We are seeing two trends in the Robert Mueller matter that should be pulling in opposite directions, but aren’t:

1) As far as we can tell at the moment (and this is necessarily speculative), Mueller doesn’t seem to be closing in on a collusion conspiracy. If that’s true, he’s also unlikely to be closing in on a real obstruction-of-justice case. In other words, the best bet right now is that, after catching up people guilty of various, extraneous crimes, the Mueller investigation will leave President Trump relatively untouched.


2) Momentum is building for the idea of firing Robert Mueller. This is a result of the disturbing evidence of political bias of top FBI agents and prosecutors, (we editorialized about this Thursday) but is completely at odds with point 1.

If Trump knows he has something to hide that’s potentially impeachable, he should probably — putting ethics and the truth aside — fire Mueller and try to out-run the law. Otherwise, cashiering Mueller would be insane. It would be like firing Comey only worse. If Democrats took the House — and firing Mueller would increase the odds of that happening — Mueller might be the lead witness at an impeachment hearing, even if there isn’t any Russian collusion.

I have to say that there would be something perfect about this — a special counsel investigating, in part, the circumstances that led to his appointment would be fired, perhaps leading to an impeachment about the circumstances of his ouster. It’d be the most self-referential alleged high crime in the history of the republic.