5 Scenarios For How Mueller’s Investigation Could End

Joshua Geltzer was quoted by FiveThirtyEight on what Special Counsel Robert Mueller's final report might look like.

If Mueller has this evidence and an appetite for a legal battle that will probably end up at the Supreme Court, he could try to test a longtime constitutional hypothetical and charge Trump with a federal crime. But most experts I spoke with think he’ll abide by Justice Department guidelines that say indicting a sitting president is unconstitutional. A likelier outcome in this situation is that Trump’s involvement could be spelled out in charges against other people (similar to the way Trump was implicated in campaign finance violations by his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, but not explicitly named). Trump could also be named as an unindicted co-conspirator, as the grand jury in the Watergate investigation did with Richard Nixon, although that is also discouraged by the Justice Department. Even if he didn’t face any immediate legal liability, both of those outcomes could be very politically damaging to Trump, because his alleged wrongdoing would still be out in the open.

Alternatively, Mueller could include in his final report any information he finds about presidential misconduct, which could be just as damning if the relevant parts of the report are released to Congress or the public. When he concludes his work, Mueller is required to submit a confidential accounting of his indictment decisions. And that information could be presented in a myriad of ways. “He could use that report to describe a lot of things his team has uncovered that didn’t make their way into criminal charges,” said Joshua Geltzer, executive director of Georgetown’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. “Or it could be a very sparse report that essentially recaps what we’ve already seen through Mueller’s legal filings — or anything in between.”