What will Mueller’s testimony turn up?
Special counsel has spoken only once — for nine minutes in May — since his appointment in 2017
After two years of silence and one brief public statement, special counsel Robert Mueller will finally sit for prolonged questioning at two House hearings today.
Although he has expressed reluctance about testifying and has vowed to discuss only the contents of his 448-page investigation report, his appearances are nonetheless highly anticipated.
Mueller’s longtime associate, Aaron Zebley, will appear alongside him and serve as his lawyer, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.
Zebley, Mueller’s former chief of staff and his top aide on the Russia investigation, was an unexpected addition to the witness table less than 24 hours before the hearing.
Republicans were livid about the last-minute change. Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the Judiciary panel’s top Republican, called the move an “apparent stunt” by Democrats. He said it “shows the lengths Democrats will go to protect a one-sided narrative from a thorough examination by com
mittee Republicans.”
The possible change in lineup comes as the Justice Department is asking Mueller not to stray beyond his report on Russian election interference when he testifies to Congress today.
Still, Democrats are preparing questions to highlight the report’s most damning details. Judiciary panel Democrats planned to practice with a mock hearing behind closed doors Tuesday.
Attorney General William Barr has said congressional Democrats were trying to create a “public spectacle” by subpoenaing Mueller to testify and has offered to give Mueller an out, saying earlier this month that he and the Justice Department would support Mueller if he decided he didn’t want to “subject himself” to the congressional appearances. Barr has also said he’d block any attempts to force members of Mueller’s team to testify before Congress.
While Mueller’s 448page report did not find sufficient evidence to establish charges of criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to swing the election, it said President Donald Trump could not be cleared of trying to obstruct the investigation.
The nation has heard the special counsel speak only once — for nine minutes in May — since his appointment in May 2017.
The basics
The House Judiciary Committee hearing starts at 5:30 a.m. today and is expected to last about three hours, followed by a short break. The House Intelligence Committee hearing starts at 9 a.m. and will last about two hours.
The Democratic chairmen of the two committees, Reps. Jerrold Nadler of New York and Adam Schiff of California, will set the tone and lead the questioning for both sessions. But Republicans are preparing to try to counter them, led by Reps. Doug Collins of Georgia and Devin Nunes of California, with an assist from Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the most vocal critics of the Russia investigation.
What they’ll talk about
• Obstruction. Much of the discussion at the first hearing, in the Judiciary Committee, is expected to revolve around the second volume of Mueller’s report, an exhaustive account of the president’s attempts to impede investigators. Mueller and his team did not decide whether Trump’s efforts amounted to criminal obstruction of justice but also declined to exonerate him.
• Collusion. The Intelligence Committee will focus on the first volume of the report, which described Russia’s 2016 election interference. Investigators found repeated contacts between Russian intermediaries and the Trump campaign, whose advisers welcomed the help and expected to benefit from it, but not sufficient evidence to prove a conspiracy.
The Democrats want Mueller to bring to life the most serious acts of possible obstruction in the report.
They believe that many Americans lack a full understanding of Trump’s efforts to impede the inquiry and that Mueller’s recounting of it will leave an impression on voters. They may also try to push the taciturn Mueller to more clearly state whether Trump could have been charged with obstruction if not for Justice Department guidelines that say a sitting president cannot be prosecuted.
The Republicans want to focus on parts of the report they view as beneficial to the president: namely, Mueller’s decision not to charge anyone with conspiracy. But they have a litany of other questions about the investigation itself, beginning with its length.
Republicans disagree about how hard to go after Mueller but intend to ask about potential antiTrump bias in the FBI and among prosecutors on his team, many of whom have worked for or donated to Democratic causes, and some of the questions could get combative.
What success looks like for …
• Democrats: Their chief accomplishment would be getting Mueller to say that the president would have been charged with a crime if not for the Justice Department guidelines. But they also hope that he gives tacit or explicit endorsement of an impeachment investigation by Congress. Both are unlikely. More realistically, Democrats want average Americans watching at home to come away outraged by the president’s behavior.
• Republicans: The status quo. Republicans believe that if Mueller simply reiterates his report and keeps from helping Democrats, they have succeeded. They also hope to sow doubt about the fairness of Mueller’s investigation itself.
• Mueller: Be boring, very boring. Mueller wants to avoid entanglement in the political fray and leave with his reputation for independence unblemished.
What else to look for
• Much of Mueller’s report focuses on the question of whether Trump obstructed justice, and Democrats on the Judiciary Committee say that’s where their attention will be, too. And for good reason: His report examines in blow-by-blow detail nearly a dozen episodes in which the new president sought to control the Russia probe, narrow its scope or even have investigators fired.
• Mueller will almost certainly be pressed about tensions with Barr over the way his report was handled and how the Justice Department communicated its findings to the public, including the attorney general’s decision to exonerate the president even when the special counsel pointedly did not do so.
Mueller complained privately to Barr in March that the attorney general’s four-page letter summarizing the main findings of his report “did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of this office’s work and conclusions.” Barr, in turn, has called Mueller’s note “a bit snitty.”
• The dossier. Republicans aren’t likely to directly attack Mueller himself. But that doesn’t mean they won’t have areas to mine.
They’re likely to seize on the origins of the investigation and press Mueller on the extent to which the FBI, in the early weeks and months of its Russia probe, relied on information from a dossier of anti-Trump research paid for by Democrats.
The Justice Department has acknowledged that the dossier helped form the basis of a secret surveillance warrant it obtained to monitor the communications of a Trump campaign aide, though the investigation had actually begun months earlier and was based on entirely separate allegations.