Mueller mostly brushed aside Republican allegations of bias, but in a moment of apparent agitation, he said he didn’t think lawmakers had ever “reviewed a report that is as thorough, as fair, as consistent as the report that we have in front of us.”Īnd when he was pressed on the fact that multiple members of his team had made contributions to Democratic candidates, Mueller bristled at the implication his prosecutors were compromised. That was “outside my purview,” he said repeatedly. Mueller, pressed as to why he hadn’t investigated a “dossier” of claims that the Republicans insist helped lead to the start of the probe, said that was not his charge. Doug Collins, the Judiciary Committee’s top Republican. Nothing we hear today will change those facts,” said Rep. The president did not conspire with Russians. “Those are the facts of the Mueller report. Though Mueller described Russian election interference as among the most serious challenges to democracy he had encountered in his decades-long career, Republicans focused on his conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. But Mueller, 74, was nonetheless skilled enough in the ways of Washington to avoid being goaded into leading questions he didn’t want to answer. The prosecutor who endured nearly seven hours of hearings was a less forceful public presence than the man who steered the FBI through the Sept. ![]() They hoped that even if his testimony did not inspire impeachment demands - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made clear she will not pursue impeachment, for now - Mueller could nonetheless unambiguously spell out questionable, norm-shattering actions by the president. They referred repeatedly to what they consider the improper opening of the investigation.ĭemocrats, meanwhile, sought to emphasize the most incendiary findings of Mueller’s 448-page report and weaken Trump’s reelection prospects in ways Mueller’s book-length report did not. ![]() ![]() Trump’s GOP allies tried to cast the former special counsel and his prosecutors as politically motivated. Mueller was reluctant to stray beyond his lengthy written report, but that didn’t stop Republicans and Democrats from laboring to extract new details. “The Democrats had nothing and now they have less than nothing.” “This was a devastating day for the Democrats,” he said.
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