The final implosion of Robert Mueller. (Intelligence)

After a whole morning of being battered by House Judiciary Committee Republicans, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller came back for more. Incredibly, his credibility sank even lower.


As mentioned in the rundown of the Judiciary Committee testimony, Robert Mueller was subpoenaed to testify before the House in order to "bring to life" his report. This was the language used by the Committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) to explain the baffling decision to bring the former FBI director before his committee after the failure of the investigation to establish a conspiracy between the Trump 2016 campaign and the Russian government.

During the hearing before the Judiciary Committee, Mueller established a clear pattern of memory lapses, evasive answers, and inability to explain key findings when challenged. However with the Intelligence Committee hearing immediately afterward he seemed to dig himself other new holes. It is understandable that at least one committee, probably the Judiciary would have been enough, but it is bizarre that the House Democrats decided to bring Mueller around for a second pass where GOP hammerheads could get more bites out him. Here are a few more takeaways from the Intelligence Committee hearing.

1. Exoneration: Know your role


Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) poked a major rhetorical hole in the Mueller Report and the special counsel surrounding the statement at the end of the document that it was not exonerating the President. Turner brought out law books concerning the roles of prosecutors and public attorneys and had Mueller confirm that neither he nor Attorney General William Barr have the power to exonerate, meaning the act of officially absolving a defendant of guilt for a criminal act. Therefore Turner sustained that Mueller's (or his team's) decision to include the statement about not exonerating Trump was improper and well beyond the purview of Mueller's role.

2. No Foreknowledge by Trump, Jr.


Apparently one contention within the report was that when they set the meeting with Russian attorney Natalya Veslnetskaya in 2016 Donald Trump, Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner had knowledge of prior connections between Russian intermediaries and campaign aide George Papadopoulos. In an exchange with Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) this premise is blown apart since the report indicated that Papadopoulos had informed no one of his contacts with the "Russians". There were also denials by Australian diplomat Alexander Downer and Prof. Joseph Mifsud that they had a. been told of Russian contacts by Papadopoulos and b. that he had been led to believe that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton. This contradiction undermines the notion that Papadopoulos' unproven involvement had any trace of an underlying crime and calls into question the motives for investigating him at all. Mueller as usual refused to entertain any questions about the origins of the Russian collusion investigation claiming it was irrelevant to his role.

3. ThunderStrzok


In a shorter questioning period Rep. Rick Crawford (R-ARK) questioned Mueller concerning whether disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok had intimated his knowledge that there was no evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia that he had expressed in his text messages with Lisa Page. However, at the time when Inspector General Michael Horwitz notified Mueller of those texts it is likely that he would have at least seen the statements among the others that indicated Strzok and Page's prejudicial views toward Trump and their extramarital affair. Crawford went on to ask whether Mueller proceeded to investigate the origins of the investigation, but Mueller demurred and claimed that he would not get into internal deliberations of the investigation. This opens a new question which is that if Mueller was aware of his own chief investigator's prior findings concerning collusion, but did not investigate the origins of the probe itself, was his team in reality more concerned with covering up the origins than discovering them?

4. No bites for the Democrats

Repeatedly Mueller's Democratic inquisitors attempted to get him to deliver either confirmations or characterizations of Trump or his associates that would justify using the testimony and report as the basis for impeachment. They were sorely disappointed. At one point Rep. Joaquin Castro (TX) attempted to corner him into claiming that the Kremlin spokesperson had lied about his contacts with Michael Cohen, but Mueller dodged again claiming he would not comment on stories that were reported in the media. Similar exchanges happened with Democratic Reps. Mike Quigley (IL), Val Demings (FL) and Peter Welch (VT).

Quigley also went fishing for a statement by Mueller that the inability of Trump to be prosecuted would be placing him beyond the statute of limitations should he be reelected. Mueller refused to confirm or deny that legal opinion. This was a further failure by a Democrat to state that impeachment was necessary in order to hold Trump accountable for a crime that law enforcement could not prosecute while he was in office. In another line of questioning Quigley asked whether Trump, Jr.'s reaction to the Wikileaks revelations would present a legal issue, but Mueller would only go so far as to call it "problematic".

Swan song for the Schiff Storm

The major takeaway from the Mueller testimony was that he had nothing to offer for those demanding impeachment. A lot of the same sensational claims about Russian interference were recycled with the same innuendo as in the past three years. Yet for the GOP and its anti-impeachment stalwarts such as Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan this will be seen as the last gasp of the Democratic investigations, while they can continue to demand more details concerning the roots of the FBI surveillance. Much of the time taken by Democrats like Schiff and Denny Heck (WA) was spent with lofty statements regarding the values of democracy and the pernicious Russian threat, but they were obviously used as filler as there was no smoking gun. Even Harvard Law Prof. Laurence Tribe, an arch-advocate of the impeachment movement, had his faith deeply shaken by Mueller.

 It will be interesting what the next move by House Democrats will be. Jerry Nadler has already declared that there will be more subpoenas related to the findings in the investigation as well as demands for the redacted grand jury testimony. This begs the question: Does the Democratic Party know when enough is enough?

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