The Robert Mueller testimony came and went yesterday and although it was dubbed as the biggest congressional hearing in quite some time, the outcome was pretty unsurprising from a few different levels.
So let’s get into it…
🔵 The Democrats
The outcome of yesterday is exactly why the Democrats shouldn’t have put all of their eggs in the basket of the Robert Mueller hearing. Sure there are other options that they’re exploring as Nancy Pelosi suggested yesterday during the post-hearing presser.
Heading into the hearing though it certainly seemed like some Democratic Representatives were much more prepared than others. House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler opened things up strong by getting Mueller to publically state on the record that the findings in the report didn’t exonerate the President as Donald Trump often tries to make claim to.
And although Mueller walked back his response to a line of questioning from Rep. Ted Lieu in which the California congressman asked if the Office of Legal Counsel guidance against indicting a sitting president was the reason he didn’t indict Trump, the hypothetical to that question is still very real. In other words, a person who isn’t suspected of trying to obstruct justice probably has nothing to worry about when it comes to hypothetical indictments. Trump, on the other hand, is a completely different story.
Other than that though, if the Democrats were looking for some kind of political theatre that was going to help push their case for impeachment they really didn’t get it. Dems knew going into the hearing that they weren’t going to get Mueller to read directly from the Report or offer anything extra considering his statements prior. Yet it seemed like that’s something they continued to try and push while peppering Mueller with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions while the Director often replied with one-word answers, referring to the report itself or saying it’s something he simply couldn’t talk about.
🐘 The Republicans
As much as House GOP members may want to take a victory lap over yesterday’s outcome, I’m going to go and say calm the fuck down, today wasn’t a good day for them either.
If the Dem gameplan heading into the hearing was bad, the GOP one was worse given they either helped reinforce a case for obstruction of justice or tried to continually push bullshit conspiracy theories.
Vox:
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) argued that the Steele dossier, an early if overstated warning of Trump-Russia connections, was itself some kind of second-level Russian false flag. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) zeroed in on the theory that Joseph Mifsud, the Russian-linked professor who approached Trump adviser George Papadopoulos with an offer of Russian help, was really a “Western” intelligence operative. Rep Louie Gohmert (R-TX) submitted an article he wrote for Sean Hannity’s website into the record. (The title? “Mueller Unmasked.”)
Shit like this isn’t going to push the needle other than for QAnon clowns or members of the Donald Trump base who weren’t going to have a grassroots support for impeachment anyways nor were they going to vote for anyone but Trump in 2020.
😴 Robert Mueller
There was a lot of attention being placed on the demeanor of Robert Mueller which is fair to an extent. The guy looked tired, not interested in being there and every bit of the 74 (soon to be 75) years he’s lived to this point. These particular sets of criticism though probably had more to do with the hype heading into yesterday’s hearing that Mueller was some superhuman Juris who was going to slay his critics and offer up that compelling political theatre Democrats were hoping for.
At the end that didn’t happen. Not really even close while critics in the media and those on the Twittersphere took potshots at the Mueller’s behavior with some questioning whether something was up with his health.
Yes, he didn’t look sharp. His answers were imprecise, he didn’t defend himself very well against the relentless attacks from the Republicans and there was that massive flub when it came to the Ted Lieu line of questions.
But in all fairness, if anyone stuck to the gameplan it probably was Robert Mueller.
He pretty much made it clear that he wasn’t going to deviate from the Report and he didn’t.
🍊Donald Trump
Aside from House GOP victory lap after yesterday’s hearing, there probably wasn’t a bigger ill-advised set of fist pumps than that of those coming from the White House, namely Donald Trump.
That ill-advised Trump victory dance was mainly due to there being zero substance throughout the course of yesterday’s testimony that changed anything in regards to the President not being suspected of obstruction of justice. In fact, yesterday could be taken as a tremendous loss for Trump considering much of the damaging factoids withing the report itself were confirmed by Mueller on the record.
Aside from the Trump Campaign’s actions with Russian being once again unearthed, Mueller still confirmed that the President could be indicted on obstruction charges if he loses his re-election bid and the Report itself didn’t exonerate Trump (except for the collusion aspect) despite what the POTUS likes to claim. Plus Mueller told Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) (via Axios) that it is “generally” fair to say that many of Trump’s written interview answers were not only incomplete, but also showed he wasn’t always being truthful. Mueller would not answer whether he found Trump to be credible.
📃 Office of League Counsel Policy
Perhaps the biggest winner from yesterday’s testimony was the Office of Legal Counsel and their 20-year-old policy that says a sitting president couldn’t be indicted.
This is not a law, or an executive order, or a Supreme Court decision. It’s an opinion written nearly 20 years ago by Randolph Moss, an assistant attorney general during the Clinton administration and current federal judge, arguing that “the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions.”
If there wasn’t a more followed to a tee document in American History, it’s this OLC memo which the Justice Department and Mueller himself didn’t deviate from, at all. Should it be in place? Absolutely not since it continues to undermine the notion that no one person is above the Law which absolutely isn’t true. Because in this particular sense, OLC policy is probably what has saved Donald Trump — at least for the time being — from being indicted on federal obstruction of justice charges.
