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Robert Mueller’s First Hearing Was Frustrating, But Not Totally Pointless

By Jul 24th, 2019, 1:20 pm

Robert Mueller looks tired of all of this.

Robert Mueller’s first Congressional hearing today was a frustrating endeavor. Mueller didn’t want to testify in the first place. Once forced to, he had said ahead of time that he wouldn’t be saying anything that wasn’t included in his original report and he was not kidding. According to MSNBC’s count, he refused to answer questions 123 times. This pretty much sums up the whole ordeal:

Even more frustrating than Mueller’s refusal to answer was the approach taken by just about every Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, which was to attack Mueller’s motives. They all spoke (or, more accurately for most, yelled) as if they knew Trump was watching (which he was, and live tweeting) or as if they were all auditioning for jobs at Fox News.

Most Democrats started their questioning by thanking Mueller for his service, both in the FBI and as a war veteran. Most Republicans attacked him for what they see as a lack of patriotism. It was pretty transparent.

So going in, we knew Mueller wasn’t going to say much. But there were a few moments that stood out as being worth the time spent here today. Just because Mueller didn’t say anything new, there is, as we’ve said before, a big difference in having something buried in a 400+page report that most people are never going to read, and hearing it said out loud.

This was a big one:

If you’re familiar with the report, you probably already know that Mueller found Trump to have committed acts that had the intention of obstructing his investigation. He didn’t make a judgment as to whether or not Trump should be charged with a crime, not because he was exonerating Trump, but because a sitting president can not be charged with a crime, even if one is committed.

Is this why Trump keeps “joking” about refusing to leave office?

It is incredibly frustrating that every single Democrat didn’t follow up aggressively on this point, but at least we got to hear it said out loud.

Speaking of Trump, I mentioned that he was live-tweeting the hearing. More specifically, he seemed to be live-tweeting Fox News’ content, which means he was basically getting the opposite of what was actually happening.

Yeah, that’s not what happened. Again, just because Trump failed in impeding Mueller’s investigation, that’s not being exonerated from a crime.

Let’s see what the afternoon session brings.

(image: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
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Vivian Kane - Senior News Editor

Vivian Kane (she/her) has a lot of opinions about a lot of things. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri with her husband Brock Wilbur and too many cats.