By Michael Kovac/WireImage.

On the eve of the release of Robert Mueller’s report, my colleague Gabriel Sherman reported Tuesday, the White House is experiencing a rare moment of peace. “I don’t think it’s ever been as pleasant of a place to work as it is now,” one official remarked to a former staffer. “Everyone is actually really happy.” And yet, under the veneer of contentment, some staffers are reportedly apprehensive about how Donald Trump will react should Mueller’s findings prove more damning than he expects. Several told CNN they are “dreading” the report’s release, predicting the ultimate presidential blow-up. “There’s 400 pages of information. And somebody like the president would have [the] sense to know that in 400 pages, there’s more than syllables,” Anthony Scaramucci told CNN, describing the spectrum of possibilities. “There’s likely paragraphs that probably are going to look not great for him or people in the administration or people in the transition.”

If the report is anything less than a full-scale vindication, Trump will find himself in a bind. His playbook, which has so far consisted of brushing off Mueller’s conclusions—“There can’t be anything there because there was no crime,” he promised reporters on Monday—will have to change, and fast. In all likelihood, he and his allies will resort to labeling the report “fake news,” relying on their hypothetical counter-report to tell the quote-unquote real story. But by embracing Barr’s letter, Trump has preemptively bound himself to the report’s conclusions. If he pivots to discredit it, he’ll induce some political whiplash among his voters—or, at the very least, prompt plenty of spinning on Fox News. (A tweet from Wednesday morning illustrated this conflict, with Trump claiming Mueller’s probe was “brought to you by Dirty Cops, Crooked Hillary and the DNC,” even as he prepares to be exonerated by it.)

The speed of Trump’s pivot will, of course, depend on what information the report contains, and what has been redacted. Its potentially embarrassing details could range from what current and former White House staffers said about him during their hours of testimony, to findings about his various alleged attempts to obstruct justice that could open up further inquiries in Congress and other jurisdictions. In the latter case, all bets as to Trump’s response are off. “In the short term, Trump will pretend it’s nothing. He’ll quote anything in the report that’s helpful to him,” a Republican close to the White House told Sherman. “But after that, it’s going to drive him crazy. My prediction is he’s going to hit Barr for releasing the report.”

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