Dems grapple with report
Trump claims vindication despite no conclusion on presidential obstruction
WASHINGTON — Democrats grappled Monday with special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings, holding strategy sessions as Republicans gleefully called for them to “move on.” President Donald Trump accused those responsible for launching Mueller’s Russia probe of “treasonous things against our country” and said they “certainly will be looked into.”
Trump said the release of Mueller’s full report
“wouldn’t bother me at all” as the Democrats clamored for the Justice
Department to release the entire document and not just Sunday’s four-page summary from Attorney General William Barr.
Barr’s letter said Mueller did not find that Trump’s campaign “conspired or coordinated” with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election — knocking down arguments from Democrats who have long claimed there was evidence of such collusion.
But Mueller reached no conclusion on whether Trump obstructed the federal investigation, according to Barr’s summary, instead setting out “evidence on both sides” of the question and stating that “while this report does not conclude the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Absent a recommendation from Mueller, Barr stepped in and decided
there wasn’t sufficient evidence to establish that the president obstructed justice.
Rep. David Cicilline, a Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, said he is among those “not willing to accept the Barr report as a substitute” for the special counsel’s findings. He said the Judiciary panel will make a formal request for Mueller’s report, with the expectation of a response from the Justice Department in “short order.” If one isn’t provided, he said, the committee will begin a subpoena process.
“People expect that this report be produced,” Cicilline said. “The longer we wait the worse it is for the American people.”
Trump, his spokesmen and leading congressional Republicans all claimed total vindication for the president anyway. Questioned by reporters, Trump said he welcomed Mueller’s results but complained he had been abused by the investigation occurring at all and taking too long.
“We can never let this happen to another president again,” he said. “There are a lot of people out there that have done some very evil things, very bad things, I would say treasonous things against our country.”
“Those people will certainly be looked at. I’ve been looking at them for a long time. And I’m saying why haven’t they been looked at. They lied to Congress. Many of them you know who they are.”
He didn’t name names, but Trump has spent months railing against former Justice Department officials, including former FBI Director James Comey, accusing them of an illegal witch hunt for the purpose of delegitimizing his presidency. He has also falsely claimed that the investigation was based on memos compiled into a dossier by former British spy Christopher Steele, and even blamed former Sen. John McCain, who died last year, for passing the memos to the FBI.
The investigation began months before the FBI saw the dossier — and the FBI already had a copy by the time McCain turned it in.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said that he told McCain to give the FBI the dossier.
Talking to reporters Monday, Graham said McCain showed him the dossier when he received it in late 2016.
“And I told him the only thing I knew to do with it, it could be a bunch of garbage, it could be true, who knows? Turn it over to somebody whose job it is to find these things out, and John McCain acted appropriately,” Graham said, according to CNN.
Graham said he “was very direct” with Trump on the issue and told the president McCain “deserves better” than Trump’s recent public attacks on him.
On Monday, ahead of several strategy meetings, Democrats showed they will curtail some focus, at least, from their investigations of Trump and try to keep attention on their policy goals. The House intelligence panel postponed an open hearing with Felix Sater, a Russian-born former business adviser to Trump who helped him negotiate an ultimately unsuccessful deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, was scheduled to hold a news conference Tuesday on health care legislation, Democrats’ top campaign issue.
In a joint statement by House Democratic leaders, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings seemed to concede that collusion had not been found, saying they had confidence in Mueller, “notwithstanding the very public evidence of Trump campaign contact with and willingness to receive support from Russian agents.”
Still, they said, “it will be vital for the country and the Congress to evaluate the full body of evidence collected by the special counsel, including all information gathered of a counterintelligence nature.”
Monday on Capitol Hill, GOP lawmakers called for Congress to move on. “This is done with,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. “It is time for the country to move forward.”
At the same time, however, Republicans followed Trump’s lead in looking into how the investigation began. Graham, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, promised to “unpack the other side of the story” of the Russia investigation.
He said his committee will probe the actions of the Justice Department. Still, he said the investigation was legitimate and had to happen in order to answer questions about interference in the 2016 election.
Graham also had a warning for Trump using his pardon power to help those ensnared by Mueller’s investigation: “If President Trump pardoned anybody in his orbit, it would not play well.”
The president started his day tweeting over the end of the special counsel investigation, segued to a meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and held a celebratory photo-op with the Stanley Cup-winning Washington Capitals. To top it off, news broke along the way of the arrest of attorney Michael Avenatti, who rose to fame representing porn actress Stormy Daniels who alleged she had sex with a married Trump, though Trump denied it.
“We can never let this happen to another president again. There are a lot of people out there that have done some very evil things, very bad things, I would say treasonous things against our country.”
The Washington Post contributed.