Wednesday, July 24, 2019
Mueller speaks
So far (9:28 AM), the Democrats on Judiciary Committee are reading the report (with questions to Mueller giving us non-readers an earful...the Republicans seem to be triangulating with questions about the special counsel law and other items and events not in the report. Their purpose I guess is to undermine the legitimacy of the report.
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Purely as theater, it's been pretty dull. The last time America tuned into a congressional committee hearing, it was to consider salacious drunken teenage doings. I predict this show will be a bust with the public.
ReplyDeleteBeg to differ...not dull...I can see it on Broadway down the line.
ReplyDeleteHalf way through 10:05...break...Preceded by Jim Joradn giving a speech...
ReplyDeleteLouis Gomhert acted like he was a prosecuting attorney cross-examining Mueller. Maybe grandstanding to his constituency? Margaret said something previously predicting that some Representatives would act like asses. Looks like that was the case with Gomhert.
ReplyDeleteSorry, spelled his name wrong. Should be "Gohmert".
DeleteI saw what you described, Katherine, and immediately switched channels. I'll read the reviews and am thankful Margaret is watching. Any condensation and commentary from her here or in Commonweal will be greatly respected and appreciated. But I am tired of the neverending confrontation and grandstanding.
DeleteAs long as Louie Gohmert is in Congress, other candidates for Dumbest Member, including Ted Yoho, don't have a chance.
DeleteNo, Louis' real name is "Goaway". I wish he and is ilk would indeed do that!
DeleteGuy Reschenthaler (R. Pa) seemed especially contemptuous to Mueller...hardly giving him time to answer.
ReplyDeleteThe Dems continue to read what they see as the criminal or civil acts of Trump recorded in the report.
ReplyDeleteRep. Ben Cline (R. Va) is equally contemptuous. (11:28)
As with Reschenthaler: Do we have campaign fodder being prepared to clip and edit for the 2020 election.
Several returns to claim that Mueller wanted the FBI job back in interview with Trump prior to his appointment as head of the Special Counsel... He has denied that.
ReplyDeleteAlso Steele report keeps cropping up...
References to the Steele report always reference the Dems paying for the work; no mention that the Republicans (committee?) started the process.
DeleteBarr investigation into the origins of the investigation referenced by several Republicans.
I'm guessing that at 72 (then) Mueller wanted a job like he wanted a hole in the head. I think he stepped up to the special prosecutor job out of a sense of duty.
DeleteFrom the Guardian:
ReplyDelete"Mueller’s confirmation that Trump could still be charged with obstruction of justice once he leaves the White House has rightfully raised eyebrows, and not least because of who prompted the remark: Republican representative Ken Buck."
I must have been in the kitchen peeling a banana!
No one is conceding time as requested by Chairman Nadler. Lunch time just coming up!
ReplyDeleteWill any Dem ask: Mr. Mueller, does your report indicate that the House should initiate impeachment charges?
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that he would throw it back at them--there's your investigation, you decide.
DeleteBeen watching for about 90 minutes.
ReplyDeleteDemocrats: Highlighting portions of the report,esp Trump directing trying to shut down the investigation, to build case for obstruction. Seems repetitive to anybody who has been paying attention.
Republicans: Casting aspersions on credibility of sources and their testimony in the report, questioning Mueller's competence, and pointing out that Mueller, unlike Ken Starr, did not characterize Trump's actions as "impeachable."
The few times that Mueller has been asked questions or raised objections to the interpretation put forth by committee members, he is interrupted and not allowed to explain.
The Guardian: 16:48 uk time
ReplyDelete"The judiciary committee hearing has already run long, and the intelligence committee hearing is supposed to begin in less than 10 minutes. Republicans now seem to have no concern about railroading Mueller in order to present his report in the most favorable light for Trump.
"The final data on how much Mueller spoke during Republicans’ “questioning” should be interesting."
Ironic that Mueller is a Republican appointed by Republicans.
DeleteMueller did say early on that the president could still be charged with obstruction after he left office.
ReplyDeleteHearing adjourned. Interesting optics: Democrats highly diverse ethnically. Wonder if that was calculated. Certainly made Republicans seem, collectively, like the party of angry white men.
ReplyDelete/Rep. Veronica Escobar (D. TX) asks about the "process other than the criminal justic system...etc. etc.
