Mueller Collusion Result: The Middle Loses Again

“No Collusion” Finding Only Further Distances Weary Moderates

When the rumors of existing proof of Trump or Trump campaign communications with Russian officials first surfaced years ago, I questioned (both internally and amongst acquaintances) how such information could have been legally obtained.

It never occurred to me that such proof either didn’t exist or wouldn’t/couldn’t come to light. When the Special Counsel Investigation was officially launched, I assumed someone had figured out a way to legitimize that proof.

In response to my cries for reason, cooperation, and an end to rabid extremism on both sides, I’ve been handed years of unprovable allegations and fruitless in-fighting.

I’m no Trump supporter; in fact, I’m registered as an Unaffiliated voter and have only ever voted for Democratic Party national, state, or local candidates. However, as a former low-level government intelligence worker, it had been my business and duty to be at least vaguely familiar with the rules that govern intelligence collection and reporting, and I just couldn’t ever piece together how someone had gotten around those to legally obtain this hypothetical proof.

A month or two ago, I commented both privately and in public print that I was losing faith that the Mueller probe would result in charges against the President. While many cheered the fall of each of those indicted individuals around Trump, I fairly quietly wondered and worried why the charges of which they were being convicted never seemed to get closer to “collusion” than a failure to properly cooperate with the investigation.

And there was the issue of the amount of time that the investigation had already taken. I didn’t begrudge the Mueller camp their reported desire to be thorough (in fact, I thought it was the best approach), but it also seemed that even “thorough” examination of definitive wrongdoing could only take so long.