The president has taken a maximalist position on the Russia findings, but the still-secret Mueller report could provide damaging new details once a redacted version is released.
By Ashley Parker Ashley Parker White House reporter Email Bio Follow April 10 at 7:17 PM President Trump paused Wednesday on the South Lawn of the White House to describe special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election as “illegal,” “phony” and “an attempted coup.”
In 2003, President George W. Bush infamously landed on an aircraft carrier — against the backdrop of a huge banner trumpeting “Mission Accomplished” — to announce the end of major combat operations in Iraq. The war would drag on for nearly another decade, and Bush’s overly confident phrase served as shorthand for the administration’s controversial conflict.
Democrats are eager to pore over the full report in painstaking detail, picking out the most problematic nuggets and using them to try to trap the president — exposing what they expect to be a canyon between Trump’s black-and-white statements and Mueller’s more complicated findings. “It would have been so much wiser if the president said, ‘I was exonerated on collusion and there’s no case to be made on obstruction,’ ” Fleischer said. “He would have had the same good positive result, dismissing it all, without waving a red flag in front of his critics and the media.”
The administration also hopes to frame the debate on a macro level. It plans to argue that for nearly two years, Democrats and Trump critics promised that Mueller would find proof that Trump or his campaign conspired with Russia, but that Mueller, by Barr’s telling, did not. In its view, that is a total and complete win — or exoneration, to use Trump’s words.
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