ReplyDeleteRep. Escobar: Impeachment? Correct? Mueller...I'm not going to answer that.... Escobar sums up the charges...and observes that Congress should do its duty...
Mueller's performance. Since my hearing is going, I was struck by the need to have people repeat their question or citation. Part of that is the echoes that must resound in a room that size. Being referred to in the press: "slightly dazed." "Dazed and confused." "Person of a different era." "not playing politics." "Not the man he was ten years ago." Absorboed a lot of attack on himself and his team."
ReplyDeleteBut he stuck to his promised performance.
"Not playing politics", I would call that a compliment!
DeleteI think the hearing format would make anyone dazed and confused. Jumping back and forth between many questioners who want address different places in a 400 page report. At times trying to respond to characterizations and not being allowed to speak. Also being nagged to speak into the mic while trying to find pages in the report.
DeleteJean's point: variety on Dems side...women/men/white/black/brown....etc. Repub. two? white women...otherwise contemptuous white man...
ReplyDeleteCorrection: Contemptuous white MEN...
ReplyDeleteChris Christie: characterizes the Republican performance as "inartful." (ABC)
ReplyDeleteHaha! It's hard to be artful when you are working with a pile driver fueled on spleen and testosterone.
DeleteAah,testosterone. My drug of choice.
DeleteIntelligence committee:
ReplyDeleteRepublicans: Trying to "exonerate" Trump and family, despite a weird sidetrack on powers of "exoneration."
Democrats: Establishing that Russian interference is real, and that prez, family, and minions had financial interests in benefiting frim.that interference.
Boy! Did that foray into exoneration ever remind me of 1 a.m. at the Strat when I was in college. Word splicing in which prosecutorial discretion never came up.
DeleteMueller is being quoted as saying "exculpated." Is that more or less than exonerate...
DeleteTrump has tweeted 16 times about hearings, surprising for someone who said he didn't plan to. tune in or maybe watch a little.
ReplyDeleteThis is my favorite so far:
"Why didn’t Robert Mueller & his band of 18 Angry Democrats spend any time investigating Crooked Hillary Clinton, Lyin’ & Leakin’ James Comey, Lisa Page and her Psycho lover, Peter S, Andy McCabe, the beautiful Ohr family, Fusion GPS, and many more, including HIMSELF & Andrew W?"
It is amazing! and instructive that the Steele file, Hillary, etc. keep coming up with the Republican Senators.
DeleteMueller has been forthcoming (for him) about Russian interference and its continuing threat.
Republicans in the Senate are a tad more civilized than those in the House...who are a bunch of bully boys who won't even give Mueller time to respond to their questions/claims.
Delete7/25 Correction: The afternoon session yesterday was not the Senate! Just came to me last night in a dream. It was another House Committee (Intel). Repubs in the afternoon may have looked at their morning behavior and toned it down a bit...but still contemptuous.
DeleteI switched off an hour ago to wrangle with Medicare and billing matters, which was more pleasant than the hearings, alas.
ReplyDeleteThere seem to be alternate worlds in which people live now: The world in which everything you hear from anything outside of Trump's tweets is a hoax or a witch hunt that only Trump can save us from. And the real world.
We opted out for a while also. Blue skies and temperatures in the 70s. A walk by the lake seemed like a better use of time.
DeleteAccording to Chuck Todd, you all switched off just when it got good.
ReplyDeleteI saw some between right after opening and 9:30 when I toddled off for physical therapy, another half hour on the car radio going -- an hour missed while working up some aches and pains -- and then most of the rest on the car radio and at home. I've always thought obstruction is a non-starter for impeachment. At best, it's an add-on offense to fill the legal page size.
I saw all of Part II, which is Book 1 of the Report, and-- aside from Adam Schiff not knowing when to shut up -- still think that's where the treason is and the outrage should be. So I may have been prejudiced in favor of the second reel.
Stuck through Round 1. Bobbed in and out in 2. Was watching Stephanopolous and switched to CNN at the end. Amazed at how quick they gave Trump the winner's prize--just because he watched it all day and declared victory.
ReplyDeleteDon't see that this will move Pelosi to impeachment territory, but anyone who thinks that the Russians (and perhaps others) didn't intervene are deaf and blind. Mueller was clear on that....
