Guest column: It's time for Mueller report foolishness to end

Let me be clear, Mr. Mueller.
First. No one in this great country needs you or anyone in authority to “exonerate” us. We are “presumed” innocent until and unless you in authority BOTH charge and convict us of a crime.
You were not hired to “exonerate” anyone. You were hired to investigate whether anyone should be charged with any crime. Had you found that the president committed a crime I have no doubt you would have said so. You did not. You punted big time. So be it.
Justice looking at all the same facts you reported on, came to the conclusion that no such crime was committed.
Second. No one needed you to recognize the right of Congress to commence, if the House chooses, the political process of impeachment. That process does not need your opinion or your support to validate it. That is always a Constitutional Congressional prerogative. Not yours.
But to impeach a president for a “crime” that neither you nor the Justice Department could conclude likely occurred is a mighty big stretch. In the Impeachment trial of President Clinton, a “crime” of lying to a federal grand jury was not only identified as having likely occurred, but Clinton lost his Arkansas license to practice law as a direct result. Still the then Democratic Senate did not convict.
Impeachment by the Democratic House for a non-crime would clearly fail today in the Republican Senate.
So please go away, Mr. Mueller. Your job is done. Thanks for saying no more. Your notion of not “exonerating” us is, quite frankly, repulsive; contrary to the rule of law and of our personal freedoms under the Constitution. And please, Democratic House, give up this nonsense of an impeachment process that will do nothing but hurt our country.
Defeat the president in his re-election bid if you can. But in the meantime, this nation faces some of the most daunting challengers of our modern era.
I don’t have to articulate them. You know them well. Get on with the job of debating and, for God and country’s sake, find ways to behave more like the Americans we all are then as slaves to our two parties and the politics of personal destruction. We need now as ever for our government to meet those challenges head on, particularly those “beyond the water’s edge” where partisan politics should end.
I lived through the Clinton impeachment. It was the worse of the worst days of my long legislative service.
Trust me on this, my congressional friends, there is nothing but harm for all of us lurking in that process.
You don’t want to go there. In my most sincere judgment. Neither does our country.
Billy Tauzin was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1980 to 2005, representing Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District.