Mueller Report Release will change nothing. Mueller Report Changes Nothing

"In what was ostensibly a hearing about Department of Justice budgetary concerns earlier this month, Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee repeatedly questioned Barr's assertion of broad rights to redact information from the Mueller report before it was released. At one point, Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, held up a memo from the Mueller investigation that was almost entirely blacked out before it was released to the public."

"But even if Barr proves the skeptics wrong and releases a genuinely informative report, it's unlikely to lead to Trump's removal from office. Even in the unlikely case that Mueller has photos of Russian president Vladimir Putin blackmailing Trump with the rumored pee tape, Trump is staying put until January 20, 2021. At least.

No matter how often it's been debunked, the idea still floats around in the anti-Trump resistance that, as happened with Watergate, we finally reach a breaking point where the impeachment and removal of the president becomes inevitable. Because of the mystery around it, the Mueller report has become the holy grail of this particular quest, imagined to be stuffed full of evidence of impeachable offenses by Trump that will be the catalyst that fuels the impeachment fire."

Amanda Marcotte is a politics writer for Salon. Her new book, "Troll Nation: How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself," is out now.