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Trump is Shitting Bricks, But Should He Really Be Worried About Mueller?
Discussion
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Ask him, please, did anyone shut down, hurry or end your investigation before you were otherwise finished?
Just watched a few minutes of the hearing. Trump has nothing to worry about. Mueller isn’t going after Trump, and in some cases he doesn’t even seem to be keeping up with the questions or to know everything in his report. The 5-minute-per-member format makes it impossible to create any sustained narrative.
Mueller could have taken Trump down, but he didn’t, and he’s not going to do so in this hearing. Frankly, I think it might turn out that he is too old and tired to do so.
I wouldn’t accuse him of being too old. He is not going to go after Trump that is certain. His job was to present the evidence. Maybe someone else would go about it differently but not this guy. Just the facts man, just the facts right here in the report.
When one of the two parties is operating in complete bad faith with the stated goal of muddying the waters and ensuring that half of the available time is wasted on distraction and obfuscation, then of course nothing could come of Mueller’s testimony. That Der Trumper and his National Trumpalists don’t want access to Zebley, one of the major participants in the investigation, is just another sign of their abject bad faith and disinterest in what Trumper pulled. The irritation factor for a responsible citizen is so high that it becomes painful to watch the spectacle, which of course is… Read more »
It does seem you are right. He is not going to stick his neck out, it may be a good idea since once he does get involved in a debate they would jump all over things like the dossier and Hillary funding it. They already tried but he shut it down pretty effectively.
In the end no one questioned the OLC opinion that you can’t indict a sitting president. Previously, Mueller said it would “be unconstitutional.” It’s been 30 years since I took Constitutional Law, but this strikes me as an overstatement, and again, just his opinion. The final arbiter of what is constitutional in our system is the Supreme Court, not the DOJ. However, given that the DOJ won’t change its opinion, who has standing to challenge it? Mueller could have decided the validity of this memo by indicting Trump, having him fight in the courts, then we would know for sure… Read more »
After several hours of testimony, I think the answer is “yes”. That doesn’t mean Trump is a goner, or that Mueller was fantastic, or that there were any “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington” or “West Wing” type turning points. But it does mean that seeing and hearing is different than reading; and that Mueller had a few damning statements/answers, and the Democrats (overall) executed a pretty good strategy in solid fashion. They moved the story forward. (We’ll see what happens with the leaders’ upcoming press conference.) Following Jacob Riis’ “Stonecutter’s Credo”*, today represented one solid blow on a seemingly unmovable… Read more »
Just starting to get a feel for how Mueller’s testimony was perceived outside the US – this from The Guardian (a generally center-left publication): His appearance is unlikely to transform public attitudes, still less to resolve the Democrats’ struggle over whether to impeach the US president. The Republicans remain squarely behind a man so signally unfit for office, and appear less troubled by foreign interference than by the inquiry into it. All this is part of the process by which Congress holds the president accountable. How far that process goes is the question which Democrats must now answer. A still… Read more »