What I learned from watching seven hours of Robert Mueller’s testimony before Congress on Wednesday had absolutely nothing to do with the factual matters of the Russia investigation. I’m not sure I learned a single new thing on that score.
Instead, I learned that Mueller is lamentably beginning to show his age and that’s he’s probably the worst Deep State coup leader in the history of the genre. I’m generally skeptical of intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and that includes the American variety. But, in this case, they had reasons of both patriotism and basic self-preservation for wanting to deliver the goods. Mueller failed the entire intelligence community as well as the country.
He said himself, in his report (Volume II, p.171), that Congress has the Constitutional authority to “criminalize certain obstructive conduct by the president, including suborning perjury, intimidating witnesses, or fabricating evidence…” He concluded (Volume II, p.176) that “Congress clearly has authority to protect its own legislative functions against corrupt efforts designed to impede legitimate fact-gathering and lawmaking efforts.” He wrote (Volume II, p.177 ) that “Congress has the authority to impose the limited restrictions…on the President’s official conduct to protect the integrity of important functions of other branches of government,” including the proper functioning of grand juries.
But, more importantly, he decided that Congress is the only authority that has the power to hold the president to account while he is serving in office. He reemphasized this in his brief press appearance in May when he said, “The Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.”
During his appearance before the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas tried to get Mueller to expand on this point.
ESCOBAR: Director Mueller, at your May 29, 2019 press conference, you explained that, quote, “the [OLC] opinion says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting President of wrongdoing”, end quote. That process other than the criminal justice system for accusing a President of wrongdoing, is that impeachment?
MUELLER: I’m not going to comment on that.
ESCOBAR: In your report, you also wrote that you did not want to quote “potentially preempt constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct,” end quote. For the non-lawyers in the room, what did you mean by “potentially preempt constitutional processes”?
MUELLER: I’m not going to try to explain that.
ESCOBAR: That actually is coming from page one, Volume II—in the footnote is the reference to this. What are those constitutional processes?
MUELLER: I think I heard you mention at least one.
One has to ask what Mueller is trying to accomplish by being coy about this. He’s clear about several things. In Volume II, p.2 of his report, he writes that the president’s conduct “presents difficult issues” that preclude him from being cleared of criminal conduct.
…if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.
He acknowledges that Congress is the proper body to address that criminal conduct. In his testimony on Wednesday, he said that the Russians had so far not been deterred from interfering in our elections in the future and that “they’re doing it as we sit here.” When questioned by Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff of California, Mueller said that knowingly accepting campaign assistance from a foreign power was “unpatriotic” and “wrong.” When asked if Donald Trump’s embrace of WikiLeaks was problematic, he stated, “Problematic is an understatement in terms of what it displays in terms of giving some, I don’t know, hope or some boost to what is and should be illegal activity.”
Given all of this, he ought not stand in the way of giving Congress that the kind of information and momentum they need to actually do something to protect the country and the integrity of our elections. And, yet, there he was refusing to concede the most obvious thing in the world, which is that Congress was asking him to help them act on his report for the benefit and security of the nation. He couldn’t even engage in that conversation or let the word “impeachment” escape from his lips.
Quite aside from this making his entire investigation a pointless exercise, it also allows Trump to continue to gut the intelligence and law enforcement agencies of the government. Mueller insisted that his investigation had not been a witch hunt and that his conclusions were not “fake news.” He repeatedly agreed that he had not exonerated the president. He agreed that Jeff Sessions had properly recused himself, that James Comey had been fired under suspicious circumstances, and that the president had ordered him to be fired as well, and yet these attacks on the FBI, Justice Department, and his own office will now go unanswered as Trump moves to complete his purge by replacing Dan Coats as the director of National Intelligence.
While Mueller stumbled over his answers and hid behind a lot of bullshit to defend his non-responsiveness to countless questions from both sides, the Republic goes up in flames. The president is above the law and our country is left bereft of professional intelligence leadership and wide open to more foreign attacks on our elections.
This isn’t just a failure for our nation, but it’s also a repeat of Mueller’s experience in Vietnam. Mueller fought gallantly in that conflict, winning a truly impressive number of commendations. But what was the result in the end, but total humiliation and disaster?
Nonetheless, after Vietnam, Mueller prospered and the country eventually recovered. That’s is unlikely to be true this time. He was so worried about protecting his reputation that he ruined it without fulfilling his mission and protecting the rest of us.
I couldn’t stand to watch it because I was afraid that this would happen. After Mueller allowed Barr and Rosenstein to misrepresent his findings without saying anything publicly in May, and then when he refused to say anything new in his press conference in June, I didn’t expect he would be breaking any new ground today. But even worse, he didn’t sound like he had any sense of outrage or anger at all with how his report had been neutered and his people slandered.
