Opinion | ‘They’re Doing It as We Sit Here’

Narrow self-interest explains Mr. Trump’s attitude toward the WikiLeaks releases, which he should have decried but instead praised as a “treasure trove.” When Mr. Mueller was asked to comment on Mr. Trump’s reaction, he again ventured a bit beyond his report and said, “Problematic is an understatement.”

Mr. Trump has pretty much had one rejoinder to the report’s revelations: “No collusion.” But as Mr. Mueller’s testimony made clear, that’s misleading. For one thing, collusion is a legally meaningless term in this context. The special counsel’s office was looking for evidence of criminal conspiracy, and its failure to find a sufficient amount to bring charges may have been due in part to the efforts of Trump campaign members and associates to cover their tracks or otherwise obstruct the investigation.

With regard to obstruction, Mr. Mueller found himself in an impossible position. A prosecutor’s job is to find the facts and decide whether to bring criminal charges. But while Mr. Mueller was obligated to do the first by the terms of his appointment, he was prohibited from doing the second by prevailing Justice Department policy, which says a sitting president may not be indicted. As a result, the report he produced exists in an unsettling limbo — documenting evidence that President Trump may have committed federal crimes, yet studiously refusing to take a position on whether he in fact did so.

Republican lawmakers expressed understandable frustration that Mr. Mueller had cast suspicion on Mr. Trump without formally charging him with anything. Particularly after all the talk of locking Hillary Clinton up during and after the 2016 campaign, it was good to hear them defend the presumption of innocence as a core American principle. Mr. Mueller’s unsatisfying response was, essentially: My hands are tied.

At least twice Mr. Mueller called for legislation to improve information-sharing and other coordination among intelligence agencies — an objective that was supposed to have been met with reforms after the Sept. 11 attacks.

But that kind of concerted legislative action seems unlikely. To this day, Mr. Trump refuses to acknowledge the seriousness of Russian intervention, and the Republican-controlled Senate is unwilling to consider legislation for enhanced election security — maybe because doing either could be seen as an admission that the election was tainted.

Conceding the obvious might seem like a small price to pay. But the president appears more concerned with nursing his ego than safeguarding American democracy — and that puts us all, Republicans, Democrats and independents, at risk.