Hang on --- this is not what was being reported

Mr. Mueller’s full report has yet to be released, and it remained unclear if it ever would be. House Democrats have demanded that it be sent to them by next Tuesday, but the Justice Department outlined a longer schedule, saying that it will have its own summary ready to send to lawmakers within weeks, though not months.

  NYT

Another "summary"? That's not going to fly. That would indeed be an egregious coverup, and undoubtedly, Mueller would be called in to testify to at least one House Committee.

They don't have to. He talks to Barr.

[...]

Mr. Mueller’s decision to not take a position on whether Mr. Trump’s many norm-shattering interventions in the law enforcement system constituted obstruction of justice means that future occupants of the White House will feel entitled to take similar actions.

At the rate we're going, we may not get to a future occupant that isn't a Trump.

Under the theory that Mr. Trump’s legal team advanced, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. work for the president and therefore a president can order investigations opened or closed, fire prosecutors, grant pardons or otherwise use his constitutional power even if it seems overtly self-interested or political.

It was that view that Attorney General William P. Barr embraced in a 19-page memo he drafted last year as a private citizen and sent unsolicited to the White House months before Mr. Trump appointed him to lead the Justice Department. And it was that same view that informed Mr. Barr’s decision on Sunday to make the ruling that Mr. Mueller would not and declare that Mr. Trump had not obstructed justice.

[...]

When the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against Mr. Nixon for covering up the Watergate burglary and other crimes, it asserted that “he knowingly misused the executive power by interfering with agencies of the executive branch,” including the F.B.I. and the Justice Department.

[...]

To prevent a repeat of Mr. Nixon’s actions, including his order firing the Watergate special prosecutor, Congress enacted a law creating an independent counsel who would not report to the president.

Those were better days when Congress was actually, mainly, trying to run a democratic country.

But both parties grew disenchanted with independent counsels after the experience of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush during Iran-contra and Bill Clinton during Whitewater and the Monica S. Lewinsky affair, so they let the law expire.

[...]

In the absence of an independent counsel law, Mr. Mueller was appointed as a special prosecutor who still answered to the Justice Department, meaning he had less latitude, could not indict the president even if he thought it merited and could be fired by the president he was investigating.

[...]

For nearly two years, Mr. Trump’s legal team has taken an expansive view of the executive powers afforded to the president under Article II of the Constitution, insisting that Mr. Trump’s actions fell within those boundaries no matter what his motive.

[...]

Since Mr. Mueller’s report remains undisclosed, it is not known how much these constitutional arguments weighed in his decision not to make a finding on obstruction. Mr. Barr argued that since there was no underlying crime of conspiracy, it would be harder to prove a corrupt intent to obstruct.

[...]

The hands-off attitude when it came to investigations of the past no longer applies.

“The extremes we have gone to accommodate the president’s authority are a terrible precedent for going forward as a democracy built on separation of power and balance of powers,” said Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor.

Mr. Rivkin, however, argued that the potential downside of a president interfering in law enforcement actions out of political motives was outweighed by the danger of such powerful agencies operating without anyone overseeing them.

“Do you want to have the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A. accountable to nobody but themselves?” he asked, citing “serious abuses of civil liberties” that have occurred in American history. “Choose your poison. When someone talks about the possibility of corruption, my response is what’s the alternative? Do you have a better alternative?”

We better come up with one.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.


UPDATE: