Despite the feverish anticipation of journalists, activists, and Rachel Maddow, Democrats in Congress are quietly steeling themselves for the agonizing possibility that the Mueller report—the Holy Grail in the case against Donald Trump—might never leave the confines of the Robert F. Kennedy building. “There is no question that there is an enormous—probably historic—public interest in getting this material out,” Elliot Williams, a former deputy assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice, told me. But D.O.J. leadership will have more on its mind than the public when deciding whether to release the report—specifically, their hot-tempered and vindictive boss in the Oval Office. “It is hard to believe that Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker or William Barr would do the right thing and put the American people first,” Williams said. “Or put another way, [that they] would do anything other than attempt to protect the president of the United States at whatever cost.”

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers and strategists on the left and right are already staging a clandestine cold war to ensure that their side has the upper hand when the subpoenas start flying. Under current D.O.J. guidelines, Robert Mueller is required to provide the attorney general with a “confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel.” The decision on whether to release Mueller’s findings would then rest with either Whitaker or Barr, if he is confirmed by the Senate to lead the department. Unlike Ken Starr, who had free reign to publish his lurid, 400-plus page conspectus on the sexual peccadillos of Bill Clinton, Mueller’s autonomy will be limited.

Democrats, of course, will bring their own legal weapons to the fight. “We will make sure it is public,” House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler said in a recent interview with CNN. Under normal circumstances, the Justice Department seeks to avoid subpoena showdowns when it comes to turning documents over to Congress. “The department historically has tried to reach accommodation with Congress regarding requests for information,” said David Laufman, a former D.O.J. official who oversaw the Clinton e-mail and Russia investigations. “There are many variations of such an accommodation, but one potential scenario would be to provide a sanitized version of the report with grand jury information redacted and, if it contained classified information, accompanying restrictions on handling and further dissemination.” A small group of lawmakers might be allowed to read, but not keep, a copy of the document.

But these are not normal times. Should the interests of Congress, the public, and the president collide, legal experts are betting on Congress to prevail in a subpoena shutdown. “Given the well-settled breadth of Congress’s constitutional investigative powers, the administration would have an uphill climb to persuade a district court judge to quash in its entirety a subpoena for the report, particularly if Congress were willing to make reasonable accommodations for any Justice Department concerns,” Laufman posited. Josh Chafetz, a constitutional law professor at Cornell University, concurred. “Congress can subpoena anything it wants relating to any matter that falls within any of its constitutional powers. Since the House has the power to impeach the president, anything related to presidential misconduct, broadly construed, would clearly fall within that power,” he said. “In order to justify noncompliance with a subpoena, the executive branch would need a valid reason that overrides an otherwise proper invocation of the congressional subpoena power.”

In the event of a court loss, the White House could assert executive privilege to prevent some of the report from release. “We will look at it and see if the president thinks there is a valid claim and if there is, do we want to make it,” Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer in the Russia probe, told Bloomberg in recent days. “We reserve the right. We don’t know if we have to, but we haven’t waived it.”