Trump claimed Manafort's trial proved there was 'no collusion'. What if he's right?

The nation’s capital is beside itself. TV crews are hunkered outside all the major locations — the federal courthouse, the offices of the special counsel and even the home of attorney general William Barr. And of course, there are always plenty of television cameras waiting at the White House.

Washington DC — the self-obsessed, strangely inward-looking bubble that exists purely for the pursuit of politics and power — frequently works itself up into a storm. And as it awaits the completion of Robert Mueller’s report into Russia’s alleged inference in the 2016 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign, it is doing so again.

The city, according to the slightly verbose rendering of the New York Times, is “jittery, full of rumour, like a becalmed ship in the dead air before a coming storm”.

But what if the special counsel doesn’t have much to say? What if his report is a damp squib? What if it’s a great big nothingburger?

One thing needs to be stressed from the start. Robert Mueller, himself a former FBI Director, has shown himself to be one of the rarest of creatures in Washington: a person who does not leak. We learned of his indictments — against former national security advisor Michael Flynn, foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos, and 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities — when he revealed them, and not before.

It may be that we awake one day this month to find the 74-year-old Mueller has brought indictments against Trump’s eldest son, his son-in-law, and perhaps even the president himself. A Department of Justice judgement from several decades ago holds that a sitting president cannot be indicted, but if Mueller were convinced Trump had committed something truly egregious, he may seek special permission to bring charges.

Yet to date, we have none of that. The most senior member of Trump’s team to be charged is Paul Manafort, who was campaign manager for a brief but crucial few months in the summer of 2016. Manafort learned today that he will spend seven years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of money-laundering and conspiracy; all of this emerged from Muller’s probe. He has also been charged with 16 counts of mortgage fraud and similar offences by prosecutors in New York’s Manhattan County, charges to which a presidential pardon cannot be applied.

Trump has bragged that the trials of Manafort prove there was no collusion with Russia. They did not quite do that; the judge at the first trial, TS Ellis, said Manafort was “not before this court for anything having to do with collusion with the Russian government”.

When Manafort’s lawyers sought to bring that up with the judge at the second sentencing on Wednesday, she shot them down.

“The ‘no collusion’ refrain that runs through the entire defence memorandum is unrelated to matters at hand,” said judge Amy Berman Jackson. “The ‘no collusion’ mantra is simply a non-sequitur…The ‘no collusion’ mantra is also not accurate, because the investigation is still ongoing.”

But there is a point worth reflecting on. Manafort was present at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr and a Russian lawyer linked to the Kremlin, an incident many have said is proof of collusion.

Yet prosecutors — who have all the evidence in front of them — have charged him with offences that largely relate to his work for Ukraine’s former pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych. Had Manafort never joined Trump’s campaign, or had he instead worked for Petro Poroshenko, the pro-Western politician who helped oust the elected Yanukovych from office, would he even have been in court? To date, no US citizen has been charged with colluding with Russia.

There are other clues as to why Mueller’s report may not contain the smoking gun so many Democrats — still smarting from the defeat of Hillary Clinton to a man they considered unqualified and unworthy — are counting on.

This week, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives told the Washington Post she did not support Trump’s impeachment, something many of her progressive members are calling for.

“Impeachment is so divisive to the country that, unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country,” she said. “And he’s just not worth it.”

Pelosi is smart and wily. It may be she is just laying the groundwork in case Mueller comes back with a report containing something so “compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan” that she cannot ignore it.

Yet it may be she realises the report could well contain little damning evidence and that her party is better focused on trying to beat Trump in the 2020 presidential election, rather than by trying to impeach him — something that would infuriate and energise Trump supporters.

When Republicans sought to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998, they were badly punished in the midterms that year by voters who thought Newt Gingrich and others were overreaching.

Pelosi wants to avoid that. If Mueller’s report were to contain nothing compelling, it would help her avoid pursuing impeachment.

It may be that a great fat nothingburger would be to everybody’s taste.