Following the morning statement from special counsel Robert Mueller, Democratic Rep. and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler has scheduled a public statement for Wednesday afternoon at 2 PM ET. In the meantime, Nadler has already issued a formal response to Mueller’s appearance, making it clear that the special counsel’s report “did not exonerate” Trump and that the House investigations will continue.
“Given that Special Counsel Mueller was unable to pursue criminal charges against the President, it falls to Congress to respond to the crimes, lies and other wrongdoing of President Trump – and we will do so,” said Nadler in his statement.
The statement from Mueller did not reveal new information not contained in his report, but allowed the special counsel to spend a few minutes emphasizing the parts of the report that he considered most important: namely, that Donald Trump repeatedly, blatantly attempted to obstruct the investigation, and that the only reason he was not indicted was because of DOJ regulations. Mueller even made it clear that the special counsel’s office investigated options such as filing an indictment under seal or some other nonpublic indictment of Trump.
In the end, Mueller made it clear that his reading of the DOJ regulations meant that he was never in a position to charge Trump. He could only investigate and produce evidence. The only people who can deal with that evidence are described in the Constitution under Article 1, Section 2.
But just because Mueller has said that “the report is my testimony” and expressed a wish that he not be called on to testify further, that’s unlikely to sway Nadler or other House leaders in their efforts to have Mueller appear, or to stop them from asking about things he doesn’t want to answer.
Top of the list for any congressional questioning of Mueller has to be the importance of the Department of Justice regulations against indicting a sitting president in preventing him from filing charges against Trump. Though he spoke for only a few minutes, Mueller devoted a good slice of that time to this particular issue. But under earlier questioning, Attorney General William Barr had insisted that Mueller’s decision was not shaped by this limit. This demands to be made clear.
And while Mueller was quick to dismiss some of Barr’s actions during his brief statement, he did not address the original three-page summary that Barr sent to Congress or the letters that Mueller sent to Barr expressing his disagreement with that summary. That also needs to be addressed.
But even if Mueller appeared and simply did as he did on Wednesday—emphasized those areas of the report he believes are most significant—it would still be more than worth bringing him in to force Republicans to deal with the actual contents of his report.
We’ll cover Nadler’s statement as it happens.