Whatever Pelosi does, I can't imagine there aren't going to be more Dems signing up for articles of impeachment, but I don't see how they're going to convince the voters, if today's Round 2 didn't do it.
Yes, while the GOP is freaking out about illegals voting and voter on the home front, they seem unable to confront the reality of Russian meddling.
DeleteNo, I doubt we'll have impeachment, but the hearings and associated coverage will provide talking points for the ultimate Dem candidate to use against Trump in the election.
I wonder if any candidates in next week's debate will have sense enough to give us a preview of how they will use that info.
Mueller was asked why he didn't subpoena the president. He said that Trump would have fought it, and the proceedings would have been dragged out. My feeling was, why bother? His lie count is probably in five figures by now. Would we be able to believe a thing he said? It would have just been another opportunity to rally his base. Who of course believe that he isn't a pathological liar.
ReplyDeleteThere was a bit of a colloquy at the end in which Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont and Mueller seemed to arrive at the conclusion that the three-pronged Russian attack on our election -- and all the other countries that are gearing up to go and do likewise -- is the new normal.
ReplyDeleteCBS's foreign correspondent -- Engel? the one with the admirable hair -- said now that the Russians have been seen doing it and getting away with it, everybody will be doing it all the time.
There seems to be a lot of disappointment in the news commentary that Mueller did exactly what he said he was going to do, which was to stick to what was in the report. Apparently they wanted him to draw a picture and tell Congress what they ought to do. If they can't figure it out for themselves it's not Mueller who is slacking off on the job.
ReplyDeleteThe point was, nobody in Congress has read the report.
DeleteThat hasn't changed. Under that situation, with Trump's Tweets and babble on the sidewalk getting equal time with 5-plus hours of Mueller, and with Trump knowing what simple bumper sticker he wanted to plant but Mueller making Congress and us work for it, Trump commands the dull-witted media again.
One more thing to note: Jay Sekulow is Trump's attorney. Everything he says about the law -- no matter how much it is amplified by Trump, Fox and steno-reporters -- is only the defense case. Prosecutors might (and already have) disagree with his reading of the law.
ReplyDeleteThis sort of thing should take place in front of judges, who are used to it. It should not be a matter of putting competing interpretations up for public opinion to decide what's the law.
This morning (7/25) front page headlines:
ReplyDeleteNew York Times: "Mueller Warns of Russian Sabotage and Rejects Trump’s ‘Witch Hunt’ Claims"
WSJ: "Mueller Sticks to His Report, Rejects 'Witch Hunt' Rebuke.
Too bad Trump doesn't read.
Dan Balz says it all at the Washington Post:
ReplyDelete"Democrats are now left with one option to end Trump’s presidency: The 2020 election"
"Regardless of the evidence of obstruction contained in Mueller’s report, impeachment is a fraught strategy for the Democrats, given public opinion and the dynamics in the Senate. After Wednesday, the prospects for impeachment appear more remote, which means it will be left to the eventual Democratic presidential nominee, with the help of the party, to develop a comprehensive case against the president, one that can win 270 electoral votes. To date, that hasn’t happened."
Developing a comprehensive case against the president shouldn't be too hard. They should try something like, "Most corrupt administration in the history of the USA, judging from the number of officials indicted or resigned under a cloud. Openly welcomed Russian interference in our elections. Cozied up to dictators and alienated our longtime allies. Appointed partisan judges that we'll be living with for the next 40 years. Appointed cabinet officials who have no experience or expertise in the areas they're expected to serve. Failed to address climate change and rolled back environmental protection laws. Put national park land up for sale. Gutted the Civil Service system. Deregulated big business and left consumer protection twisting in the wind. Not only didn't have a comprehensive health plan but tried to gut the ACA." There, laid it out for them.
DeleteForgot something important; the Trump administration's chaotic and inhumane immigration policies. It's really important for the Dem candidate to not only call that out, but to put forth a concrete, rational plan to fix it.
DeleteDan Baltz is always so much the sum and substance of conventional wisdom. A smarter way of saying what he said is, the Ds could make the case for removal in the House, knowing that Addison Mitchell McConnell (who blocked two bills to deal with Russian meddling yesterday) will block impeachment in the Senate. THEN they should replace the Dunning-Kruger in the White House and the Mouth of Flannel in the Senate together in 2000. On the basis of: the Ds are doing their job and the aforementioned are not.
