The consensus from the pundits providing color commentary on the Mueller hearings today is that the book is better than the movie. They are absolutely right, but only because they have actually read the Mueller Report and know that it elaborates on what the Democrats could not get Mr. Mueller to elaborate on in his dull responses to their questions. You can only hear “I refer you to my report” so many times before you succumb to the weight of gravity pulling your eyelids down.
However, it’s important to remember, that along with nearly every Republican member of the House and Senate, the American public hasn’t read the Mueller Report and if they are watching the hearings, they are learning for the first time its specific findings outlined in the questions Democrats are asking Mr. Mueller.
In the more likely event they are not watching the hearings, they will hear all the salient points contained in the Democrats’ questions when they see the re-caps and re-plays featured on all of tonight’s news shows. Unless, of course, they’re watching Fox News where they will be told that the president was completely exonerated.
Pundits who are giving Republicans credit for direct hits with their indignant yelling and accusations of bias seem to forget they are not reporting on a soccer game where all the players are evenly matched. The polls show that while no one likes congress, they really don’t like the Republicans. The public has seen Jim Jordan’s and Louie Gohmert’s substance free temper tantrums defending Donald Trump’s indefensible behavior before and the only people they’re persuading are the people who already agree with them.
If the best the republican apologists can do is claim that no one carried out Trump’s several attempts to obstruct justice so it doesn’t really count, then they’re in big trouble. I’m not a lawyer but even I know that if a man walks into a bar to hire a thug to kill his wife and the thug turns out to be an undercover policeman, the man is still charged with attempted murder even though his request wasn’t ultimately carried out.
And don’t even get me started on their pathetic attempt to establish bias because a few members of the special prosecutor’s team have donated to Democrats at sometime in their lives. Did anyone ever ask Ken Starr and his team when they were investigating Bill Clinton if they had ever donated to Republicans? Nope, because it wasn’t relevant. The people Mueller have on his team are career prosecutors who don’t think about politics when they’re pursuing investigations into criminal behavior. As anyone who has read the Mueller Report knows, most professional prosecutors go where the facts take them.
That’s why Mueller and his team decided that there wasn’t enough evidence to pursue a criminal conspiracy when it came to the Trump campaign’s dealing with the Russians. While there was more than enough evidence to prove that there was criminal contact between Trump’s campaign and the Russians and that everyone involved lied about it, Mueller didn’t feel they could prove there was criminal intent. In other words, they found that Individual-1 and the brain trust that surrounds him were too stupid to know they were committing a criminal act by encouraging and accepting help from the Russians, so therefore shouldn’t be charged. If that’s exoneration, I’d rather be found guilty.