Probes, suits follow Mueller hearings
WASHINGTON – After months of anticipation, Congress finally heard testimony from former special counsel Robert Mueller. So what now?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Mueller’s appearance was “a crossing of a threshold,” raising public awareness of what Mueller found. And Democrats after the hearing said they had clearly laid out the facts about the Mueller report, which did not find a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia but detailed extensive Russian intervention in the 2016 election. Mueller also said in the report that he couldn’t clear President Donald Trump on obstruction of justice.
But it remains to be seen how the testimony will affect public views of Trump’s presidency and the push for impeachment. Mueller said some of the things that Democrats wanted him to say – including a clear dismissal of Trump’s claims of total exoneration – but he declined to answer many of their questions, and he spoke haltingly at times. Trump claimed victory, saying Mueller did “a horrible job.”
Democrats have struggled to obtain testimony from some of the most crucial figures in Mueller’s report, including former White House counsel Donald McGahn. And the few people they have interviewed, such as former White House aide Hope Hicks, have failed to give them new information beyond what’s in Mueller’s report.
But Democrats have multiple investigations of the president ongoing that don’t require cooperation from the White House or Justice Department. The House intelligence and financial services committees are probing Trump’s finances, an area that Mueller appears to have avoided. And the intelligence panel is investigating Trump’s negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the campaign.
To obtain the testimony from McGahn and others, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said Wednesday that his panel will file lawsuits.
Democrats will seek to obtain secret grand jury material from Mueller’s report that has so far been withheld from Congress by the Justice Department. They will also try to force McGahn to provide documents and testimony.
Almost 90 House Democrats have called for an impeachment inquiry, and more are certain to do so after Mueller’s testimony.
But Pelosi isn’t there, not yet. And a majority of the caucus is siding with her, for now.
Pelosi said Wednesday she wants “the strongest possible hand” by waiting to see what happens in court.
The House is expected to leave town Friday for a five-week August recess, so some of the Democrats’ efforts will be on hold until September.
The Justice Department isn’t done with its own investigations into what happened before the 2016 election.
There are two ongoing reviews into the origins of the Russia probe that Mueller eventually took over – one being conducted by the Justice Department’s inspector general and another by U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General William Barr to examine surveillance methods used by the Justice Department.