Detroit Free Press Editorial Board

U.S. Attorney General William Barr's revelation that a 22-month investigation failed to establish that either President Donald Trump or his subordinates had conspired in Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election provided a golden opportunity for Trump to celebrate both his own deliverance and the integrity of the institutions that furnished it.

That is what people accused of serious criminal conduct ordinarily do when a prosecutor or court concludes that the evidence fails to support those allegations. "I always had confidence that a full and fair investigation would clear me," they say, or more simply: "The system works."

So it's odd that the president's first response to Barr's disclosure was to attack the people and institutions responsible for lifting a cloud that shadowed his presidency from its beginnings.

"This was an illegal takedown that failed," the president told reporters Sunday afternoon a few hours after being briefed on Barr's initial review of the still-confidential report in which special counsel Robert Mueller disclosed the details of his marathon investigation. He went on to assert that Mueller's report amounted to "a complete and total exoneration" of his own conduct, an assertion explicitly contradicted by Barr's more candid summary.

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The truth, if we are to believe the attorney general's account, is that Mueller's team discovered credible evidence that the president and his subordinates conspired to obstruct their investigation, but declined to say whether that evidence was sufficient to sustain a conviction on criminal charges.

Barr and Rod Rosenstein, the deputy AG to whom Mueller reported after Barr's predecessor, Jeff Sessions, recused himself, subsequently decided not to pursue an obstruction charge. It would be reassuring to believe they reached their decision after carefully considering all the evidence surrounding Trump's firing of FBI director James Comey and subsequent efforts to influence the testimony of critical witnesses. But it's more likely the decision not to pursue obstruction charges was preordained by Barr's dubious conviction, highlighted in an unsolicited memo dispatched to Rosenstein last spring, that entire line of inquiry was beyond Mueller's jurisdiction.

(Props to Michigan U.S. Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, who presciently recognized that Barr's advertised objection to any obstruction charges made him a poor choice to lead the Justice Dept.)

Whatever Trump may have done to derail Mueller's investigation or misdirect his investigators is surely less significant, and less dangerous to the rule of law, than the president's continuing attack on the integrity of those who enforce it.

In suggesting that the Justice Department, the FBI, and the courts in which seven of his subordinates were convicted of federal crimes have been parties to a failed coup attempt, the president has doubled down on his efforts to undermine public confidence in those institutions. That is the real and continuing obstruction of justice, and it will take courageous action by Republicans in all three branches of government to assure that it does not become the pretext for a flagrantly unconstitutional expansion of presidential authority.

The first step is to press the campaign, in which every member of Michigan's congressional delegation has already enlisted, for public disclosure of Mueller's full report. This is a no-brainer: Mueller's conduct throughout this investigation has only reinforced his lifelong reputation for probity and integrity, and to allow a political appointee to limit access to Mueller's work product would be a travesty. It would also sabotage the Justice Department's mission to cultivate public confidence in,the rule of law.

Barr and his congressional overseers must also ensure the integrity of the continuing criminal investigations spawned by Mueller's probe.Like Mueller, the prosecutors overseeing those investigations answer ultimately to the attorney general, and any suggestion that Barr is abusing his authority to protect the White House should compel a muscular response from Congress.

It would be premature to say whether lawmakers should limit their own inquiries, or foreclose once and for all the option of impeachment proceedings, until Mueller's uncensored report is available and the results of ongoing criminal probes are known.

In the meantime, it is in the president's selfish interest as well as the country's to support the institutions that have dispelled some, but by no means all, of the suspicions surrounding his own integrity.