I’m quoted in this WaPo piece:

Justice Department officials took less than a month to abandon an inquiry into President Trump’s communications with his Ukrainian counterpart about investigating former vice president Joe Biden — reigniting concerns among Democrats and legal observers that the law enforcement agency is serving as a shield for the commander in chief.

Just weeks after intelligence leaders asked the Justice Department and FBI to consider examining a summer phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the head of the department’s criminal division determined there was not sufficient cause even to launch an investigation, senior Justice Department officials said….

Even before the Justice Department’s decision was made public, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Democrats would conduct an impeachment inquiry into Trump — which need not find technical violations of campaign finance or bribery laws.

“It is still within Congress’s power to impeach and remove by viewing this as an abuse of power,” said Richard L. Hasen, a University of California at Irvine law professor specializing in election law. “Whether it’s a crime is secondary to the impeachment inquiry. It could be relevant if Trump is out of office and somebody wants to try to prosecute him.”…

Mueller had to wrestle with a similar question as he examined the Trump campaign’s July 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who had offered derogatory information on Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent in the presidential race. Mueller’s team wrote in their report that “candidate-related opposition research” could be a contribution and potentially break the law, if it came from a foreign source. But they also noted that “no judicial decision has treated the voluntary provision of uncompensated opposition research or similar information as a thing of value that could amount to a contribution under campaign-finance law.”

Hasen, the law professor, said he thought the Justice Department’s determination that Trump’s request could not be quantified was “laughable.”

“You’re talking about information on a potential rival that could be used in a presidential campaign, a presidential campaign which likely would run into the billions of dollars,” Hasen said. “I don’t think there’s any question that a prosecutor could go forward with the theory.”