Edited to add:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
In our dreams he was a deep state coup leader. The he failed to meet our expectations is partly the fault of our expectations, and the responsibility for that rests on us not on Mueller.
I think it’s a little early to reach the conclusion in the title — I’d add a question mark there. If Mueller has failed his country then he has a whole lot of company. Primary blame for not starting impeachment proceedings absolutely rests with the Democratic leadership in the House right now.
Pelosi and Schumer are too busy for that. They have more important things to do like attend Maureen Dowd’s DC cocktail parties with Howard Fineman and other members of the press
Martin makes the point in his post: Pelosi NEEDED MUELLER to ignite public opinion and provide her support and cover for beginning impeachment proceedings: “the kind of information and momentum they need to actually do something to protect the country and the integrity of our elections. And, yet, there he was refusing to concede the most obvious thing in the world, which is that Congress was asking him to help them act on his report for the benefit and security of the nation. He couldn’t even engage in that conversation or let the word “impeachment” escape from his lips.”
One of our two major political parties has decided there’s absolutely nothing wrong with accepting money and intelligence support from foreign governments as long as their party is the beneficiary of that help. If they have to trade away US national interests, so what? Winning is everything. Pelosi knows the ONLY LEVERAGE that Dems have now is the majority in the House of Representatives. It would be unpatriotic and political malpractice to risk losing that. If she sacrifices her majority, even for the good of the country, that leaves Dems on the moral high ground as usual but with ABSOLUTELY NO political power. And right now winning the presidency looks like a crap shoot. Mueller’s performance yesterday will make a lot of Biden supporters think twice about electing another senior citizen, no matter what his prior experience. And let’s not underestimate the power of misogyny.
Agreed on the question mark.
Writing on the morning of the 26th: since Mueller testified at least five Democratic members of Congress have released new statements calling for an impeachment inquiry, and one suburban swing-district Republican (Olson-TX 22) has announced his retirement.
Three of those Democrats are from Massachusetts. Sen. Ed Markey has been in Congress since 1976. He’s up for re-election next year, and already has two primary opponents to his left. (And Markey is the Senate sponsor for the Green New Deal.) Rep. Lori Trahan is a freshman from one of the most conservative CDs in the Commonwealth. (Which is still pretty liberal, but it means she’s vulnerable to a Charlie Baker-type Republican opponent.) And the third (and arguably most significant) is Rep. Katherine Clark, three term incumbent from the western suburbs of Boston, and vice-chair of the House Democratic Caucus. That makes her (to my knowledge) the highest ranking House leadership to call openly for an impeachment inquiry.
Moral of the story? Keep pounding the rock.
Most importantly, whether despite or because of Mueller’s hesitance, Nadler appears to have decided “well, just fuck all this waffling and agonizing . . . we’re just doin’ it!” (see my UPDATE post this thread). An official “impeachment inquiry” is underway.
Primary blame rests with leadership: yes.
Could Mueller have done more to give Congress information and help generate momentum to “do something”? Absolutely.
That being understood, if we’re going to talk about figures standing in the way, there are some in Congress who have loomed much larger for much longer.
Because Pelosi’s refusal to open an inquiry has nothing whatsoever to do with actual evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors, she was going to respond to anything Mueller chose to say in those hearings by claiming to need, as always, more evidence. At the news conference following the hearings, for instance: “Now we’re looking into his finances.” (Elide the facts that it took Cummings seven weeks after Cohen’s testimony to subpoena Mazars, or that Neal is apparently still flailing around for excuses not to ask NY for Individual-1’s tax returns.)
If Democratic leadership really wanted Congress to have information in order to generate momentum to “do something,” we would have seen very different conduct since the beginning of the session, instead of the characteristic delays, misdirections, and excuses. As a terribly unfortunate (if perfectly predictable) result of Pelosi’s choices, whatever her intentions, she has become in actual practice Individual-1’s staunchest line of defense in the House.
(À propos, Elizabeth Spiers explores that which others have noted for a while, Pelosi’s “failure to articulate any rationale for inaction,” that is, the absence of any coherent, compelling argument for it, and exposes some of the fundamental weaknesses in Pelosi’s calculations.)
So yes, while Mueller could certainly have helped make the case directly to the public more clearly, it’s no less true that the case has been out there for a long time now, and the Democratic leadership, which is in the best position to develop it for the public—some might even argue that’s their job—have been, well, very busy waiting for more evidence. And going to Dowd’s cocktail parties.
