Mueller imagined

Here is how it likely will go when the House Judiciary Committee brings in Robert Mueller to testify on his special counsel’s report.

“D” stands for a generic Democratic congressional questioner. “R” stands for a generic Republican one. “M” represents Mueller.

D: Mr. Mueller, your report plainly states that, had you been able to exonerate President Trump on obstruction of justice, you would have done so, but that you could not. Does that not mean that the president stands vulnerable to that charge based on your findings?

M: There is nothing implied in the report. The report means only what it says.

D: But sir, is it not so that you stopped where you stopped only because you were working under auspices of the Justice Department, which holds the official view that a president of the United States may not be indicted while in office—that the resulting situation of a sitting president indicted by his own executive department would be untenable?

M: We stopped when we had completed our assignment under the parameters established by the entity for which we were working. The report indeed cites the department policy against a presidential indictment, but not as the only factor in our declining to offer a conclusion on obstruction. We cite other complications.

D: But did your report not plainly and tellingly signal that you expected the report to be read by the Congress, which has the constitutional authority,

and some would say responsibility in this instance, to impeach?

M: I did expect that the report would eventually be read by Congress, though with redactions and perhaps limitations or mere summaries. So it was not my appropriate role or purpose to send signals to Congress, and I did not do so. It was my job to investigate and prosecute where appropriate and to report to the attorney general. The report does argue that Congress may make laws against presidential obstruction. But that merely was as rebuttal to assertions otherwise in a brief from lawyers for the president. That’s why it was reserved for footnotes.

D: If this House Judiciary Committee, acting on your report, should begin hearings and further probing in consideration of articles of impeachment against President Trump for obstruction of justice, would you endorse and assist that action?

A: I would be a resource, as would be the report itself, context and explanation for which I perhaps would be able to provide. But I would be neither an advocate nor prosecutor. I would offer no opinion on any action taken by this committee based on what plainly is Congress’ constitutional responsibility. On impeachment, it is Congress’ role to speak, and mine as a special executive-branch investigator to remain silent.

D: If you as a regular U.S. attorney had made findings that someone other than the president engaged in the same behavior as described by the president in your report, would you have asked a grand jury to return an indictment charging obstruction?

M: There is no direct correlation between a U.S. attorney’s regular investigation of a private citizen and a special counsel’s report to the Justice Department on findings affecting the president of the United States. Charges of witness tampering by a regular citizen are not comparable to a president’s derisive discussions of an investigation with persons who work for him and serve at his will, and a president’s stated desire to end that investigation— whether right or wrong, and I’m not saying, just as the report does not say.

And now to Republican questioning …

R: Thank you, Mr. Mueller, for, just now, making the ultimate point—that it is not possible for a president to obstruct justice by terminating the employment of someone working by law only at the will of the president.

M: I did not make that point, Congressman. The report does not decide that issue. It merely alludes to that issue as a complicating factor in our decision made more broadly not to come to our own conclusion on obstruction.

R: But, Mr. Mueller, is it not so that your investigation found that the president’s discussions about ending this investigation reflected his frustration owing to his complete innocence on the real issue of conspiracy with Russia—an innocence your investigation established in full? His action, therefore, turns out to be, if obstructive at all, more a matter of attempted obstruction of injustice than obstruction of justice. Right?

M: We included in the obstruction text a one-sentence acknowledgement that the president’s behavior had to do with a matter lacking an underlying crime. But we also included a sentence explaining that, under the law, one can take actions that obstruct—and thus do harm to the integrity of our system of justice—without an underlying crime. We included both facts because of the relevance of their conflict to our conclusion, or absence thereof.

And back to a Democrat for a final question …

D: Mr. Mueller, as the highly respected author of this report, don’t you sense some obligation to help the American people come to grips with what you found?

M: I certainly sense an obligation to call attention to Russia’s uncontroverted attempt to influence our election. Otherwise, I sense an obligation to encourage concerned citizens to read the report for themselves and think about it for themselves.

Fox News would report that Mueller’s testimony vindicated the president. MSNBC would report that Mueller’s testimony proved devastating to the president. The band would play on.