Did pardon dangling undermine the case for "collusion"?
Barr did not state that there was no evidence of a conspiracy, he simply said that Mueller "did not establish" it. In other words that could well translate to "insufficient evidence" rather than "no evidence". Mueller made a point not to exonerate the President on Obstruction of Justice. It remains unclear whether Mueller ever would have flatly concluded that Trump was guilty of an indictable crime given DOJ policy regarding sitting Presidents. The relative weight of evidence for and against Obstruction though is an incredibly important variable that was not covered in Barr's letter. So are the specifics on when and how Trump may have attempted to obstruct justice.
Did he do so in regards to influencing to the degree of cooperation potential witnesses gave to the Office of Special Counsel? Did Trump act to undercut the motivation for witnesses to testify against him to Mueller's office, by dangling a potential get our of jail free pardon card in their faces on national TV, but only if they did not squeal like "rats" against him? Did the lack of cooperation by certain key witnesses tip the scales of evidence for collusion to the point where it could not "be established" despite some indications that it may in fact have happened?
Barr's letter was (in my view intentionally) opaque in that regard, to the point where he cited a lack of conclusive evidence on collusion as a reason to conclude that the burden to establish whether obstruction occurred could also not be met. Implicit in that latter argument is the contention that one can't establish "corrupt intent" to cover up a crime if that crime did not occur. What is lacking from that equation though is simple, and chilling. What happens when Obstruction succeeds? What happens when, through the obstruction of justice, the literal ability to assemble evidence of a crime is impeded to the extent that sufficient evidence to indict on that crime can no longer be established? Should that then get used as supporting evidence that justice was never obstructed?
All of the above includes a great deal of speculation, speculation only necessitated by the fact that we do not now have access to Mueller's actual report We do not have Mueller's reasoning as to why he could not establish whether a conspiracy occurred. We do not have Mueller's evidence for how Obstruction of Justice may have occurred, in what ways, with what people, toward what ends. There can be no resolution possible, nor any semblance of justice achieved, until that full report is made available.
My own hunch and I will not call it more than that, is that Mueller was not going to move directly against either Trump or his immediate family members on the matter of criminal conspiracy against Russia unless the evidence for that conspiracy was overwhelming, in essence virtually air tight. He too felt the horns of the dilemma Pelosi weighed in setting such a high bar for impeachment proceeding to begin. We have a President who would literally pull down this nation if he could rather than let the House of Trump fall. That, I believe, is why Trump's family members were never interviewed in this probe. I contend that they would have been in the closing stages of the probe were the other needed pieces all in place. In my view Trump's ability to obstruct justice weakened the case against him and his family just enough to make pressing charges against any of them too dangerous for us as a nation to pursue, given the likely reaction of the Man in the Oval Office were that to happen. OK, that's making a fairly bold claim. But until we all see Mueller's full report, that is where this all leaves me.