UPDATE: “Impeachment proceedings” are officially underway. (Quoting myself there at atrios’ place:)
Mueller’s behavior yesterday could mean any of several things: hearing loss, congnitive decline, mistaken political judgment that “taking the high road” was the way to go, that Trump and/or the Russians have something on him and blackmailed him into that performance, etc.
The more important thing (imho) is that yesterday was another step in the right direction, i.e., towards an impeachment inquiry. (See, for example, Charlie Pierce’s analysis on Esquire’s politics blog.)
Now the challenge, for anyone opposed to Trump and his behavior, is to get up today and keep walking: call your member of Congress’ district office and urge them to (as Rep. Trahan did yesterday) call publicly for an impeachment inquiry; start organizing now to show up at a local event with your Rep/Sen during the August recess; find a local immigration fight with the Trump administration and get involved.
This is how oppressive regimes get overthrown: not at all, then imperceptibly, then slowly, then picking up speed, then in a rush. (See: Rossello’s resignation.)
Right. Which is now officially underway (see my UPDATE comment, this thread).
Mueller has spent his career trying to be an objective, non partisan professional. Always rare, such people are almost extinct today. Part of me wishes he had given a fire breathing J’Accuse presentation. But not only is that is not his style, it is not the way he believes someone in his position should act. As it was, he confirmed in a calm and dispassionate manner the damning evidence in the report. The problem is that the Republican Party at all levels is eager to ignore or excuse all of it in order to protect Trump and keep their hold on power. A passionate, stirring presentation would not have changed that in the slightest. What Mueller’s presentation did do, in addition to confirming the substance and details of his report, was make it impossible for any fair minded observer to conclude that the investigation was a sloppy, partisan hatchet job.
OLC memo gripe again – what if Trump really did shoot someone on 5th avenue? We are being told that unless Congress grows a spine, a murderer would sit in the White House until his term is over. That is the logical conclusion of that memo, as these would be state charges, but the memo supposedly applies to those as well. Let’s see the NY AG file something now and see where it goes.
The chain of OLC memos is
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/2000/10/31/op-olc-v024-p0222_0.pdf
back to
https://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/olc/092473.pdf
I think there should be more eyes on these. The author of the 1973 memo is long gone but the Clinton twilight era author is still around – I wonder what he (Randolph Moss) thinks … has anyone asked him.
Enjoy!
Thanks to the OLC memo, and its not law BTW, just a policy of the DOJ, the person holding the office of President IS above the law, as long as he holds it. And if that person breaks any laws while president for which the statute of limitations would run out before they leave office, then even more so.
Congress being the legislative body could fix this, I assume, and pass a law that would invalidate the OLC memo. Not that anything like that could happen with the current congress and president. But it clearly needs to, at some point.
I don’t know why this isn’t appearing, but here’s a repeat:
The OLC memo ….
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/2000/10/31/op-olc-v024-p0222_0.pdf (2000 version)
https://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/olc/092473.pdf (1973 original)
More eyes need to be on these memos.
Mueller is in his declining years, that was clear but, still, he got a message out, weak though it was. I blame the democrat leadership for some of this. They should have listed the alleged obstructions on the screen and then discussed/questioned each one in turn. That way Mueller could see what was coming, especially if they told him so in advance. He would have been at least a little prepared. As it is this likely made such a small dent we won’t get an inquiry.
I, too, am angry at how Mueller handled this thing. But I cannot let the democratic leadership off the hook here. This report has been out for months. What have they done to raise awareness of it? They put all the eggs in this one basket, and it exploded on them, all bc Mueller is getting old and his memory fails him, or bc he refuses to go outside the bounds of the report? Those facts were in evidence for some months now. I still think he shut this investigation down prematurely, more should have been included in the report, even in the intel portion of it. Maybe the dems should have been asking Mueller, where’s the beef? As it is the dems will go out of town for six weeks and this will become a forgotten cause. And guess what, if Trump wins the next election the statute of limitations will have expired. Nice.
But it was disingenuous of the democrats, if that were the case, to have as a goal for the hearings getting some explosive, Col. Jessup “you can’t handle the truth!” moment, that would propel them forward to do their damned jobs. Its not in Mueller’s disposition, plus the fact that he had made crystal clear he wouldn’t go beyond what’s in the report.
And let’s be fair to Mueller: given the volumes of details, the size of the report, and the number of contributors (Of course Mueller didn’t write the entire report himself; no one in that position would be expected to) anybody regardless of age would have had some stumbling moments retrieving information from memory while being careful trying not to misstate facts.
