Recently, the famed Mueller Investigation finally concluded. There was no collusion found between the Russian government and Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election. It’s hard to believe, especially after the multiple convictions of officials and advisors related to the supposed collusion, so how were we lead to this conclusion after two years of hype and various accusations?

After the 2016 election, various figures in the political and social spectrum brought up various concerns of the possibility that Russian influence tilted the scales of the election in Donald Trump’s favor. The F.B.I. and the intelligence community also voiced concern over the outcome of the election. The acting Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein appointed former F.B.I. director Robert Mueller as a head of an investigation into Russian influence into the 2016 election.  The team made some progress in uncovering some unknown truths about the campaign.

The investigative council got guilty pleas out of various high level figures in the campaign and in the White House from them being caught on making false statements. Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, for example, was caught making false statements to the F.B.I. in 2017. He took a plea deal and became a cooperating witness in the following investigations. Others charged with making false statements were not as cooperative with authorities. Former Trump advisor Roger Stone had his properties raided after his involvement in various Wikileaks releases where information stolen by Russia was discovered. Even with various electronic conversations confirming his involvement Stone refused to cooperate, so it can be argued that the investigative council had varied successes and did some good by putting corrupt figures out of politics.

In early 2019, Donald Trump’s lawyer decided to come out and testify against his former boss. Michael Cohen had much to reveal to the council. Cohen spoke of many events that occurred during the time that he represented Mr. Trump, one of the more notable things that he discussed was paying a large sum of money to the adult actress Stormy Daniels. This money was to the tune of $130,000. Cohen also presented a check for $35,000 that was directed to himself from Donald Trump. According to Michael Cohen this check was compensation for paying Daniels the money to keep her quiet about a possible affair from 2006.

Trump was accused by Michael Cohen to have been conducting business deals while in office, testimony from Cohen lended light on various negotiations that Trump himself conducted with Russian authorities with the purpose of building a Trump tower in Moscow while he was in office. For some, this testimony alone would spark the proceedings for an indictment. But there is no law against the President conducting foreign business deals, the one thing that could have gotten him into trouble was reportedly instructing Michael Cohen to lie about it.

Most of the convictions have been made from the these supposed suspects making false statements, although in other cases like Roger Stone, there was electronic evidence proving his crime. But in most cases the suspect states one thing and then changes his story down the line and is caught. Since most of these convictions were made from false statements, what do we actually have? From the view of the everyday person this investigation does not make sense, all the hype that we have seen from this huge case and we don’t get hardly anything on the president. Sure there was the check and the Moscow-Trump tower deal that Cohen talked about, but other than that we have nothing on Trump. We the people need something more, we can’t be stringed along by tidbits of information and hope to be constantly behind this investigation that we are in the dark for the majority of.