Letters | Never mind Mueller or Russia, Trump presidency has been an obstruction of justice from the start

Look at the children separated at the border, the persecution of Muslims, the failure to strongly condemn white nationalists and the cosying up to dictators

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President Donald Trump has claimed victory since the conclusion of the Mueller report resulted in no indictments for collusion with Russia during the 2016 election. Photo: AP

Published: 1:30am, 28 Mar 2019Updated: 1:30am, 28 Mar 2019

If Robert Mueller’s investigation was really just one monumental witch hunt, as Trump has claimed at least 170 times on record, then the findings of the report are irrelevant.

In other words, if it was a genuine witch hunt, why should Trump care what Mueller said? If the president truly believed that he did nothing improper – during the 2016 campaign and after he was elected – why was he so nervous that the report was going to be a bombshell? If there was nothing to hide in the first place, what is so significant about Mueller’s work in the end?

Do you want to know if Trump obstructed justice? Ask Muslims who were temporarily banned from travelling back to their home country, job or university, just because they practised a certain religious faith. Ask the 12-year-old Guatemalan girl who was taken from her mother and detained in a warehouse for months.

Do you think the family of Otto Warmbier would argue that justice has been obstructed by a president who is unwilling to say that the North Korean dictator was responsible for their son’s death? How about the countless victims of Vladimir Putin’s regime?

How about all of those sexual encounters that led Trump to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to silence the women? Was justice obstructed when they had their careers and even lives threatened by Trump’s personal fixer Michael Cohen?

I don’t think we need Mueller’s special counsel report to know that locking children up in cages is hardly an act of justice, or that the president has routinely acted outside the acceptable bounds of a responsible national leader.