It’s easy to understand why the media and intelligence community suspected Donald Trump was guilty of collusion: He acted guilty.
He publicly talked about Manfort and Cohen “flipping,” and changed his tone regarding Cohen after he cooperated with investigators. Trump also fired James Comey, wanted Jeff Sessions to un-recuse, and wanted to remove Mueller—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
By not fully enacting Trump’s capricious orders, some of his senior aides may have rescued the president from himself. As the Mueller report notes, “The President's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”
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He tried to stop the investigation, but he didn’t actually stop it.
He also seemed to have a clear motive for obstructing justice—basically saying this was the end of his presidency. ("Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I'm fucked.")
All of this made him look utterly guilty of the underlying crime of collusion. So why did he do the exact things a guilty person might do to cover his tracks?
During his Thursday morning press conference, Attorney General Barr noted, “there is substantial evidence to show that the President was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks.”
In other words, Trump acted guilty because he’s insecure and narcissistic, not because he was guilty of corrupting our democracy by working with a foreign power.
In some ways, this rings true. Consider how irrationally obsessed Trump was over the size of the crowd at his inauguration. Now consider how Trump might react to the suggestion that his very election might have been illegitimate.
When Trump says this “is the end of my presidency,” maybe he thinks the “deep state” is out to get him and that a special counsel will always find something (even if it’s something regarding his past personal business interests), regardless of the merits. Maybe he’s worried that someone on his team might have done something they didn’t actually do. Maybe he just has this weird belief that you always cover up, always punch back, never cooperate, and never concede anything.
Whatever his reasons, this turned out to be a great way to troll and entrap many of us. The media and intelligence community, understandably seeing Trump act the ways that a guilty person does, succumbed to confirmation bias and assumed the worst.
That, at least, is the theory about the Trump-hunters that Barr has latched onto. But it also seems to assume a couple legally dubious arguments. The first is that a person can’t be guilty of obstruction if they aren’t guilty of the original crime. The second is to suggest that doing things that might otherwise be construed as obstruction is exculpatory if you’re worried about leaks and preserving your governing agenda (in the case of Nixon’s Watergate cover-up, it most certainly was not).
What is more, because Mueller didn’t actually have a chance to interview Trump (though he claims he could have subpoenaed him), citing Trump’s state of mind as the rationale for his behavior is purely theoretical, and very generous.
Again, I’m willing to believe that a highly emotional and vindictive Trump did the things that made him look guilty, even though he was innocent. This is a perfectly legitimate theory; I’m just not sure that we know it for sure, or that we ever will.
To be sure, it will live on among the bitter-enders. But Robert Mueller’s decision not to make a decision turned out to be incredibly important. Because he didn’t conclude that Trump’s actions constituted obstruction, it’s hard for anybody else to draw that conclusion. Those who do risk looking like they are the ones who are out of touch and obsessed.
