By rejecting—even appearing to ridicule—Mueller’s punctilious insistence that fairness foreclosed any finding of likely criminality by the president, because department policy barred an actual indictment, Barr thus opened the way for his own formal finding on that subject. And in reaching a finding of no criminality without ever discussing the evidence, Barr plainly relied on his own twisted vision of an autocratic president constitutionally empowered to shut down any investigation—even an investigation into his own conduct. It was a vision he had spelled out in detail in a 19-page memo attacking “Mueller’s ‘Obstruction’ Theory,” which he submitted to Rod Rosenstein in June 2018, perhaps as an audition for the job of attorney general.

Anyone who has carefully read Volume II of the Mueller report knows that it offers a very readable account of repeated acts by the president carefully tailored to interfere with and disrupt the investigation, and that it offers an enormous amount of evidence to substantiate its narrative. That is why more than 1,000 current and former prosecutors have come together to say that but for the departmental rules categorically foreclosing it, indictment of the president for obstruction would be well justified.

But very few people have actually read the report. And for the others, Barr’s careful campaign of cryptic and misleading public statements has muddled the message very badly. Indeed, it has left most people at best puzzled, and some with the mistaken view that evidence showing serious misconduct probably does not exist.

Thus, if the arduous task Mueller undertook as special counsel included informing the American people and Congress about the facts and law surrounding the president’s conduct in a way they would be likely to understand, he is not yet done. He needs to be more direct about what the investigation found. And there seems little doubt that an unambiguous direct statement by Mueller of his own prosecutorial judgment based on the work of his team and their assessment of the law—as other independent counsels have provided—would carry enormous weight, and do much to set the public record straight. He needs to tell us whether, in his view, the president obstructed justice.

Perhaps his recent decision to testify before two committees on July 17, after saying on May 29 that he hoped that would be the last time he would have to explain his report, shows that Mueller himself has come to this realization. If so, and if he has decided to give us the benefit of his professional judgment, his path to that decision may have been aided by reflections on the meaning of loyalty in the circumstances America finds itself in. Still, the decision to take that step cannot be easy for this Marine. The very idea of investigating criminality by the commander in chief sits uneasily with a soldier’s unconditional acceptance of the president’s power over his own life, including to order actions that will result in his certain death. But that issue has been on the table since the start, and is a bridge Mueller must have crossed many months, or even years, ago.