The Mueller Papers

It was the firing heard round the world. With one impulsive move, on the advice of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, Donald Trump fired James Comey on May 9, 2017. It would change the course of the Trump presidency and, with it, alter the course of world history in ways both large and small. It was that firing that led to the creation of the position of Special Counsel, filled by former FBI director Robert Mueller. The product of Mueller’s year and a half of investigation may or may not be made public, but, in a critical way, it already is. As Chad Day and Eric Tucker of The Associated Press have written, Mueller has spoken loudly, if indirectly, in court - indictment by indictment, guilty plea by guilty plea. In doing so, he tracked an elaborate Russian operation that injected chaos into a U.S. presidential election and tried to help Trump win the White House. He followed a GOP campaign that embraced the Kremlin’s help and championed stolen material to hurt a political foe. And ultimately, he revealed layers of lies, deception, self-enrichment and hubris that followed. Woven through thousands of court papers, the special counsel has made his public report. This is what it says. The filings have an almost novelistic quality. Mueller’s legal filings, which include indictments and sentencing memorandums, have created an almost novelistic narrative, featuring rich portraits of the political and personal motivations of a large cast of characters, observed Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker’s legal affairs correspondent.