The point is that he will not be convicted by any federal court of those crimes while in office
I'm
not so sure. Mueller's mandate very clearly authorizes him to indict the President, regardless of how careful Rosenstein and others were in regard to
various subsequent assurances. Indeed, Rosenstein was very careful in his remarks to make a distinction between what has been done
in the past and what may be current:
[T]he Department of Justice has in the past, when the issue arose, has opined that a sitting president cannot be indicted. There’s been a lot of speculation in the media about this. I just don’t have anything more to say about it.
DOJ guidelines are just that. They do not follow the concept of legal precedent. They can be changed at will, basically, so long as the threshold of "extraordinary circumstances" is met, apparently, which we have here in spades. At best, Trump has committed numerous felonies, each one alone warrant impeachment proceedings at the very least. At worst, he's a treasonous foreign puppet. There is no higher crime short of murder.
I think the biggest obstacle is the fact that there are so many other Republicans that are embroiled--whether they knew it or not--in the same conspiracy.
So that leaves Mueller (if he's at all concerned and not just focused exclusively on being thorough; i.e., not worrying himself with the politics of it all, but I think that's nearly impossible) with a sort of Sophie's choice. Does he report without concern over politics, fallout or where the chips fall and let Congress take it from there, or does he realize (as we all do) that if he does just leave it all up to Congress, that there is a strong likelihood that all of his efforts will be for nought?
We certainly see evidence of strategy in the manner in which he has let things unfold. Is that strategy restricted to a "police" mentality (i.e., strictly myopic in regard to artfully herding the criminals into the net, as it were, and nothing beyond that) or more like a "prosecutor mentality" (i.e., in regard to the larger picture and how best to achieve convictions)?
I can't imagine it's strictly "police." So if it's "prosecutor"--and I believe it is and that there is strong evidence to support that belief-- then he must be doing everything for the end-game of conviction and not just turning everything over to Congress, knowing as he must that that might not cut it.
I also think we're not fully understanding the power of the heavily maligned intelligence community that's no doubt a significant part of this. Which is precisely why Trump went after them in the first place, as a pre-emptive assault. He knew (or rather Putin knew) that the very first institution that would see exactly what transpired was the intelligence community.
So there are many elements to this, of course, that go so deep into "extraordinary circumstances" from a "deep state" level that, again I don't see how it could be something that Mueller just treats as a normal job and that's that. This is about evisceration and deserved revenge on a traitor and the only reason it's delicate is because Putin booby-trapped it so well.
But that's why it needs to be an evisceration. The public--iow, the Republican Trump supporters (NOT the irrelevant core, but the ones that actually matter in regard to Senate re-elections)--must actually see the "Teflon Don" with his guts hanging out on the floor with their own eyes.
That does not necessarily have to happen on the
Senate floor for Trump to be finished.
It is possible, of course, that Mueller is running out the clock so that it becomes a matter of destroying Trump's re-election bid and/or timing things so that the vulnerable Senate Republicans get the same butt-fucking that happened in the House in the midterms, but both of those scenarios are way too risky for someone as careful as Mueller to hang everything on.
And, yes, indicting a sitting President is likewise fraught, but in so doing it gives Mueller the opportunity to make everything he has public, because it would force a constitutional crisis. Even if the SCOTUS ruled that the DOJ could not indict a sitting President--and there is
nothing in the Constitution that says anything near that--then, again, (a) all of Mueller's report would be public and (b) it would effectively force impeachment proceedings and end-run any attempts by Republicans in the Senate to hide any part of Mueller's report in the process.