The Mueller War rages on

Americans waited almost two years for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to finish his investigation into the 2016 presidential election. They could be forgiven for celebrating after the report's release, and especially in its finding that no evidence existed showing Americans facilitated Russian efforts to interfere with and "sow discord" during the election. While Mueller's assessment about potential obstruction of justice was ambiguous, the sudden collapse of the Russia-collusion theory left voters with the impression that the country now could turn its attention to policy and the upcoming election.

But it's become apparent that Democrats have no intention of moving on. If the report closed out the first stage of the Mueller War, it appears to have also launched the second stage — one in which members of Congress will attempt to reshape Mueller's investigation to reach the conclusions they expected. The White House plans to fight this next siege more aggressively than it did the first time around — and it will likely prevail.

Democrats have made no secret of their intentions to conduct investigations into the Trump administration and President Trump himself. With Mueller conducting the special counsel probe, however, Democrats largely steered clear of pushing for separate investigations into Russia-collusion, preferring to focus more on regulatory differences, ethics concerns, and Trump's personal finances. Those efforts will continue no matter what.

Added to that now, however, are plans to essentially redo the Mueller investigation through the judiciary, intelligence, and oversight committees in the House. The focus will shift from Russia-collusion to obstruction of justice, which even Mueller himself found a murky legal ground. Some of the potentially obstructive conduct never happened at all, but manifested as "orders" Trump barked at subordinates, but that never got fulfilled. Other actions, such as the firing of former FBI Director James Comey — the catalyst for appointing Mueller to the special counsel position in the first place — involved "facially lawful acts within [Trump's] Article II authority." And, Mueller acknowledged, the lack of evidence of any underlying crime "affects the analysis of the president's intent."

Still, Mueller pointedly refused to state that Trump had not committed actionable obstruction of justice. "If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice," Mueller wrote, "we would so state." Instead, Mueller left that question open, and Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein positively declared that no obstruction had taken place, after noting some disagreement with Mueller's legal theories on obstruction.