Andrew McCarthy of National Review Online takes aim at special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of President Trump.

In gross violation of Justice Department policy and constitutional norms, a prosecutor neither charges nor recommends charges against a suspect, but proceeds to smear him by publishing 200 pages of obstruction allegations. Asked to explain why he did it, the prosecutor says he was just trying to protect the suspect from being smeared.

This is the upshot of the Mueller report’s Volume II. It might be thought campy if the suspect weren’t the president of the United States and the stakes weren’t so high.

The smear-but-don’t-charge outcome is the result of two wrongs: (1) Mueller’s dizzying application of Justice Department guidance, written by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), holding that a president may not be indicted while he is in office; and (2) the media-Democrat complex’s demand that only laws they like — those that serve their anti-Trump political purposes — be enforced. …

… In recent Senate testimony, Attorney General Bill Barr related that he and his staff met with the Mueller team a couple of weeks before the report was completed. Mueller surprised them with the news that he would not be resolving the obstruction question. When asked to explain, Mueller said his rationale for this non-decision was not yet fully developed — such temporizing, of course, is often the sign of handwringing as one tries to rationalize a determination one knows is wrong.