Last Week Tonight: John Oliver offers his take on the Mueller report

We’ve finally got most of the Mueller report, minus some censored sections. What do John Oliver and company make of it all on Last Week Tonight?

We might as well face facts. The world keeps turning, but we’re still in the midst of the Mueller report, and with good reason. Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller and his investigative team released their findings weeks ago, but Attorney General William Barr only just released a censored version this past week.

Between all of the blacked-out redactions in the over 400-page document, there’s still much to analyze and opinions to form. On Last Week Tonight, John Oliver took much of the latest episode to get centered on the issue.

While the report doesn’t conclude outright that Trump was criminally close to the Russians, it does outline at least 10 different ways in which he could be charged with obstruction of justice. That’s no exoneration of Donald Trump or his associates, whatever Kellyanne Conway might have you think.

According to Mueller’s team, “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.” It’s hardly inspiring stuff.

What are some of the details in the report? And how has his presidency survived so far when there are so many legally awkward situations? For Oliver, it all comes down to two factors: incompetence and disobedience.

In this instance, “incompetence” is really just a byword for Michael Cohen. The former personal lawyer to the president had some very worrisome ties to Russia and, perhaps even worse, couldn’t seem to do anything useful with said connections.

Klokov who?

Cohen was deep in contact with Russians throughout the campaign, mostly trying to broker business favors like a huge Trump tower. It turns out Cohen was terrifically bad at his job. For one, he got some key emails wrong, then confused Dmitry Klokov, his prospective Russian contact, with a very different weightlifter of the same name.

The “real” Klokov persistently tried to connect Cohen and Russian president Vladimir Putin. Cohen biffed it, in part because he still thought he was talking to a professional weightlifter. That connection, which could have proven to be deeply damaging, never happened.

To be fair, it’s not just Cohen who messed up. Turns out Russian representatives had tried to assist the Trump campaign, but with spotty receptiveness. Oliver described “cartoonish levels of disorganization and incompetence”, to the point where it may have actually saved their bacon. They were so bad at following up and so uninformed that Mueller’s investigation couldn’t prove that they knew they were breaking the law.

Truly, are we to believe that someone like Donald Trump Jr. – so utterly inept that members of the Trump campaign called him “Fredo” after the equally ineffectual character in The Godfather – is a highly sophisticated political player?

Following orders

It wasn’t just a general sense of idiocy that may have staved off criminal charges. Oliver argued that Trump’s staff members were also too disobedient to get him into trouble. Looking at both the Mueller report and other accounts, subordinates have routinely ignored Trump’s orders. Corey Lewandowski was told to order Jeff Sessions (then the Attorney General) to hobble the Mueller investigation. Lewandowski and an aide both declined to follow orders, not necessarily out of a noble desire so much as to avoid doing something stupid and unpleasant.

Don McGahn, former White House counsel, repeatedly refused to help Trump remove Mueller as the Special Counsel. Trump persisted in his request, until McGahn simply decided to quit. He told then-chief of staff Reince Priebus that Trump had asked McGahn to “do crazy s—”.

Don’t relax completely, for this is no reassurance. Many of the most resistant people are former staff members. The current White House employees appear more likely to go along with Trump’s course. Current Attorney General William Barr made excuses for the president’s behavior and leaned hard into the “no collusion” interpretation, despite the actual findings of Mueller’s report.

“The White House fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation,” said Barr. Yet, “full cooperation” would include sitting down for an interview. Neither would Mueller have likely concluded that Trump’s participation was “inadequate”.

Mueller also wrote that Trump “engaged in efforts to curtail the Special Counsel’s investigation”. We’re left wondering just what report Barr read, as it doesn’t seem to be the same document we have in front of us.

The future of the report

Even now, there are many things we don’t know. Mueller apparently handed off 14 different investigations (12 of which are still secret). That’s on top of the large swathes of the report which remain blacked out.

In the wake of all this information, the White House is taking advantage of media appearances and statements to spin the situation in their favor. No one’s been charged with anything, right? That is, no one currently working in or around the White House. Are Trump and his associates justified in declaring victory?

Well, not exactly. The Mueller report “only vindicates the administration on their own false premises”. See, the presidential administration has made it all about “collusion”, which is not a legally prosecutable term. Mueller couldn’t find evidence of collusion because it wasn’t a category available to his team. However, they did find evidence of clear ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. There is also the worrying matter of those 10 possible instances of obstruction of justice.

The content of the report isn’t dead in the water. It can inform Congress and, just as crucially, voters in the 2020 election. That’s why we shouldn’t simply conclude that it exonerates someone or totally condemns them. The results of Mueller’s investigation deserve more attention and consideration.

A chance to cheer up

If that’s all utterly depressing, stick around for a far more charming segment that caps the episode, wherein Oliver waxes rhapsodic over Chiitan. Oh, you don’t know him? Chiitan is the unauthorized mascot of Susaki, Japan. He’s an otter, one that’s cute, surreal, and occasionally violent. It’s unsurprising to learn that the officials of Susaki are less than happy to see him stalking their streets.

From the outside, though, it’s pretty great. “Every Chiitan video is a work of art,” said Oliver. “When’s the last time Twitter made you happy? When’s the last time anything made you happy?”

Chiitan isn’t perfect, however. Between obliquely threatening you with a baseball bat and demolishing walls, he seems to have abandoned his friend and fellow mascot, Shinjo-kun. That’s why Last Week Tonight created Chiijohn, “a 41-year-old nearsighted English fairy baby”. Oliver can’t introduce him in person because they sent the mascot to Tokyo.

Chiijohn traveled all the way there to comfort Shinjo-kun, which is why we’re watching this oddly sentimental video showing their budding friendship. “Destroying something together is an act of creation,” intones the narrator as the two wreck various structures.

Things must have worked out okay, however, as Oliver says that Chiijohn is now living full-time in Susaki. It’s nice to have a happy ending every once in a while.