Mueller's message to Nancy Pelosi

Walter Shapiro, writing for the Opinion section of the respected British paper The Guardian, observed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Special Counsel Robert Mueller are not known to be friends.   However, Shapiro says:

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". . . . Despite their differing persona, these two past-normal-retirement age figures . . . boast important affinities.   In a political age defined by corrosive cynicism, they both share an old-fashioned belief in institutions whether they are Mueller's justice department or Pelosi's House of Representatives.

"That institutional faith pinpoints  Mueller's target audience for his nine-minute coda to this tenure as special counsel.   In an extreme example of narrowcasting, masked by the careful legalistic language, Mueller was speaking directly to Pelosi.

"His implicit message:   my institution (the justice department) cannot indict a sitting president.   But your institution (the House) can vote to impeach Donald Trump and mandate a Senate trial for obstruction of justice and possible other 'high crimes and misdemeanors'. . . .

"Then Mueller, in the same procedural step-by-step tone of a legal indictment, went on to deliver one of the most important sentences of his tenure as special counsel.  'The constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.'

"Mueller could not have been clearer about impeachment if he had stepped before the cameras with a scarlet I pinned to his suit.

"Up to now, the debates over impeachment roiling the House Democratic caucus have either been political ('It will cost us seats in 2020') or moral ('How can we tell our grandchildren that we did nothing in the face of Trump's lawless behavior?').

"But Mueller, in his subtle, understated fashion, tried to break this Democratic stalemate.  He offered a new argument and perhaps the only one that could possibly trump Pelosi's hard-won political caution.  What Mueller was saying, in effect, was that the constitution and the institutional legitimacy of Congress as an independent body require commencing impeachment hearings. . . . 

"Mueller's other message to Pelosi . . . was to try to convince her not to compel his congressional testimony.  He broadly hinted that he would answer all questions with boring-for-television lines such as:   'You will find my answer on page 84 of the second section of my report' . . . ."

[Mueller then debunks the common notion that impeachment could be a quick process of the House indicting one day, trial in the Senate the next.   But he says that the House judiciary committee's efforts need to be "both investigative and prosecutorial" and should be 'as deliberate as the Mueller inquiry itself'.   In addition: . . . ]

"Mueller had a narrow mandate, but there are no such limitations on impeachment hearings.

"Trump's shameless profiteering in the White House, with some of the money coming from foreign sources, may well violate the 'emoluments clause' of the constitution.   His conduct in office also raises grave national security questions from secret meetings (with no American note-takers)  with Vladimir Putin to Jared Kushner's dubious top-level access to secret documents.  Mueller may be faulted for being too punctilious in his fidelity to justice department rules and precedents.   But he followed what he saw as the path dictated by integrity to the end.   Now it is up to Pelosi also to transcend politics -- and do what the constitution demands."

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Walter Shapiro is a journalist and opinion writer who is also a fellow at the New York University's Brennan Center for Justice.   Among other distinctions, he was a speech writer for President Jimmy Carter.