Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked the credibility of special counsel Robert Mueller, with Fox News and Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lead lawyer, providing invaluable assistance. The strategy seemed to work extremely well until mid-August, when Paul Manafort was convicted and Michael Cohen pleaded guilty. A Washington Post-ABC News poll last week put approval of Mueller’s investigation at 63 percent. “This president and Mr. Giuliani have done everything they could to discredit the special counsel and undermine the independence of law enforcement in this case,” says Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “But you can cry ‘fake news’ all you want—when you see people around the president pleading guilty and being convicted, that has a decided impact.”

The real test will come, however, when Mueller finishes his work and submits a final report to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is not required to release the document—and may well have his own reasons to bury it. Last week, Giuliani gleefully revealed that he is preparing a “counter-report,” and that it is already up to 58 pages. He is also prepared to try to invoke executive privilege as a way of suppressing the special counsel’s findings. Mueller has been resolutely silent, but he cares deeply about the truth being known. So how might he make his work public?

“It’s difficult, because Mueller’s standard is that he is only going to put in his report what he could prove in court. And in a courtroom, Giuliani would get decimated because he just makes stuff up,” says Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor in New York. “But this is going to be argued in the court of public opinion. I’m hoping Mueller has a plan, and he probably does, because he is extremely smart and he has already been far more strategic about the public debate than I think we even realize. You see that in the timing of the indictments and the things he includes in the indictments that point people in certain directions. But Mueller is not going to go on Rachel Maddow. Even though that would be awesome.”

Prosecutors, particularly United States attorneys, commonly hold press conferences to explain charges they are filing in high-profile cases. “True, but prosecutors become experts in saying nothing more than is actually in the indictment, to avoid creating any pre-trial prejudicial publicity issues,” says Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago. “If Mueller talks, Trump would have an argument that the special counsel is trying to poison any potential jury pool. Which would be hilarious, given that the president has spent two years trying to do just that.”

Besides the fact that Mueller—unless he goes against precedent and conventional wisdom to seek the indictment of a sitting president—won’t be filing a criminal case against Trump, he will also be constrained by regulations that greatly restrict a special counsel’s ability to speak publicly about a closed investigation. Instead, Mueller will most likely submit a report to Rosenstein. The report’s narrative will be rigorous and thorough, regardless of whether its conclusions are exculpatory or damning. “Notwithstanding the nonsense that the president and his surrogates continue to put out about corruption and incompetence and witch hunts and all this garbage, anybody who knows this business knows that Bob Mueller and his team are the best you can get,” says Sam Buell, who helped lead the government’s Enron investigation. “So whatever they write is gonna be darn good.” Though the public may never see substantial parts: grand jury testimony, for instance, is legally sealed.