Nadler says Mueller should testify ‘to a television audience’

Nadler said the special counsel should testify, even if he gives no new information about the Mueller report’s findings

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler plans to have Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III testify publicly before Congress even if he doesn’t say anything beyond what is in his 448-page report on the Russia investigation.

“We will have Mr. Mueller’s testimony,” the New York Democrat said in response to a question Friday on WNYC radio.

Nadler’s push to bring Mueller before the panel for a televised hearing is the latest twist in what had been weeks of negotiations with the special counsel about his testimony. Mueller made a surprise on-camera announcement Wednesday at the Justice Department with a clear message that he did not want to testify.

View the complete May 31 article by Todd Ruger on The Roll Call website here.

Trump, Mueller and obstruction of justice

“I’ll make a few remarks about the results of our work. But beyond these few remarks, it is important that the office’s written work speak for itself. … We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself.”

— Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, in a statement at the Department of Justice, May 29, 2019

“The report is my testimony.”

— Mueller

“[The report] explains that under long-standing department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that, too, is prohibited. The Special Counsel’s Office is part of the Department of Justice and by regulation, it was bound by that department policy. Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider.”

— Mueller

Now that Mueller is riding off into the sunset, he has some advice for anyone with lingering questions about President Trump’s campaign and Russian election interference, obstruction of justice or the prosecutorial rules the special counsel had to follow.

Read the report.

At 448 pages, the Mueller report requires commitment. It’s a legal document studded with redactions, acronyms and footnotes, with a cast of characters in the hundreds. The report offers complex answers to thorny questions and leaves some blanks.

View the complete May 31 article by Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post website here.

Trump uses discredited conflict-of-interest charges to attack Mueller

President Trump renewed his personal attacks against Robert S. Mueller III on Thursday, leveling discredited accusations that the former special counsel had conflicts of interest that made him a biased investigator.

The attacks came a day after Mueller’s first and only public statement since the conclusion of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether Trump sought to obstruct the probe. During a brief news conference, Mueller reiterated his finding that if his team had concluded Trump did not commit a crime, they would have said so — a statement that sparked a new round of calls from Democrats to impeach the president.

Trump, in tweets and in comments to reporters, accused Mueller of being a “true never-Trumper,” who was conflicted due to a past “business dispute” between them. He also alleged that Mueller asked him for a job.

View the complete May 30 article by Colby Itkowitz, Josh Dawsey and John Wagner on The Washington Post website here.

The Memo: Trump’s anti-Mueller rage is for real

President Trump isn’t trying to goad Democrats into impeachment, after all — he is genuinely angry at the prospect.

That’s the main conclusion to be drawn from Trump’s furious reaction to the first public comments from former special counsel Robert Mueller on his report into allegations of Russian collusion.

Mueller on Wednesday emphasized that he had not been able to exonerate Trump on suspicion of obstruction of justice and seemed to imply that Congress should look at taking up the matter, presumably via impeachment proceedings.

View the complete May 31 article by Niall Stanage on The Hill website here.

Trump Accuses Mueller of a Personal Vendetta as Calls for Impeachment Grow

COLORADO SPRINGS — President Trump lashed out angrily at Robert S. Mueller III on Thursday, accusing him of pursuing a personal vendetta as Mr. Trump sought to counter increasing calls among Democrats for his impeachment.

A day after Mr. Mueller, the special counsel, spoke out for the first time and refused to exonerate the president, Mr. Trump dismissed the Mueller investigation as hopelessly tarnished and expressed aggravation that he could not shake allegations of wrongdoing that have dogged him since the early days of his administration.

“I think he is a total conflicted person,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Mueller before flying to Colorado to deliver the commencement address at the Air Force Academy. “I think Mueller is a true Never Trumper. He’s somebody that dislikes Donald Trump. He’s somebody that didn’t get a job that he requested that he wanted very badly, and then he was appointed.”

View the complete May 31 article by Peter Baker and Eileen Sullivan on The New York Times website here.

Democrats ramp up campaign to get Mueller to testify

House Democrats are ramping up their campaign to get Robert Mueller to testify despite the special counsel’s stated aim to avoid such an appearance on Capitol Hill.

Democrats negotiating for Mueller to come before several committees hope to avoid the antagonistic step of issuing a subpoena to compel his testimony, but they’re not ruling it out.

Plenty of unanswered questions remain about Mueller’s sweeping investigation, and Democrats want to hear from the special counsel.

View the complete May 30 article by Mike Lillis and Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

Here are 5 of the most bizarre moments from Trump’s bonkers Mueller rant on the White House lawn

President Donald Trump delivered a crazed rant on the White House lawn before heading to Colorado — and here are the wildest moments.

The president lashed out at special counsel Robert Mueller, after his first public remarks in two years, and claimed exoneration in the Russia investigation, and he seemed to grow angrier and angrier as the impromptu news conference went on.

These are the most bizarre moments from the president’s remarks:

View the complete May 30 article by Travis Gettys from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

What Mueller Told The Country About Trump

Behind the straight shooting, ramrod demeanor always mentioned by his friends, Robert Mueller possesses a shrewd intelligence. He demonstrated that strategic acuity on Wednesday morning when, with a few carefully selected sentences, he wielded his own reticence to deliver a crushing blow to Donald Trump (and a hard shot to Attorney General William Barr, the White House henchman).

The more diffidence Mueller displayed in speaking publicly — after two years of principled silence as special counsel — the more powerful were the words he chose to utter. Standing before the seal of the Justice Department, he told us it is important that his 448-page report “speak for itself.” Yet with the nation listening, he briskly underlined the most salient aspects of the report, which the great majority of his fellow Americans will never read.

Mueller wants us to understand — contrary to whatever Trump, Jared Kushner, or assorted Republican patsies might claim — that the Russian plot to sway the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton was a historic assault on our democracy. This act by a hostile foreign power was a matter “of paramount importance” that “deserves the attention of every American.

View the complete May 29 article by Joe Conason on the National Memo website here.

This obscure 1973 memo kept Mueller from considering a Trump indictment

The memo itself is not law, but it is the Justice Department’s binding interpretation of law governing its own conduct

The obscure government memorandum that Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III says prevented him from pursuing criminal charges against President Donald Trump points at one avenue for dealing with a misbehaving president: impeachment.

During his first public remarks since taking over the Russia investigation two years ago, Mueller made clear that he never considered indicting Trump, regardless of the findings of his investigation, partially because a 1973 Office of Legal Counsel memorandum prevented him from doing so.

That memorandum, issued in the midst of the Watergate scandal, meant that “charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider,” Mueller said Wednesday. The memo itself is not law, but it is the Justice Department’s binding interpretation of law governing its own conduct.

View the complete May 29 article by Michael Macagnone on The Roll Call website here.

Standing Where Barr Cleared Trump on Obstruction, Mueller Makes a Different Case

The special counsel hopes an appearance will be his first and last public statement about the Russia and obstruction investigation. But he left many things unsaid.

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William P. Barr stood at the Justice Department lectern six weeks ago and put the best possible spin on the Mueller report for his boss, declaring that the special counsel had amassed insufficient evidence to accuse President Trump of a crime.

Robert S. Mueller III delivered a starkly different presentation on Wednesday from the same lectern, saying that charging a sitting president was never an option, no matter the evidence. Instead, his investigators asked another question: Could they clear the president?

On potential obstruction of justice, the answer was no.

View the complete May 29 article by Mark Mazzettti and Charlie Savage on The New York Times website here.