Abstract
Have you read the Mueller Report? This is more than a question of interest, since the act of reading and not reading is essential to the – what shall we call it: the life? the trajectory? the destiny? the experience? – meaning of this text. Indeed, the act of reading and not reading has been, and continues to be, essential to the Report’s construction. It, this reading and not reading business, has even been stitched into the Report’s dissemination. But more than that; this apparently simple act of reading and not reading, of deliberately choosing not to read, of not allowing documents to be read that are known to exist and which otherwise would be part of the Mueller Report had their reading been permitted, of a carefully orchestrated misreading and dissemination of that misreading prior to the release of the Report, and even the studied delay in allowing what had become of the Report to be read, has come to represent a melodramatic but nevertheless thoroughly disturbing cleft in the constitution of American democracy. So when I ask the question – have you read the Mueller Report? – I’m not necessarily expecting a straightforward answer, given the complexity, power and impotence of what reading and not reading in this context have come to mean, and how these reading and not reading practices are at the centre of America’s constitutional crisis.
The Mueller Report is divided into two volumes. Volume I details evidence, compiled by lawyers working for the Special Counsel, detailing Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election, and how that interference was organized and operated, including how it was financed and which people were involved. Even at the time of the election, there was never any serious doubt within the American security services that Russian interference had occurred. But much more interestingly, the Special Counsel, in the person of Robert Mueller III, a former head of the FBI, was appointed by the Justice Department of the United States in 2016, to investigate possible coordination between the Trump Election Campaign, and Russian support for the election of Trump to the presidency; since it is illegal to accept any support from any foreign source in an attempt to influence an election. There are two related but very basic and obvious points, which are integral to the Mueller Report, that are worth remarking upon here, namely: why is foreign interference in an American election such a big deal? And why appoint a Special Counsel, in the person of Robert Mueller, to investigate this possibility? John Brennan (2020), is representative of a generally, but perhaps more pugnaciously, expressed view that American democracy, and therefore the integrity of American democracy, is synonymous with the functioning and meaning of America itself. So that foreign interference in an American election, and especially therefore a Presidential election, amounts to an attack on America, and is thus a national security issue of the highest significance. And this is why it is also significant that a person in the form of John Brennan, an ex-Director of the CIA and counter intelligence officer, consistently and as a matter of intelligence and government practice, asserts and defends this concept, and most importantly the administration of this concept of American democracy. It is the administration of the concept of American democracy that allows procedures and practices – the running of its elections; adhering to and defending the constitution through its Law and judiciary; the activities of its national intelligence and defence services – that represent the concept and belief in the meaning of America to be represented. And it is this bureaucratic activity that is represented in the Mueller Report. It is saturated not only in its motivation, as the bureaucratic response to its reading of the threat to America by the interference of Russia in the 2016 election and possible coordination with the Trump Election Campaign; but also in its very language, and in the legal and constitutional grammar of the Report’s organization. This is an enormously jarring experience to read; because in the rather arid language of American legalise, and in the accordingly meticulously balanced sections where evidence is assessed and arguments are dissected outlining the logic of the next phase investigation, and a narrative with indictments and prosecutions along the way, what is being so carefully presented to the reader is a fissure in the meaning and possible continuity of America. Quite literally, reading about this fissure, and following the constitutional bureaucratic processes that ought to proceed from reading about this fissure, is the administrative response that is designed to address and heal America’s fissure within itself. It was for this reason that in March 2019 the Special Counsel released the Mueller Report to the Attorney General, William Barr; in order that any redactions that might compromise national security could be made, and it could then be released to Congress so that they could read and make judgments about the Report; and too, so that it could be read by the public.
In the introduction to his book, Andrew Weissmann (2020), one of the key lawyers for the Special Counsel, takes the entire introduction to describe his physical and emotional response to how Barr then delayed releasing the Mueller Report, and in the meantime prefaced the release by his own reading of the Report, summarised in a brief letter. This short summary essentially found that the Special Counsel had found no wrong had been committed. Weissmann’s visceral response not only to Barr’s reading of the Mueller Report, but also to his dissemination of this reading as a second form of delaying and suppressing a public and political reading of the Report, a reading that addressed the fissure in America, is interestingly contrasted with the procedural legalise with which the Mueller Report is constructed. So that, he is able to provide his own reading of the Mueller Report in Weissmann (2020): ‘… the frequency and seriousness of interactions we uncovered between the campaign and the Russians were nevertheless chilling, with Trump campaign officials both receptive to, and soliciting, Russian assistance throughout the summer and fall of 2016’ (Weissmann, 2020). Incidentally, the work of the Special Counsel, of which the Mueller Report is its documentary, by the time it had been released to Barr had already secured prosecutions against twelve people associated with the Trump campaign, including: Trump’s personal lawyer; the head of his election campaign; Trump’s national security adviser; and numerous Russian intelligence operatives.
Even, however, before the work of the Special Counsel was underway, a more primary and absolute injunction on reading had been determined; this being an injunction preventing the Special Counsel from reading Trump’s financial records, from Trump. As reported both by Schmidt (2020) as well as Weissmann (2020), not only did this determination to not read documents known to be there, impede the work of the Special Counsel, it also limited the nature of the investigation. So that not only did it, for example, prevent the financial organization of Russian interference being directly traceable to the President, it also prevented the investigation being directed in this way as the President being a counter intelligence threat to America. There is something telling in this episode about the vulnerability of the constitutional administrative processes that guide and organize official writing and reading practices, as exemplified by the Mueller Report. The Special Counsel adhered to Trump’s injunction not to read his financial records, in other words not to look at the fissure in American democracy and therefore America and in this way to prevent anyone from reading about the extent and nature of this rupture, not because of some constitutional propriety; but because President Trump threatened to shut down the Special Counsel if it did so. This is a very strange vulnerability, because it is a vulnerability that the meaning of America in the Mueller Report is predicated on.
Accordingly, the impact and intention of Barr’s reading of the Report, and his dissemination of this reading in his letter prior to the Report’s delayed release, was to determine the national narrative of the Report’s findings, that basically there was nothing wrong, and to suppress independent reading. This was a suppression that was registered not just in terms of a popular apathy about the Report’s findings; it was also a suppression registered in the deliberate refusal of members of the Republican Congress to read the Report after it was released and when it was considered during congressional hearings about the findings of the Special Counsel. Not reading, being determined not to know, and being determined not to know what was already known (about the rupture in the integrity of America) became the dominant and successful political and literacy strategy.
There is, however, a constitutional administrative response to political and reading strategy of being determined not to know, of preventing the legal reading of documents and practices that undermine the integrity of America, in the form of obstruction of justice. Perhaps, then, unsurprisingly, Volume II of the Mueller Report details evidence compiled by Mueller’s team investigating attempts by President Trump and his administration to obstruct justice, principally by acts designed to hinder investigations by the Justice Department into the Trump campaign. If anything, Volume II is more striking than Volume I, containing Trump’s now famous response to being told of Mueller’s appointment to the Special Counsel: ‘Oh my God,’ he is reported to have said. ‘This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.’
The Mueller Report, it makes you wonder, has reading, and the ability and the opportunity to read, and all that this practice represents, ever been so important, or ever been so over-rated? And will history or education decide?