OPINION

JOHN BRUMMETT: Mueller testimony looms

At long last, Robert Mueller will testify before two House committees Wednesday.

Democrats and Republicans seek exploitable moments, which speaks to the sad essence of our diseased contemporary politics.

Both partisan sides want to hear Mueller's voice producing politically usable snippets that would influence the superficial thinking and partisan leanings of people who'll never read his exhaustive report.

Nothing can possibly reap real political benefit, you see, until it's said on television.

Democrats want Mueller to enumerate examples of Trump campaign interaction with Russians and with presidential behavior that might have qualified as obstruction of justice. Republicans want him to mouth the magic words that he found no collusion.

Naturally, each wants to pay no attention to the other.

On Sunday, setting this stage, The New York Times reported that, in 88 career appearances before congressional committees, Mueller came to a state of dread over the partisanship those exercises forced him to endure.

Rep. Peter Welch, a Democrat from Vermont, told The Times: "We go in eyes wide open. His style under the most effusive of circumstances is almost monosyllabic."

It all served to remind me of a column I wrote in April that imagined Mueller's testimony. For the occasion, I wish to republish excerpts.

Here goes, with "D" standing for a generic Democratic congressional questioner; "R" for a generic Republican one, and "M" for 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 implicitly that the president stands vulnerable to that charge based on your findings?

M: There is nothing in the report that is implied. 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?

M: We stopped when we had completed our assignment under the clear parameters established by the entity for which we were working, the Justice Department.

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 mere summaries. But it was not my appropriate role or purpose to send smoke signals to Congress, and I did not do so.

D: If this House Judiciary Committee, acting on your report, should begin hearings in consideration of articles of impeachment, would you endorse and assist that action?

A: I would be a resource, as would be the report itself. 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.

And now to Republican questioning ...

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

M: Neither I nor the report actually made that point, Congressman.

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 a charge of 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 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 and think about it for themselves.

One new element necessitating addendum: There is a recent indication that Republicans, depending on how the hearings are going, may try to discredit Mueller with queries about alleged political bias in some of his leading attorneys and prosecutors.

Any chance of Mueller blowing his top could come in reaction to that.

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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 07/23/2019

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