Barbara McQuade

Opinion columnist

Don’t let Robert Mueller’s understated performance fool you.

Some people expressed disappointment that the former special counsel did not deliver more impassioned testimony when he appeared before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees on Wednesday. Perhaps we have all seen too many movies and television shows in which the star lawyer gives a riveting closing argument that spurs everyone to stand and cheer.

Instead, we saw a prosecutor behaving the way prosecutors should behave — cautiously, carefully and with restraint. Unlike politicians, who use rhetorical flourishes to rile up an audience, prosecutors generally let the power of their argument come from the facts themselves.

And even though the facts came out at the hearing in halting fashion, they were devastating. Among them:

►Mueller’s investigation did not exonerate President Donald Trump

►Russian interference was not a hoax and the investigation was not a witch hunt

►Russia interfered in our election in sweeping and systematic fashion

►Russia worked to benefit Trump as a candidate in the 2016 presidential election

►Trump developed messaging strategies around the release of stolen emails

►Trump lied and directed others to lie to hide those facts

US laws did not anticipate Trump

Mueller stated that as special counsel, his task was limited to investigating facts and determining whether crimes were committed. Mueller uncovered a number of damaging facts.

With regard to the substance of the Russia attack, Mueller found evidence that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort shared polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the FBI assessed was connected to Russian intelligence. The data included Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Trump won upset victories. Mueller concluded that Donald Trump Jr. and others met with Russians to obtain disparaging information about Hillary Clinton as part of Russia and its government’s ongoing efforts to support Trump. Mueller obtained evidence that Trump told deputy campaign chairman Richard Gates that he had advance knowledge of releases of stolen emails by WikiLeaks. These facts show a candidate who was willingly accepting help from Russia to interfere in the outcome of our election.

None of these facts amounted to violations of the law, at least in part because they did not precisely fit within the contours of any federal criminal statutes. Congress passes criminal laws to prohibit and punish wrongful conduct that it can anticipate. Before 2016, who could have imagined a crime of working with a hostile foreign adversary to weaponize social media and email messages to attack an election?

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Not surprisingly, none of the statutes Mueller considered fit the facts of this case. But just because the facts do not amount to a crime does not mean that they comprise conduct we should tolerate in a president.

Devastating details over six

With regard to obstruction, Mueller acknowledged facts as committee members methodically walked through the five most egregious acts of obstruction of justice described in the report: asking White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller as special counsel, directing McGahn to falsely deny the request to fire Mueller and to create a false document to support that lie; directing former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, then a private citizen, to tell then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reverse his recusal decision and limit the investigation to future elections; and trying to influence the testimony of two witnesses, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen.

Mueller made it clear that although the efforts to fire him were not successful, even attempts to obstruct justice is prohibited by law. Moreover, his investigation suffered “identified gaps” in reaching its conclusions because members of the Trump campaign lied, provided incomplete information, deleted communications, used encrypted messaging applications and relied on legal privileges. In this way, the obstruction efforts appear to have been successful in part.

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It took more than six hours to pry these details out of Mueller, but the facts are devastating. And even though they cannot be charged as criminal offenses against a sitting president, Mueller stated in his report and his testimony that one reason he did not reach a conclusion about whether crimes were committed when he could not charge them was that he did not want to preempt the constitutional process for addressing presidential misconduct. He would not say out loud what that word is because he believes that process is not within his purview, as he said many times. The word is within the purview of Congress.

The word is impeachment.

Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow her on Twitter: @barbmcquade