DeleteBut that is not the conventional wisdom.
Balz: Goes to show how rare conventional wisdom has become.
DeleteTom, you're right that they could do both.
DeleteConsider this a follow up to what I posted yesterday afternoon (3:46 p.m. EST), on the thread titled " Mr. Mueller! Here are some questions."
ReplyDeleteI haven't had time to follow this issue, so I admit my ignorance. I said yesterday, "I wonder what to make of the clash between McGovern's analysis and the analyses he criticizes." I'm still asking myself about that. Tom Blackburn commented yesterday, "... this is not the first time that McGovern has what we call in the trade a scoop. And a lot of them remained scoops, being a story that somehow only McGovern could find." Could that be the case here? Or is there another explanation that's a better one? I don't know. Your thoughts?
https://raymcgovern.com/2019/07/25/mueller-agonistes-over-the-hill-marine-cant-take-the-hill/
I'm not familiar with Ray McGovern before this, but I read the link. Geez, he's pretty mean (but not the only mean pundit on the subject). No wonder Mueller was reluctant to testify. Anything he said, or didn't say, was going to be used against him. I totally get why he refused to go beyond what was in the report. And if Congress doesn't heed his warning about the Russians' interference, they're idiots, or collaborators. Or both.
DeleteHere are two which offer a different take from Ray McGovern's:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/i-said-what-i-meant
https://www.georgevecsey.com/home/robert-mueller-remains-an-american-hero
Gene, In his blog post you cited yesterday, McGovern has to know that in asking for proof that the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg is a Putin operation he is asking for sources and methods, which the intelligence folks never, never talk about. So he is just blowing smoke there.
DeleteThe Report says that the intelligence agencies provided the evidence against the Russians he indicted. Apparently there is enough they can declassify that a case could be made if any of those bozos could be arrested. A bunch of lawyers couldn't get that kind of evidence on their own. Members of Congress knew they'd just get "it's a secret" if they demanded the answers to McGovern's questions. And those on the Intelligence Committee can get more from the intelligence sources in closed session.
I read something (one of those "for what it's worth but not likely provable" articles) in which an ex-CIA type (who, unlike McGovern didn't claim to know everything) speculated from something one of the agencies let slip that we were able at one point to follow an IRS attack on a local election supervisor keystroke by keystroke as they sent it out. That suggested, to him, a mole or even possibly a hidden camera. Who knows?
Maybe McGovern. He knows everything.
Thanks very much for this, Tom.
DeleteBoth newspapers we receive here, and a good deal of other news coverage I've seen regarding Mueller's appearance, has run with the storyline, "Mueller's testimony contradicts Trump". True, as far as it goes. But I don't think it goes very far. I expect that Trump already is perceived as such a habitual liar, that everyone already discounts everything he says anyway; so nobody is surprised, or cares very much, that Mueller has contradicted Trump.
ReplyDeleteI also think that the storyline "Mueller contradicts Trump" is a breathtaking moving of the goalposts. Surely the weight of hope invested in the hearings, and indeed in the entire Mueller investigation, is that Mueller would reveal something impeachable. That's the elephant. "Trump said something untrue on Twitter" is a gnat.
If the Democrats controlled the Senate, Trump would have been impeached already. They had more on him than they had on Nixon back in the day, and way more than on Clinton. The weight of hope was that the findings of the Mueller investigation would be something that would garner bipartisan support for impeachment. There is nothing that would do that. His famous quote that "he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" and get away with it isn't hyperbole. It's just a statement of fact.
DeleteThe story doesn't go away. Take Book 1 of the Mueller Report. Add what is reported here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/us/politics/states-voting-systems.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage
Especially these two grafs:
"And despite a flurry of activity across the federal government, coordination is a major challenge — chiefly because President Trump, who has only episodically acknowledged the Russian interference in 2016, reacts badly whenever aides bring up the topic, which he interprets as questioning the legitimacy of his election.
"He has never overseen detailed meetings about hardening the American system, and he undermined a White House briefing for reporters about actions it was taking when he joked with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, mockingly warning him not to interfere in elections again. Because the administration eliminated the post of White House cybersecurity coordinator last year, interagency meetings on the issue are often held elsewhere, or are convened by House and Senate oversight committees."
There is the case for impeachment.