Senate allows Mueller to testify

WASHINGTON: The Republican chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee will accede to Democrat requests to call former special counsel Robert Mueller to testify, after Mr Mueller (pictured) offered a rare public defence of the Russia collusion probe he led.

“Apparently Mr Mueller is willing – and also capable – of defending the Mueller investigation through an op-ed in the Washington Post,” Senator Lindsey Graham said in a statement.

Although the committee’s Republican majority had said it was time to move on, Senator Graham said the Democrats’ repeated requests for Mr Mueller to appear before it would now be granted.

His motivations are unclear.

Once critical of Donald Trump, he is now considered a confidant of the president.

Democrats were outraged when Mr Trump commuted the jail sentence of friend and political ally Roger Stone, who faced a 40-month term on felony charges flowing from the Mueller investigation.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Mr Trump’s move a case of “staggering corruption”. Few Republicans have spoken up against it.

A White House statement on the matter denounced the Mueller probe as part of a “witch hunt” by “overzealous prosecutors” looking into what Mr Trump has often called the “Russia hoax”.

Mr Mueller said his twoyear investigation established that Moscow intervened to boost Mr Trump’s 2016 election chances, and pointedly said it did not exonerate the president of obstruction of justice.

In the op-ed, he defended his probe as being of “paramount importance”.

Stone “remains a convicted felon, and rightly so”, Mr Mueller wrote.