Introduction

Less than four months into Trump's term, in May 2017, Congress appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to conduct a broadly defined counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Like characters from Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, incredulous supporters and anxious detractors of the president breathlessly devoted months to speculating, after two years, whether Mueller would ever show up with a report. At the center of the controversy were charges that Trump and his campaign team had colluded with Russia in the election. Some of the president's political and media critics even went as far as to suggest the president had committed treason.

When Attorney General William Barr released a four-page precis of the findings of the Mueller investigation to the public in late March 2019, he interpreted the conclusions as having cleared the president of any wrongdoing. There were no indictable crimes. The president took a victory lap, rejoicing that no evidence emerged of any conspiracy or collusion between him or his campaign staff and Vladimir Putin and the Russian government.