David has a piece on the Russian indictments that argues they show the importance of Mueller’s investigation. I’d say they show the importance of a Russia investigation, not necessarily Mueller’s. These are exemplary indictments that will never be tried. There’s no reason that they couldn’t have been pursued by Justice Department professionals or, better in my view, an independent commission. Instead, we have a wide-ranging special-counsel investigation that, like almost all special-counsel investigations, has become a proxy for partisan political warfare and has strayed beyond what should have been its original ambit, in this case into an obstruction case that is inherently political and should be pursued by Congress (if it believes it is worth pursuing). My usual caveat: Maybe there are things we don’t know that change how this looks, but I don’t think these indictments qualify.