First, I don't know who other than reporters had "considered" a final report "an option" - and the use of the passive voice is significant - but such a report would appear to be prohibited by law. Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, as you know, prohibits a prosecutor from disclosing grand jury proceedings. If Fitzgerald did issue a report, he would be in contempt of court. Perhaps the Times reporters and others may have been misled by the fact that special prosecutors appointed under the now-expired Independent Counsel Act, such as Lawrence Walsh and Ken Starr, issued final reports. But those reports were specifically authorized by the statute under which they were appointed, and Pat Fitzgerald wasn't appointed under that statute.

Rather than straightforwardly reporting the law, however, the Times makes it seem like Fitzgerald is choosing not to issue a report, and permits them to feed the frenzy of uninformed speculation about what he will do. We're just going to have to wait and see - and we're going to have to accept the possibility that Pat Fitzgerald may conclude that no crime was committed here, or that no prosecution of such crimes is warranted, and we'll never know why. In the long run, our judicial system works better that way. One of the things we learned from our experience under the Independent Counsel Act is that "reports" by prosecutors, representing their one-sided view of their investigative efforts, can be impossible to rebut and can damage individuals' reputations without justification.