Mueller Report Illustrated

I finally read the copy of The Mueller Report Illustrated that someone gave me a while back. I think this is just the obstruction of justice investigation. I was dreading the bad memories it would inevitably dredge up.

It was an easy read, and not bad as a graphic novel. I ended up enjoying it.

There weren’t any revelations in it, but organized as a timeline, the familiar events of the first part of Trump’s first term felt different.

Famously, Mueller did not say that Trump committed a crime, but just as famously, did not exonerate Trump. I’m not a lawyer, nor am I on a jury: where there’s this much smoke, there’s fire, metaphorically speaking. I believe Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia. Trump worked hard, and successfully, to cover up that collusion.

Trump comes off as a weak, soft and fearful leader: he doesn’t ever say anything directly, always hinting, probably to maintain plausible deniability, but also so that someone else has direct responsibility for any difficult action, like firing James Comey. Trump tried to get Corey Lewandowski, his ex-campaign manager, to carry a message to Attorney General Jeff Sessions indicating that Trump wanted Sessions to fire Mueller. Bafflingly, Lewandowski wasn’t employed by the US government at the time. When Lewandowski didn’t actually pass along the message, Trump just let it ride. That’s the most convoluted example, but several things like that occur.