The Mueller Report Is an Impeachment Referral (Yoni Appelbaum, The Atlantic)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/mueller-report-impeachment-referral/587509/
Excerpt:
This points back to Muellers basic concern about fairness. In the report, he laid out 10 specific incidents his team had examined, each of which might constitutesingly or in aggregateevidence of obstructive conduct on the part of the president. The Special Counsels decision to describe the facts of his obstruction investigation without reaching any legal conclusions leaves it to the Attorney General to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime, Barr wrote.
But there is another, simpler way to understand Muellers report. A footnote spells out that a criminal investigation could ultimately result in charges being brought either after a president has been removed from office by the process of impeachment or after he has left office. Mueller explicitly rejected the argument of Trumps lawyers that a president could not be guilty of obstruction of justice for the conduct in question: The protection of the criminal justice system from corrupt acts by any personincluding the Presidentaccords with the fundamental principle of our government that no person in this country is so high that he is above the law.
But if Mueller believes a president could be held to account after he leaves office, he also spelled out another concern with alleging a crime against a sitting president: the risk that it would preempt constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct.
The constitutional process for addressing presidential misconduct is impeachment.