Eventually, the whole Robert Mueller investigation will reach its conclusion and the story will be restored to clear view. But even now we know what Trump seems unable to comprehend—that he is a key reason why the investigation keeps going. This is not because he is reviled by the establishment for his politics, but because of what the investigation and his response have already revealed about this character: his disregard of legal limits when it is in his personal and political interest to ignore them, and his persistent failure to render an honest accounting of his actions. Although not quite in the way that he imagines, Trump is, in fact, what ties all these pieces together and assures that the inquiry will, as it must, continue.

Trump, although fully entitled to defend himself against the investigation, has failed to negotiate the boundary between legitimate self-defense and obstruction of justice, and in attacks such as those on his attorney general and his failed courtship of former FBI Director James Comey, he has indicated in no uncertain terms that he expects loyalty rather than fidelity to the law. He recently said of Attorney General Jeff Sessions: “The only reason I gave him the job was I felt loyalty.” He has dangled pardons for crucial witnesses, raising legitimate questions of whether he has engaged in witness tampering. In recent days, he has declared, “campaign-finance violations are considered not a big deal.” Throughout the investigation, as issues have publicly surfaced, the president has lied time and again. He lied about the payoffs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, and about the purpose of the Trump campaign meeting with Kremlin emissaries in the summer of 2016.

Trump’s chronic scorn for the law and legal institutions, together with his trademark dishonesty, are not the only ways in which the president has presented the prosecutors with a damaging picture of himself and his motives. Those attributes appear in the specifics of his conduct as both president and, before then, as candidate, and it is reflected in the conduct of many of those whom he has chosen to assist him in his affairs. There is no indication that the Trump campaign sought advice of counsel about the Trump Tower meeting with the Russian delegation. Trump did not seek legal counsel when he dictated the fallacious statement about the meeting on behalf of his son. Not a lawyer other than Cohen, who does not appear to have been advising on the law, shows up in the emerging narrative about the hush-money payments to McDougal and Daniels. When the president does see the need for lawyers, it is evidently to have them say what he would like to hear.

In the light of this emerging picture of the president, prosecutors have ample reason to discount his stream of vehement denials and to persist in looking closely at the evidence of a deal with the Russians for help with the campaign and then covering it up. The president’s lack of credibility in his legal affairs would only bolster the prosecutors’ conviction that they should be thorough and run every lead to ground.