Himes plays role in daylong Mueller testimony

WASHINGTON — In his turn during daylong testimony of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller before two House committees, Rep. Jim Himes pressed the chief of the TrumpRussia investigation on whether President Donald Trump benefited more from Russian interference in the 2016 election than Hillary Clinton, and whether the efforts played a decisive role in the outcome.

But much like his colleagues on both sides of the aisle, Himes got responses that fit within the four corners of the 448page Mueller report released in April, and Mueller’s insistence at the time that the report “is my testimony.”

“Which presidential candidate was Russia’s hackinganddumping operation designed to benefit, (Democratic nominee) Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?” Himes asked Mueller turning his 5minute round of questioning in a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday afternoon.

Mueller agreed with Himes, but it was an easy answer since the report had already stated that Russian efforts were directed toward helping Trump.

Himes took it a step further to ask one of the questions still hanging over the 2016 election: Did the Russian hacking and use of trolls to flood social media affect the outcome of the election?

Mueller responded that those issues “are being or have been investigated by other entities,” which he didn’t identify.

When Himes pressed him, Mueller responded: “I’m not going to speculate.”

Himes also questioned Mueller on the “third avenue” of Russian connections to the Trump campaign, the one involving Trump’s informal foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, whose bragging over TrumpRussia connections prompted the start of the original FBI investigation preceding Mueller’s.

Mueller again offered vague answers. Himes finished up by asking whether campaigns should report contacts by foreign individuals or governments?

“Should be and can be,” Muller said, “depending on the circumstances or crime.”

After the hearings, Himes said they lived up to his expectation that bombshells would be few and far between.

Nevertheless, Mueller’s testimony served a positive purpose, he said.

“Americans really need to understand how the Russians manipulated us, and how they’ll do it again,” he said. “Hopefully we took a few steps in that direction today.”

And even though the Mueller report does not conclude Trump must be prosecuted for any crimes, “the U.S. needs to understand the sleaze of this president and ask themselves how they feel about it,” Himes said. “President Obama would have been impeached a thousand times over for this kind of behavior.”

During about seven hours of testimony with a break for lunch, Mueller, a former career federal prosecutor and FBI director, appeared tentative and at times weary.

Democrats used his demurrals as a blank canvas upon which to paint their own views of the investigation, including Trump’s involvement in obstruction of justice.

Republicans, on the other hand, used Mueller as a pinata of sorts in their effort to discredit the investigation — especially the role of former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and the “dossier” he prepared on Trump for Global GPS, which in turn had been hired by the DNC and Clinton campaign.

Mueller stoutly defended the investigation, as well as the legal team of lawyers and agents that assisted him. And he pushed back against Trump’s description of the investigation as a “witch hunt” and a “hoax.”

“Absolutely it was not a hoax,” he said at the intelligence committee hearing. Russian efforts to subvert U.S. elections poses “longterm damage to the United States that we need to move quickly to address.”

Rep. Devin Nunes, RCalif., senior Republican on the intelligence committee, compared Democratic efforts to implicate Trump in wrongdoing via the Mueller report to the Loch Ness monster.

“Like the Loch Ness monster, they insist it is there even though no one can find it,” he said.

Mueller appeared to stray outside the report when he suggested at the morning hearing of the House Judiciary Committee that but for the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion that sitting presidents cannot be charged with federal crimes, his office would have indicted Trump for obstruction of justice.

At the outset of the House intelligence hearing after lunch, Mueller corrected himself by saying his office reached no conclusion on whether Trump was liable to an obstruction indictment because the OLC opinion blocked charging him. That was the conclusion reached in the report.

But at another report, Mueller stated that sitting presidents can indeed be indicted for crimes once they leave office.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that whatever corrections Mueller offers, the sum total of the report and his testimony is damning. Without Justice Department protection, Trump “would be a criminal defendant right now,” he said.

Mueller also sparred with Republicans on Trump’s claim the report gave him “total exoneration.”

The report actually states: “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

In one testy exchange, Mueller disputed Rep. Michael Turner, ROhio, who told Mueller “if the attorney general doesn’t have the power to exonerate, you don’t have to power to exonerate.”

Mueller said that is why he included the language about exoneration in the report because Attorney General William Barr, a staunch Trump defender, “may not know it, and he should know it.”

In a tweet, Trump said Mueller had a conflict of interest in that days before his appointment in May 2017, Mueller had been in the Oval Office asking for his old job back as FBI director. Speculating that Mueller would deny his interest in the job, Trump tweeted “hope he doesn’t say that under oath” and also claimed he had witnesses including Vice President Mike Pence.