The Mueller report handed a limp legal lightening rod to those adrift in the Trumpiverse's darkness: Their earthly messiah's deftness in circumrotating the event horizon of criminal justice is stellar.
But that undershoots the galactic lesson of Mueller's findings: Textbook criminality is never the sole criterion on which to judge anyone's honesty, ethics, trustworthiness or character. Crashing explosively in those areas, Trump has piloted his presidency in an amoral trajectory, becoming a space shuttle Challenger-type disaster in office.
Three elements of Mueller's investigation reveal Trump's dearth of integrity and contempt for legality, strict criminality aside.
First, obstruction. Mueller detailed 10 instances where Trump's actions "militated toward concluding criminal obstruction of justice occurred" and said his report "does not exonerate" the president, refuting spaced-out claims from Planet Trump and its constellation of starry-eyed sycophants.
Second, conspiracy. Anybody deorbited enough to believe Trump, a micromanager with the comportment and vocabulary of a B-movie mob capo, was blind to the shady Russian ties and illegal actions of his hand-picked — now criminally convicted — flunkies, campaign manager Paul Manafort, national security adviser Michael Flynn and "fixer" Michael Cohen, is living light years away from terrestrial reality.
Third, witness intimidation. Legal genius isn't required to determine corrupt intent in Trump's interminable tweet dysentery and verbal sewage that those cooperating with Mueller were "rats," arm-twisting, wiseguy lingo from an incoherent goon thuggishishly jabbering to terrorize witnesses.
Trump's cocktail of perpetual prevarication, malignant malfeasance and administerial blindness is immensely more toxic than his "witch hunt" harangues. In 2020's election — or sooner — he must be blasted out of his noxious galaxy, leaving him a Phaethon-like casualty fallen into the black hole of his own infinite hubris.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.
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