CAPITOL HILL – Iowa had upset Cincinnati. Oregon was tipping off against Wisconsin. And everyone had just learned that the basketball team at the University of California-Irvine is known as the Anteaters.

However, few inside the Beltway could exhaust time on March Madness and travails of the hardwood.

It was “news o’clock” in Washington.

Of course word was going to come, just before 5 p.m. on a Friday, that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had completed his investigation and delivered his report to Attorney General William Barr.

It went down this way because things like this always go down this way in Washington.

Last week, there was conjecture that the report may come out Tuesday. Even Wednesday.

Really? Wednesday? Did anyone truly think the Mueller probe would end in the middle of the “First Four” play-in games in Dayton? North Carolina Central versus North Dakota State? Doubtful.

Friday afternoon?

Perfecto.

That’s just the way Washington rolls.

Dinner plans delayed. Date nights fractured. Reporters already in the bar sipping cocktails, rushing back to the office. Weekend excursions to Virginia wineries postponed.

Everyone would be on the clock this weekend in Washington.

There were few if any lawmakers rushing about the Capitol at 7 p.m. Friday. The House and Senate had been in recess for over a week. But, reporters were all on the air from the Russell Rotunda, hammering away at their computers in the media galleries and walking through the Senate subway station.

All they knew for sure on Friday was that the report was in Barr’s possession, the attorney general would soon produce a memo to brief lawmakers on the findings (that would come Sunday, during the Washington/North Carolina tilt), and Mueller wouldn’t indict anyone else in connection with his probe.

That wasn’t much of a narrative to go on. But perhaps Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said it best, channeling Winston Churchill: “It’s the end of the beginning. But it’s not the beginning of the end.”

That didn’t stop lawmakers in both parties from firing a fusillade of news releases to reporters on Friday and Saturday. They speculated on Mueller’s conclusions and contoured the story to their own benefit.

On Saturday, Democrats hailed the fact that Mueller’s inquest produced more than 30 indictments. They pointed to the convictions of President Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and onetime confidante Michael Cohen.

“The reports that there will be no new indictments confirm what we’ve known all along: there was never any collusion with Russia,” said House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., on Friday night. “The only collusion was between Democrats and many in the media who peddled this lie because they continue to refuse to accept the results of the 2016 election.”

Mueller launched his investigation in Ma, 2017. Many Republicans complained along the way about the length of his inquiry. Presidential loyalists claimed the investigation dragged on too long.

For context, the Watergate investigation lasted four years. The Iran-Contra probe consumed six-and-a-half years. The examination of the land deal in Arkansas known as “Whitewater,” involving President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, transmogrified into the Monica Lewinsky investigation. It absorbed seven years.

The House of Representatives voted 420-0 (with four Republicans voting “present”) on a non-binding resolution earlier this month to urge Mueller and Barr to publicize the report. It’s unclear if that will happen – although some lawmakers have suggested they subpoena the document.

More:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mueller-probe-findings-trigger-a-different-kind-of-march-madness-on-capitol-hill