

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American Greatness

Mueller’s Investigation Must Be Limited and Accountable

By Andrew C. McCarthy| July 19, 2017

How much goalpost moving should be tolerable in the Trump-Russia collusion investigation?

Remember, we started with an allegation that the Trump campaign may have been complicit in the Putin regime’s “cyber-espionage”—i.e., the hacking our intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian government operatives carried out against email accounts tied to Democrats. The investigation took a more serious turn last week, when it was revealed that Trump campaign officials met in June 2016 with a suspected emissary of the Putin regime. Yet, there is currently no basis to believe that meeting had anything to do with hacking. So, while the meeting warrants investigation, the original allegation is no closer to being proved.

Of course, it is certainly possible for a political campaign and a foreign government to engage jointly in unsavory behavior that does not rise to the level of crime. The less objectionable the behavior, however, the further afield we would be from the egregious allegation that prompted the investigation in the first place. Unless one is a rank partisan whose goal is to damage the president (rather than hold him accountable for actual, significant wrongdoing), this should be a matter of concern. Investigations are debilitating. They erode an administration’s ability to govern.