What happens if Mueller’s Russia probe finds nothing?

And… from this Politico report, it sounds like Robert Mueller is likely to hand anti-Trumpers a big fat nothingburger. This highly likely outcome is not at all what the left had hoped for when the probe was launched. The left was so convinced that Hillary Clinton would ascend the throne that 2016’s outcome just had to be the result of a grand scheme. Should the special counsel’s report not indict someone, anyone that implicates the President in an impeachable offense, oh my.

And should that report not be made public by Deputy Attorney General Rob Rosenstein, the outcry is going to be epic.

For starters, Mueller isn’t operating under the same ground rules as past high-profile government probes, including the Reagan-era investigation into Iranian arms sale and whether President Bill Clinton lied during a deposition about his extramarital affair with a White House intern. Those examinations worked under the guidelines of a post-Watergate law that expired in 1999 that required investigators to submit findings to Congress if they found impeachable offenses, a mandate that led to Starr’s salacious report that upended Clinton’s second term.

Mueller’s reporting mandate is much different. He must notify his Justice Department supervisor — currently Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — on his budgeting needs and all “significant events” made by his office, including indictments, guilty pleas and subpoenas.

When Mueller is finished, he must turn in a “confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions” — essentially why he chose to bring charges against some people but not others. His reasoning, according to veterans of such investigations, could be as simple as “there wasn’t enough evidence” to support a winning court case.

Then, it will be up to DOJ leaders to make the politically turbo-charged decision of whether to make Mueller’s report public.

Oh, the temper tantrums.

There’s another link I’d like you to follow, but it’s a tad longer of a read than most Tweeters and Facebookers might be willing to concentrate on. The author describes a category of Democrats and Democrat-leaning folks that I have been calling WHELPs—White, Highly Educated Liberal People.

WHELPs are liberals that don’t like playing by any rules other than their own. They make the rules, and they apply the rules however and whenever they want to (or find them useful) and ignore them whenever they want to (or find them unhelpful). This is anathema to people who subscribe to the rule of law concept.

WHELPs set the rules for the 2016 election. To their shock and horror, Donald Trump broke every single one of those rules and was still sworn in as our 45th President. But they had a mulligan, they thought. They thought that surely, the election was a sham and Mueller would prove it.

Unless he doesn’t. And he won’t. 

So, we can expect a pandemonium of protest when Mueller’s report finds no evidence of an impeachable offense. When the WHELPs learn that there will be no Senate Trial presided by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; that President Trump will remain in office until at least January 2020, they will be in the streets. It’s gonna be a hot mess.

I believe that if Mueller had found evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, he would have followed his mandate and reported them to his superiors already. The left will not get what it wants.

I also believe that the national embarrassment of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation will be made to look like a kindergarten donnybrook.

These are people who like to make their own rules.  They refuse to live life on terms that are set by someone else and are the same for left and right alike before the game begins. They regard any outcome short of total victory under such terms to be illegitimate.

Fortunately, elections and courts of law are conducted by rules set by mature, (usually) rational adults. While impeachment is a political process, it is one that already has a set of rules prescribed by the Constitution. It even has precedents. This game is not played by WHELP rules.

WHELPs are fortunately a minority of a minority. They nonetheless make the most noise and cause the most trouble and they are their noisiest and most troublesome when the game doesn’t go their way. This one probably won’t, just like 2016. Just like Kavanaugh.