Or, being cynical, was that the game plan all along, e.g. lets put Mueller out there, knowing he won’t give anything new and be dull doing it to boot, and then we can use this cover to say see, more reason for us NOT to impeach, from the distance of a six week break? Dastardly!
Well, except they’re now doing pretty much the opposite of that (see my UPDATE comment, this thread).
I think you’re mostly wrong about most of that. Note, for example, that whether because of or despite Mueller’s performance, a formal “impeachment inquiry” is now underway (see my UPDATE comment, this thread).
Very difficult to know what motivates the man. As Booman points out, it appears Mueller understands Rome is burning, except we don’t have Nero fiddling, but Caligula. A lifetime of professional rectitude and “non-partisanship”? Fear that his “old friend” Brownshirt Barr would prosecute him for violating the last minute DOJ gag order/letter? Who knows.
Of course, what Mueller did repeat in his ridiculous “yes” and “no” answer format was damning. And the Dems are certainly attempting to point out the open lawbreaking and disloyalty, in the face of complete subversion and disinterest by the worthless corporate media, who have pronounced the entire exercise a political failure. They are one step away from the Trumpalist “Move on!” talking point. Their failure is total.
But ultimately the failure is on the citizenry, most especially the National Trumpalist 46%, but also on that substantial portion of the unpolitical “independents”, whose disinterest in government allows them to imagine both parties are equally bad. These are the folks who imagined that Hitler was a momentary fluke. Much can be accomplished by a citizenry that operates in consensus, as Puerto Rico has just shown us. But as Lincoln said, “A house divided cannot stand”, and the “conservative” movement (which has now reached its natural culmination in National Trumpalism) has permanently divided the nation, and made just and legitimate government simply impossible. A nation cannot be better than its citizens.
“A republic, if you can keep it”, said Franklin in explaining the proposed 1789 constitution. As deTocqueville predicted, ultimately we could not. He can now rest in peace, his prediction vindicated after almost 200 years. But thanks for playing, Professional Prosecutor Bob!
I am a little encouraged by Nadler’s news conference. He didn’t call it an impeachment inquiry but it sure sounds like that is what he is doing, and next week they will try to enforce a subpoena in court with words that sound like an inquiry. We will see if they can get the grand jury testimony.
The court filing is very explicit that it is, in fact, an impeachment inquiry (see my UPDATE comment, this thread, directly quoting it).
If the democrats goal was to get a dramatic soundbite out of this, or some new information, they should have known better. Mueller had previously made clear he wouldn’t go beyond what was already in the report. And given his by the book demeanor, its obvious he’s not one for drama either.
But unless the only lens you judge the hearing as a whole is on style and The Toddler’s “optics,” then the hearings were successful in that it amplified and put into the record Mueller himself directly disputing Trump’s “no collusion”, “witch hunt” take on the Mueller Report and investigation. Not to mention Adam Schiff’s devastating opening statement, and some of the other superb questions that allowed Mueller to amplify for the public the criminality and betrayal engaged in by Trump and his minions.
Everything Mueller testified to they already had before today. That said, though not a failure, the hearings will have been a waste of time if the democrats don’t move forward with impeachment.
I was out of town when most of the hearings were underway, but from the bits of catch-up I did later, this appears a fair assessment. I found Mueller’s performance underwhelming, but I was already expecting it to be so. There were some solid statements (Schiff stood out) and the answers Mueller gave at his most lucid were damning – even if they did not go beyond anything that could have been read in the written document. I think there is plenty of material for soundbites for ad/social media purposes as a buildup to impeachment begins. Basically the onus is on Congress to do its damn job. If indeed the judiciary committee has done what apparently it appears to have done (open an impeachment inquiry in all but name), at least we’re headed in the right direction. For now, I am cautiously optimistic.
” . . . in all but name” is superfluous. This clearly declares that an official impeachment inquiry is underway: ” . . . this Committee is conducting an investigation to determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment.” (see my UPDATE comment, this thread, for context) That is the very definition of an “impeachment inquiry”.
The real question might be, what would the Rs have done if they wanted a better soundbite? The dems got what they could get but not what I suspect the Rs would have gotten with better planning. But it is what it is and Nadler has opened up an impeachment investigation, not to be confused with an inquiry. So it is moving in the right direction.
Distinction without a difference. The “investigation” Nadler declared underway in his court filing is the very definition of an “impeachment inquiry”.
IANAL. But Laurence Tribe is!
Schiff’s closing statement was likewise excellent, essentially saying “now it’s on us.” And Nadler’s now made it official that an “impeachment inquiry” is, in fact, underway (see my UPDATE comment, this thread).