WASHINGTON, DC — House Republicans said nothing meaningful came from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony before Congress Wednesday and it’s time to move on, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made some of her strongest comments yet about the chamber possibly starting impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
Mueller testified before two Democrat-led committees for more than six hours on his 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The opposing takeaways by Democrats and Republicans show how deeply polarizing Mueller’s investigation has been.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Mueller’s two-year probe didn’t find guilt on Trump’s part, and his testimony Wednesday “should be the end of the chapter that we put America through.”
Pelosi said at a news conference that a “cone of silence” from an uncooperative White House, which has refused to provide documents and witness testimony, “will not prevent us from going forward.”
“In fact, it’s even more grounds to go forward,” Pelosi said, adding she wants the “strongest hand possible” by continuing court actions aimed at forcing the White House to cooperate. The stronger the case, Pelosi said, “the worse the Senate will look for letting the president off the hook” if there’s an impeachment trial.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York said his panel will file lawsuits this week to obtain more information about Mueller’s report and to enforce a subpoena against former White House counsel Donald McGahn.
The lawsuits to obtain secret grand jury material from Mueller’s report have been in the works for weeks, but Democrats waited until after Mueller’s testimony to move forward. The Justice Department so far has withheld that information from Congress. House Democrats are also expected to challenge the White House’s claim of “absolute immunity” for McGahn and others who worked in the White House.
“If we break that, we break the logjam,” Nadler said.
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During the long day of testimony, Mueller said Russian interference in the election wasn’t a hoax perpetrated by Democrats, as Trump had claimed, nor was it an isolated incident. More should be done to guard against future interference, he said, warning:
“They’re doing it as we sit here.”
The report of the investigation detailed 11 instances of potential obstruction of justice, including Trump’s attempts to scuttle the investigation and have Mueller removed as special counsel. He made clear in his report the investigation didn’t exonerate Trump, but also that investigators didn’t find sufficient evidence to establish charges of criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Mueller often answered the questions in short sentences or a single word, and declined to answer some questions, including whether investigators had subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr., who the report says “declined to be voluntarily interviewed.” The president’s oldest son is a key figure in a 2016 campaign meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower in New York that captured Mueller’s attention.
Mueller also condemned Trump’s praise during his 2016 campaign of WikiLeaks, and said to call it “problematic is an understatement.”
WikiLeaks released troves of hacked emails from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign. U.S. intelligence agencies and Mueller’s investigation subsequently determined Russian government entities were responsible for the hack and gave embarrassing correspondence to WikiLeaks to support Trump’s bid for the presidency.
Speaking to reporters at the White House Wednesday before leaving for a re-election campaign fundraiser in Wheeling, West Virginia, Trump called Mueller’s testimony “all nonsense” and said the investigation cast a “phony cloud” over his administration. He said Mueller’s performance was “obviously not very good,” and said it was a “devastating day” for the Democrats.
Ahead of the highly-anticipated hearings, the Justice Department told Mueller not to stray beyond what he wrote in the report on Russian election interference. In a letter sent Monday to Mueller, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer said the former special counsel should not speak about any redacted material in the report, The Associated Press reported. This includes subject matter involving pending criminal prosecutions, third-parties that haven’t been charged with crimes and “executive privilege,” such as “presidential communications privileges.”
Mueller previously — and emphatically — said he wouldn’t say anything beyond what’s written in the report. The statement came after Democrats expressed dissatisfaction with Attorney General William Barr’s summary and redacted release of the report. Mueller also explained that he opted not to not indict Trump nor accuse him of criminal conduct.
“We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself,” Mueller said. “I would not provide information beyond what is already public in any appearance before Congress.”
Mueller testified at the insistence of Nadler and California Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, who wrote in a letter that the public “deserves to hear directly” from him about the investigation and its conclusions.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.