When all is said and done and public circus is over, you may be even too optimistic.
I suspect many will be disgusted by the spectacle. Both Republicans and Democrats will take away what they want regardless of true meaning or spin of Mueller’s words. Mueller will be one of the most boring to watch. I’m going to sit outside and watch the grass grow between chapters of next weeks book/books instead of watching.
You’ll enjoy reading this strategy for impeachment by David Faris:
The 440+ page report was decried by Dems and vaunted by the GOP as a complete vindication for Trump. He didn’t go far enough to recommend legal action because he is of the same incorrect opinion that a sitting President can’t be indicted. I can’t imagine Ken Starr being quite that wishy-washy. And Starr’s wasn’t even about crimes against the State.
Yeah, I had seen that one. Not a fan. I want it done now, well ahead of the election. Sure, we’ll have the loss in the Senate, but then you’re looking at that loss a year before the election, an eternity in Trump World. Which allows his ‘victory’ to be ancient history as he inevitably gets 10,000 more scandals done.
Grandstanding will occur. Nothing will change. All smoke, no fire.
Impeach
Yes, that’s most likely the way it will play out, unfortunately. But once Mueller’s testimony is realized to be a bust, the “I” word will be, almost by default, the next road to go down. The committees seem less and less relevant, which is really disappointing.
“We also sought a voluntary interview with the President. After more discussion, the President declined to be interviewed. During the course of our discussions, the President did agree to answer written questions on certain Russia-related topics, and he provided us with answers. He did not similarly agree to provide written answers to questions on obstruction topics or questions on events during the transition. Ultimately, while we believed that we had the authority and legal justification to issue a grand jury subpoena to obtain the President’s testimony, we chose not to do so. We made that decision in view of the substantial delay that such an investigative step would likely produce at a late stage in our investigation. We also assessed that based on the significant body of evidence we had already obtained of the President’s actions and his public and private statements describing or explaining those actions, we had sufficient evidence to understand relevant events and to make certain assessments without the President’s testimony. The Office’s decision-making process on this issue is described in more detail in Appendix C, infra, in a note that precedes the President’s written responses.”
You’re not getting a more complete answer than that. The better area of focus, imho, in this respect is Trump’s written answers. That has been underreported and his statements are contradicted by the facts.
We first describe the considerations that guided our obstruction-of-justice investigation, and then provide an overview of this Volume: First, a traditional prosecution or declination decision entails a binary determination to initiate or decline a prosecution, but we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment. The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) has issued an opinion finding 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” in violation of "the constitutional separation of powers."1 Given the role of the Special Counsel as an attorney in the Department of Justice and the framework of the Special Counsel regulations, see 28 U.S.C. § 515; 28 C.F.R. § 600.7(a), this Office accepted OLC’s legal conclusion for the purpose of exercising prosecutorial jurisdiction. And apart from OLC’s constitutional view, we recognized that a federal criminal accusation against a sitting President would place burdens on the President’s capacity to govern and potentially preempt constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct.2
Second, while the OLC opinion concludes that a sitting President may not be prosecuted, it recognizes that a criminal investigation during the President’s term is permissible.3 The OLC opinion also recognizes that a President does not have immunity after he leaves office.4 And if individuals other than the President committed an obstruction offense, they may be prosecuted at this time. Given those considerations, the facts known to us, and the strong public interest in safeguarding the integrity of the criminal justice system, we conducted a thorough factual investigation in order to preserve the evidence when memories were fresh and documentary materials were available."
Followed by this kicker which has been more frequently cited:
Fourth, 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.
There is a much lengthier discussion of the OLC memo in Vol II. I just pulled the portion from the summary.
On this OLC memo issue, the better approach, imho, is to translate this into English: 1. Trump met the elements to be charged for obstruction. 2. If Trump were not POTUS, he would be charged. 3. The only thing that held Mueller back from actually making a charging recommendation of Trump was his status as POTUS and the OLC memo’s interpretation of the POTUS’ immunities. 4. Mueller would agree that Trump could be charged based on this report when he leaves office (which is also something that he wrote in the report).
It’s the OLC rules that he was working under. It’s beyond his scope of authority to overrule that, so he had to decide that way, is basically where you end up.
I’ve mostly given up on NPR, but an interview with one of their reporters this morning pointed out that Mueller is terse, preferring short answers. I hope the Dems play to that. My strategy?
Give the questions to their Counsel and have one person asking. No posturing, no missed follow up, no mixed messages. Show him, and the country, and the Republicans, that this is goddamn serious and we are treating it like that.
FIFY
When I saw this story I thought we were going to find out that they are vacuuming in the corners and under tables and chairs, polishing the furniture and washing the windows.
Sadly, Democrats are unlikely to be unified and smart enough to follow your advice. Too many egos.
The guy who enforced that guardrail was Rosenstein. Barr took it a step further with his zany executive power theory to shut the whole investigation down.
Yup. And it’s precisely these lines of questions that I hope they go down, all the stuff surrounding the report along the way, what obstruction was happening internally. Not much point in rehashing the report, except to get him to speak in plain English about Trump’s guilt.
I like the effort and level of prep work. I still say they should just highlight portions and make him read the report on TV but, asking the right questions and in the right way is key
Dear Democrats,
Pay attention to the Mueller Report footnotes!
Ask pertinent questions
Ask short and direct question that even Trump/MAGAts could understand, the rest of us will definitely understand it!
Be ready with facts and sources (like Rep. Katie Porter) and bring up new unsealed evidence(s)/report(s)
Ask follow-up questions (not only to your questions but to other Ds questions that ran out of time)
Redirect Republican’s questions or rants
You can all do this!
It would be nice to know what the hell Rick Gates, Flynn et al, offered up in exchange for their sweetheart deals. I mean, we have a judge practically accusing Flynn of treason & Gates is still cooperating about something. Plus, why were Don Jr. & Jared deemed too stupid to know they shouldn’t be meeting with Russian agents re the campaign ?
It would be nice if the committee chairs could say, “Congressman, you have 5 minutes for questioning. Have you read the Mueller report?” for each republican time slot.
The best “preparation” the Democrats could do, would be to allow questioning by legal counsel.
Instead, in this historical moment for the country, their first thought is their own grandstanding.
And Mueller’s coded response to every question will be, RTFM.
Great Point
“Frenzied…feverishly…onslaught”? Take a breath, Kate.
What evidence is there that “the general public” (which I assume to mean everybody who hasn’t paid thus all much attention up to now) are somehow going to start when Muller walks up and sits down in the hearing room? It seems wishful to think so.
I’ll bet ratings for this hearing are nowhere near the top for the day in question.
Republicans and Democrats have long since taken away what they want regardless of true meaning or spin of Mueller’s words. Unless he says something that is off-scale new and shocking (like Dean’s remark about taping)–which seems a vanishingly low probability from Mueller–the time of Maximum Mueller has long passed.