Looking back, as outsiders, both the criminal investigation and impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump were foreordained and doomed from the start, weren’t they? Think about it.

Still, what about the principals? What and when did they know? Didn’t Special Counsel Robert Mueller know the minute his “law man”—former deputy solicitor general Michael Dreeben—told him, early in the game, that official Justice Department policy unambiguously forbade the Justice Department (Mueller was indeed “employed” by the Justice Department) from indicting a sitting president? Wasn’t Mueller, after all, all but fastidious in following the department’s rules of engagement?