Robert Mueller lowered expectations for his testifying before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. But after Trump’s disgraceful lovefest with Putin at the G20 I wonder if he will decide to do more, do a lot more, than regurgitate what is in the 400 page report. In his 11 minute speech (transcript) he said about the report: “We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself. And the report is my testimony. I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress.”
Here’s how the New York Times put it in Weeks of Talks Led a Reluctant Mueller to Testify:
Now Mr. Mueller, 74, is set to take the biggest stage of his long public career to answer questions on live television in back-to-back public hearings about his investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference and President Trump’s attempts to impede the inquiry. He will face lawmakers from both parties who believe his testimony can help them drive divergent narratives.
Democrats hope that Mr. Mueller will tell a story of presidential misconduct worthy of the public’s censure. Republicans want to draw him out on allegations of misconduct by supposedly crooked F.B.I. agents bent on taking down a president.
Mueller will have a chance to answer the Republican gotcha questions as they try to blame everything on the Democrats. I expect her would say that he found no evidence which would lead him to pursue this line of investigation.
Of course this will be the first time Mueller with all his gravitas will have a chance to tell the public not merely what the report says, but what it means about how the president obstructed justice. He must also be asked to explain the evidence of a conspiracy between Russia Trump’s associates which didn’t rise to the level of proof needed to issue indictments, and further exactly what level of proof would have been necessary.
He can once and for all answer questions about whether he would have decided there was enough evidence to indict Trump himself had he not been protected by Justice Department rules.
More from the New York Times:
“Bob Mueller will testify, and I’m sure he’s going to stick to what is in his report,” Jay Sekulow, a personal lawyer for Mr. Trump, said Wednesday on CNN. “I don’t expect there’s going to be a new revelation here. That certainly would be inappropriate.
This is what Jay Sekulow has to say, after all he has to represent his client. It's really is mild considering his use of the word inappropriate is ( make up a word) milquetoasty.
You can bet that every Democrat will have read the report and will ask him questions that will essentially fill in the blanks.
The question I have is whether Mueller will stick by his original statements that all he would do if he went before Congress was reiterate what’s already in the report. I have no doubt Mueller has seen and to put it bluntly had his mind blown over the president’s audacity in putting on such a public display of what can only be called proof a a conspiracy to allow the Russians to try to influence the 2020 election. I can’t imagine what Mueller could have been feeling and thinking when he saw the videos and photos of Trump and Putin snug as two bugs in a rug at the M20, let along him chatting amiably with Mohammad bin Salman.
If none of these actions lead Mueller to decide that he has to do everything he can to save the country and the free world from Donald Trump, either by making it less likely he’d be reelected or through impeachment, there’s this tweet:
After some very important meetings, including my meeting with President Xi of China, I will be leaving Japan for South Korea (with President Moon). While there, if Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the Border/DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!
Mueller must be asked to rephrase the following more explicetly:
And as set forth in the report, after that investigation, if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime.
For example:
You say that you “had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have asked ”what he meant by confidence, and whether he meant a level which he thought would lead to an indictment if Trump could be indicted. I would pin him down on how he could have described 10 instances of obstruction and then say he didn’t have confidence that the president didn’t commit a crime.I would ask him whether obstruction was a crime.
We’ll have to wait until July 17th to find out.
Please register at Daily Kos so you can make comments and take the polls.
They do not sent you email spam.