About Robert Mueller's Investigation

I admit I don't know very much about the Robert Mueller investigation into the degree of how much Russia interfered with our 2016 presidential election and to what extent there may have been collusion on the part of any campaigns here, especially that of Donald Trump.  It does seem clear to me that Vladimir Putin wanted to avoid Hillary Clinton getting elected first and foremost...Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders would have been the preferred candidates for him.  Was Trump some kind of "Manchurian candidate" with secret, special obligations to the Russians?  I don't know.  Did he cooperate with Putin by enabling their propaganda machine to plant false news stories derogatory to Clinton?  I don't know, but Trump during the campaign was very vocal in promoting the WikiLeaks release of stolen emails from her campaign...something that has been tied to hackers working for the Russians.  Seeing how Mueller is keeping everything in his investigation close to the vest, it's hard to know exactly how much has been revealed and who all it is pointing to.  Yet the president keeps going on and on about how the inquiry into Russian meddling is all a big hoax...

I've tried to suspend any judgment of Trump and his campaign until substantial results from the investigation have been produced.  So far there are some indictments...they seem to be focusing on false statements and money laundering...and there are some guilty pleas, implying that these people are now cooperating with Mueller's probe.  Personally, I suspect that Donald Trump is involved with Russian election interference on some level, but that's just my unsubstantiated hunch...you're entitled to your own opinion about this.  I am hoping that Robert Mueller won't do what Kenneth Starr did during the Clinton administration in the 1990s when he was initially commissioned to look into any possible improprieties of the Clintons involving Whitewater...and then stuck around after that investigation was fruitless, trying to dig up anything to damage the president and finally hitting pay dirt with the Monica Lewinsky revelations on a completely different matter.  Trump was on the Clintons' side back then and obviously knows how independent special counsels can widely stray from the original missions they were assigned: to this extent I sympathize with Trump.  But then again, he has behaved in an arrogant, interfering, and obstructive manner with this investigation...I can't see how Nixon behaved much worse with Watergate in this regard.  The main difference is that during Watergate the opposition party controlled Congress: Trump has his own party in there, and they don't seem very enthusiastic about holding him an any way accountable for anything he might have done...

Until this Mueller investigation issues its final report...assuming the president doesn't fire him first...neither I nor others around me will really know what happened in 2016.  Those who have allowed themselves to become overly emotional about Donald Trump...both those who idolize and despise him...may have already formed their respective opinions about his connection to the Russians: just listen to their own narratives on this subject.  As for myself, I think the country would be better off if one of the houses of Congress...either the Senate or House of Representatives...were under Democratic control in order to better ensure to the public-at-large that the president's own party isn't complicit in obstructing the flow of the investigation...