Opinion

KERNS: Did Trump Stonewall The Mueller Investigation? Not Even Close

REUTERS/Mike Theiler

Jen Kerns Contributor
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On the Sunday talk shows, Democrats railed against President Trump and Special Counsel Robert Mueller. His report reportedly shows no evidence of Russian collusion by Trump, his family or his campaign staff.

Among the Democrats’ gripes has been the fact that Trump never sat for an interview under oath with Mueller — which Democrats argue makes the Mueller report incomplete.

However, the accusation that Trump was anything less than cooperative is about as false as the allegation that he colluded with Russia in the first place.

The evidence of Trump’s cooperation throughout the Mueller investigation is nothing short of impressive, and could be a model for future presidents falsely accused of such ridiculous shenanigans.

During the Mueller investigation, Trump’s legal team turned over nearly two million pages of documents.

In addition, Congress itself subpoenaed and has in its possession another one million pages of documents.

As of September 2018, the special counsel’s own statement of expenditures shows that the office spent nearly $16,000 just on copying and printing. The figure is likely even higher now, six months later, as the investigation careened toward its final report.

The staggering number of documents shared in the Mueller investigation is enough to keep a paper mill in operation for a season.

In addition to the mountain of documents submitted for examination, Trump also responded to specific, complex, “multipart” questions about the Trump campaign, including interactions with any Russians – even if those meetings were a set-up, which the Trump Tower meeting with the “adoption lawyer” now appears to have been.

At last public count, the written responses to the interrogatories led by the president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani totaled at least 87 pages as of last count in mid-November.

The shuttle diplomacy via paperwork wasn’t the only way Trump was cooperative.

In addition to the nearly 500 witnesses that Mueller’s office interviewed, more than 30 witnesses were made available from the White House. The witnesses included close advisers of Trump in the West Wing and elsewhere around the administration, including former White House communications director Hope Hicks, one of the president’s closest advisers at the time.

In total, the special counsel’s office issued more than 2,800 subpoenas in the investigation — at a clip of roughly four per day over a drumbeat of 675 days. From the moment the investigation began, Trump publicly acknowledged that he had advised all members of the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation.

The West Wing wasn’t the only entity that complied.

Trump’s Department of Justice acquiesced to every single request from Mueller’s team. Even though it was within its right to do so, Trump’s DOJ did not decline a single request from the special counsel’s office. This equates to Mueller’s team having unfettered access as well as an unlimited budget for its fishing expedition.

Even in recent days before he knew the contents of it, President Trump encouraged the full text of the Mueller report to be released.

As for the Democrats’ complaint that the investigation was missing Trump under oath, Mueller could have certainly subpoenaed the president to testify, yet he chose not to do so. The conclusion is that Trump’s legal team played their hand correctly, not allowing the chief executive to sit for open-ended questioning in what turned out to be an investigation about a crime nobody committed. The president would have been foolish to sit for such folly, and he would have put every future president’s executive privilege at risk by doing so.

In fact, to see what happens when you sit with a special counsel in search of a crime, you need to look no further than former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

After admitting that he misled law enforcement, Flynn is now awaiting sentencing by a criminal court. Despite Flynn providing “substantial assistance” to the special counsel’s office, he may still face up to five years in prison. (Some thanks he gets!)

It is a pity that those who did sit down to speak with the special counsel‘s team are now facing jail time. Given their experience, who of sound mind will ever speak to a special counsel’s office again? In a town known for politics as bloodsport, the answer is simple: no one.

Despite Trump’s overwhelming cooperation in the matter, it appears it won’t be enough for Democrats who are blood thirsty.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) signaled on Sunday that they will proceed full speed ahead with congressional investigations in an attempt to find something — anything — that might embarrass Trump.

At a kickoff rally in New York City, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) called the president a “coward” and alluded to the word “crook” to describe a republican president just cleared of wrongdoing by a former appointee of President Bill Clinton.

As Democrats gear up for 2020, Trump will unfortunately see little reprieve in attacks on his character, his finances and his family’s livelihood.

However, millions of pages of documents later the president has shown all Americans that even after two years of a merciless witch hunt, transparency and truth still prevail in the American justice system.

Jen Kerns (@JenKernsUSA) served as spokeswoman for the California Republican Party; spokeswoman for California’s Proposition 8, which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court; and as a Fox News writer for the 2016 U.S. presidential debates.


 The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.