Impeachment of Trump looks like a dead horse

The Democrats are getting all excited at the prospect of impeaching Donald Trump after convincing themselves that Robert Mueller, who resigned yesterday as special counsel having completed his Russia/Trump collusion investigation, had given his implicit blessing for Congress to start an impeachment process against the president. I seriously believe this is just wishful thinking on the part of the Democrats. I don't think Mueller did any such thing despite what most of the American newspapers claimed today. All Mueller said was that under US Justice Deparment regulations he was never in a position to say whether the president had committed a crime or not. This was not part of his brief and he had no authority as a special counsel to decide whether Trump was guilty of a crime of obstructing his investigation. His report concluded negatively - that he did not feel there was sufficient evidence to mount an obstruction case. Mueller repeated this in his statement on Wednesday. What he didn't say was what the US newspapers seem to be saying today which is that he felt there WAS a case to be made against the president and it was up to Congress to start impeachment proceedings. That was the interpretation made by most people but I don't think Mueller stood up to make his statement in order to pass the impeachment baton to Congress. That would have been highly presumptuous and outside his remit, and Mueller is a remit man. That's not to say of course that Congress, or at least the Democratic-run House of Representatives, won't now go ahead and initiate an impeachment inquiry and claim that Mueller had signalled this was what he wanted. Aware of this, Rudy Giuliani, Trump's lawyer, has in his usual way rushed to defend his master and has denounced Mueller. But actually all Mueller did was to lay out the facts in a very straightforward way. There was nothing new in his statement. But interpretation is everything and the Democrats have now got fire in their belly. I think they have to step very carefully. Rushing to try and impeach Trump based on what they think Mueller was really saying is a risky path to take, especially with only 18 months left before the 2020 presidential election. If impeachment becomes the only issue in the Democratic campaign, I suspect Trump will waltz back into the White House for a second term.