I never want to play poker with Robert Mueller. If he played his cards any closer to his vest, they'd be in his back pocket.

He spoke for nine minutes on Wednesday, never going far beyond what his report already said, and boosting its book sales. He made Attorney General William Barr look like the lawn ornament that he is. He once again tossed the whole thing into the lap of Congress. He clearly said that he did not indict the president* for a crime solely because he believes that it is unconstitutional to do so. And the signifying was clear and simple.

"If we had had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not however make a determination as to whether the President did commit a crime."



"Under longstanding department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office... Charging the president with a crime was, therefore, not an option we could consider."



"When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of their government's effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable."



(An aside: it really is time to dump this DOJ policy, which essentially makes a criminal president above the criminal law.)



The president clearly meddled in the investigation. Anadolu Agency Getty Images

More significant, at least from this seat, was Mueller's discussion of the Russian ratfcking of the 2016 election and the ongoing attempts to ratfck the 2020 election. This section of his report is the basis for the "No collusion" half of the "No collusion. No obstruction" litany that everybody down at Camp Runamuck says with their morning prayers, and that Mueller pretty much left as a pointed open question on Wednesday. There was no hoax. There was no coup. There was an attack, and there soon will be others, so saddle up, you idiots.

"The indictment alleges that they used sophisticated cyber techniques to hack into computers and networks used by the Clinton campaign. They stole private information and then released that information through fake online identities and through the organization, Wikileaks. The releases were designed and times to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate. And at the same time as the grand jury alleged in a separate indictment, a private Russian entity engaged in a social media operation where Russian citizens posed as Americans in order to influence an election."

Here he is saying that a) the Russian ratfcking was aimed at damaging Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign and b) that it was meant to influence the election in a certain direction—i.e. to benefit the Trump campaign. You may recall some stories at the time that alleged the Russians were engaged in some nihilistic, non-partisan ratfcking in order merely to create chaos in the American political system. No, Mueller said on Wednesday. The Russian ratfcking had one definite purpose: the election of Donald Trump. The Russian ratfckers, and the Volga Bagmen behind them, wanted this incompetent, vulgar talking yam to be president*.

There is no doubt: Russia meddled in a United States presidential election to get Donald Trump elected. Congress must find out why. Getty Images

Anybody who wants to know why that was the case—like, say, several committees in the House of Representatives—is free to explore the reasons at length. To believe still that Mueller's investigation definitively concluded, "No collusion," you have to believe that all this effort and expense to influence an election in favor of a guy whose businesses already depended on Russian money, and who at the time was trying to close a major real estate deal in Moscow, was all a happy accident, a blessing from above on the Trump campaign. All of this, of course, was in the report. But watching Mueller say it out loud was a compelling bit of theater.

And that brings us to the most disappointing thing about Mueller's brief appearance on Wednesday: his stated reluctance to appear before Congress. He has no excuse left. He is a private citizen now. And if he only repeats what's in the report, on television, in front of the country, it will contribute mightily to the political momentum behind the demands that Congress do its damn job or shirk its duty entirely. He still needs to testify. He still needs to take questions. He's only a citizen like the rest of us now, and he has a duty to do the right thing. We all do.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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