By Staff Writer Sawyer Pollitt.

At the dawn of the third year of the Trump presidency there has been much talk of collusion between the current United States government and Russia. The man in charge of investigating this, Robert Mueller, has been hard at work with the Special Council Investigation since 2017. However, there are those who say he hasn’t done enough.

Since the investigation began on May 17, 2017, special council Robert Mueller has been working to provide evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election. So far there have been a string of indictments that have resulted in eight guilty pleas that the public knows of. There could however be more charges that are being kept under wraps by Mueller and his team.

This secrecy is one of the main strategies employed by the Special Council Investigation and may be a factor in the perceived slowness of the investigation process. Mueller is a notably private individual and he conducts his work in a similar fashion. Very few words have been spoken to the public by the man himself, with any media engagements being handled by Deputy United States Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein.

For those who are thinking that two years is quite a long time for an investigation to make any concrete advancements, they would be wrong on several counts. First, when compared to the investigations of other presidents it can be seen that this process is matching similar timelines. The Watergate Scandal took roughly two years from the discovery of the wiretapping in June 1972 to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in August 1974.

Granted, it has now been just about two years and there seems to be no serious signs that President Donald Trump is in any way planning on resigning, but there is a lot more to uncover than a relatively simple wiretapping. Mueller and his team have to prove, using inscrutable evidence, that a candidate for election to the office of president sought help from a foreign power to assume his role.

Seeing as there are an unknown amount of people who could have been involved, and the consequence for being caught and charged could be treason, it is easy to see how it could be difficult to produce concrete testimonies and evidence. Not to mention the powerful clandestine might of the Russian government, potentially working against American interests, as well as attacks from right wing news entertainment channels calling the investigation a “witch hunt”. All of these factors can produce a perfect storm of difficulties that the Special Council has to deal with.

However, even though it has been two years, several strides have been made in the investigation. Notably, the indictment and guilty plea of Michael Cohen. Charged for lying under oath to the United States Senate, Cohen’s plea has led to knowledge of others who may have been involved in any possible Russian interference. This may speed proceedings for those who are becoming impatient with the process.

Ultimately, the public will probably never know if Robert Mueller and his team are doing enough. The inherent secrecy surrounding the process, coupled with the private personality of Mueller himself means we won’t know what’s happening until something big, like an indictment, drops.

Regardless of which side of the political spectrum we fall on, one would think that we would all prefer a meticulously researched, airtight investigation that will either prove the innocence, or lead to the impeachment of our 45th president. In the meantime we can all wait and bite our nails while dealing with the stress of knowing that the President of the United States may or may not be a Russian asset.