Dear President Trump,

How are you? What’s your world like tonight now that Mueller has submitted his report to AG Barr? It’s pretty inconceivable to me that you haven’t somehow been able to find out the contents of the report. In fact, I think you found out what is and isn’t in it a couple of days ago ahead of your magnanimous sounding statement that you think the report should be released in full. If this is true, then the implications are pretty awful since it almost certainly means that Mueller didn’t find evidence of collusion between your campaign and Russia. Otherwise, I can’t imagine you being gung ho about the report being released – unless you were somehow guaranteed it won’t be released and you can shrug and say you wanted it released, but what can you do? Like, you’ve been promised the DOJ rules about not disclosing findings that don’t result in charges will hold sway even if the only reason charges aren’t brought is that a sitting president can’t be indicted (even if he or she is a sitting president because of corruption and fraud, which is so nuts that that’s all I’ll say about it right now).

But your children and Jared aren’t sitting presidents and the fact that there will be no more indictments emanating from the Mueller investigation has me feeling heartsick. And confused. How can there be hard evidence that Donald Jr. gleefully met with a Russian attorney with ties to the Kremlin with every expectation that he and Jared would be getting dirt on Clinton and there not be charges brought? When people attempt armed robbery and they are caught, they do time even if they don’t successfully steal a dime, so how can someone who is part of a presidential campaign attempt to collude to gather damaging material about the opponent and not have that result in an indictment? This is just the most obvious thing and if Mueller isn’t (apparently) going after that, then I really want off this ride.

There may be some perfectly good reasons there are no further indictments, including perhaps groundwork having been laid for state level cases, but this feels like straw grasping because there are no further indictments. It’s like those words from the WP headline are seared into into my limbic system (really, not my prefrontal cortex since I’m not able to marshal much reasoned thought about it, just raw emotion).

I can’t tell you how much I want you to go down. I know various wise people have been saying we can’t pin all our hope on the Mueller report and that there’s plenty else to go after, but it’s like the universe is on tilt right now. If you aren’t checked by this report and you get to convince your supporters and anyone on the fence that you’ve been vindicated, we are all going down hard. You will have license to do pretty much whatever the hell you want with the smug-ass GOP feeling mighty fine about having stood by you. This is such a nightmarish prospect that I think I need to do some more straw grasping so I don’t go utterly crazy while we wait in what feels like an entirely different space now that we know there will be no further indictments.

May we be safe.
May we hold onto the possibility of happiness, even if it’s a ways off.
May we not make ourselves sick with worry.
May we find peace and not just give in to dramatic handwringing (for too long).

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson