US politics:

Former special counsel dismisses Trump assertion on probe

Robert Mueller has bluntly dismissed US President Donald Trump’s claims of total exoneration in the federal probe of Russia’s 2016 election interference.

The former special counsel told Congress he explicitly did not clear the president of obstructing his investigation.

Mr Trump’s Republican allies tried to cast the former special counsel and his prosecutors as politically motivated.

Democrats sought to emphasise the most incendiary findings of Mr Mueller’s 448-page report and weaken Mr Trump’s re-election prospects in ways that Mr Mueller’s book-length report did not.

They hoped that even if his testimony did not inspire impeachment demands, Mr Mueller could nonetheless unambiguously spell out questionable, normshattering actions by the president.

Yet Mr Mueller by midday appeared unwilling or unable to offer crisp sound bites that could reshape entrenched public opinions.

He frequently gave terse, one-word answers to questions, even when given opportunities to crystallise allegations of obstruction of justice against the president.

He referred time again to the wording in his report or asked for questions to be repeated.

He declined to read aloud hard-hitting statements in the report when prodded by Democrats to do so.

But he was unflinching on the most-critical matters.

In the opening minutes of the hearing, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, asked Mr Mueller about Mr Trump’s claims of vindication in the investigation.

“Did you actually totally exonerate the president?” Mr Nadler asked. “No,” Mr Mueller replied. Though Mr Mueller described Russian government’s efforts to interfere in American politics as among the most serious challenges to democracy he had encountered in his decadeslong career, Republicans seized on his conclusion of insufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.

“Those are the facts of the Mueller report. Russia meddled in the 2016 election,” said Doug Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.

“The president did not conspire with Russians.

“Nothing we hear today will change those facts,” he said.

Mr Trump lashed out early yesterday ahead of the hearing, saying on Twitter that “Democrats and others” are trying to fabricate a crime and pin it on “a very innocent President”.