FINALLY! ROBERT MUELLER III WILL BE TESTIFYING IN AN OPEN SESSION

…The man called an “Honest Abe”, Robert Mueller III

Hopefully, Mueller will come across to all Americans as John Dean did in the Watergate hearings

It has been obvious that if the special counsel investigator, Robert Mueller III, did become subpoenaed, he would most likely agree to testify to Congress in an open session.  But if he did, then Trump would go bananas.

Well, it has happened and as expected, Trump went ballistic.

Trump actually lashed out at the former special counsel Mueller and he falsely accused him, of course without any evidence, of falsely committing a crime by deleting text messages exchanged by two former FBI officials who had expressed negative comments about the president.

Trump actually stated: “Robert Mueller terminated their text messages. He terminated them. They’re gone,” Trump said. “And that’s illegal. That’s a crime!”

No matter what, this up-coming potential spectacle seemed to have irked the president. “It never ends,” Trump said during an interview with, of course, the Fox Business Network, when he was asked about the up-coming hearings. “We have no obstruction. We had no collusion,” Trump stated. which was neither of what Robert Mueller ever said in his lengthy report.

Trump then obviously had to call the Democrats 'unhinged', when it was Trump that was sounding highly “unhinged”.

This reaction from the president had occurred a day after the Democratic House leaders announced that Mueller had been subpoenaed to testify publicly in July about his investigation.  The investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, and the possible obstruction of justice by President Trump.

The hearing itself  might be quite brief, as Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said their portion of the meeting, which will be followed by a briefing with the Intelligence Committee, would have a two-hour limit.  Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who leads the intelligence committee, said he had agreed that each of his committee’s members would be allowed only five minutes for questions.  That itself will take about two hours in total.

It is possible that such parameters could change.  However, Chairman Schiff said he believed negotiations with Mueller were done.

President Trump had slammed the Mueller report; all Democrats, and of course; the Dem’s Green New Deal; all of this during the Iowa Republican Party’s annual dinner in Iowa on June 11.

A lawyer of Mueller’s listed on the House subpoena has not responded to requests for comment, which is “classic Mueller”, nor have any of the senior aides in the now-defunct special counsel’s office.

In Trump’s comments falsely accusing Mueller of a crime, Trump was trying to refer to the FBI agent Peter Strzok, who played a major role in the early stages of the investigation into Russian interference.  Strzok and the FBI lawyer Lisa Page, whom Trump refers to as; “pathetic lovers”, did have an affair.

“Here’s the problem,” Trump said. “Robert Mueller, they worked for him; the two lovers were together, and they had texts back and forth. Mueller terminated them illegally . . . He terminated all of the stuff between Strzok and Page.”

That is again all false.  A report that was made public in December said that the Justice Department inspector general could not recover texts from the phones assigned to Strzok and Page for their work with Mueller.  This was because, by the time investigators requested the FBI’s phone devices, they had already been reset in preparation for being reissued for others to use.  That’s because both of these individuals had left their jobs at the FBI much earlier in the investigation.  Mueller never had anything to do with those former FBI employees phones, much less did he delete anything on them.

So the president was again blowing smoke about something that he knew nothing about.

The public report detailed the glitches that had complicated the inspector general’s ability to recover any messages exchanged during the five-month period.  A period that ended on the day Mueller was appointed as the special council.

The inspector general wrote there was “no evidence” that Strzok and Page “attempted to circumvent” the FBI’s data-retention policies, and the “content of the text messages did not appear to be a factor” in whether or how they were retained.

The report itself also makes no mention of Mueller playing any role in the deletion of any texts. 

Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team in July 2017, and he was ultimately fired from the FBI last year after the communications with Ms. Page were discovered.  Ms. Page separately left the investigation team and later she left the FBI.

Speaking to  the reporters, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said his committee would hear from Mueller first on July 17, followed by the Intelligence Committee in a separate room.

“I think it will have a profound impact,” Nadler said. “Just if he says what was in the report, and says it to the American people so they hear it, that would be very, very important.”

Nadler characterized the hearings as a way of countering what he called Trump’s “campaign of disinformation”.  Disinformation that was led by the new Attorney General William Barr who “subjected” the country “to months of deception as to what was in the report.  Attorney General Barr . . . deceived the American people about what was in the report,” Nadler said. “The president joined in when he strategically said ‘no collusion, no obstruction,’ which is not what the Mueller report found.”

Nadler also stressed that “the Russians attacked our democratic election with the goal of helping Trump win the election.  The Trump campaign welcomed that help, and that’s the words in the report,” Nadler said.

Nadler said he did not know if Mueller’s testimony would be extended beyond the content of the report, and he said that it is possible the White House might try to suppress his testimony.

“They may attempt to. I doubt that they would succeed, because Mr. Mueller is an honest man who understands that . . . congressional subpoenas are not optional,” Nadler said. 

He added that the panel might meet with other members of Mueller’s legal team outside the scheduled hearing.  The House Intelligence Committee is expected to follow their public hearing with Mueller inside a closed-door session with other members of Mueller’s staff.

“The Democrats want a do-over . . . There are no do-overs,” Trump told reporters. “We spent a long time working with Mueller. I gave him all the witnesses he wanted. I gave him lawyers. I gave him people . . . They have everything they could possibly have. Nobody’s ever had more. Nobody’s ever been more transparent. And now it continues further? This is just a hoax.”

As usual, Trump’s comments are all just a bunch of B.S. from him in trying to paint a different picture for his base supporters.

Hopefully, Mueller’s testimony and that of his other investigators will eventually become something that every American voter can hear and digest, without having to read the full 448 page Mueller report.

Copyright G. Ater 2019