Special Counsel Robert Mueller told Congress on Wednesday that he did not exonerate President Trump and that he could, in fact, be indicted after he leaves office. And he hinted that he believes Trumpâs written answers to questions may have contained falsehoods.
In a curt exchange with Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck, the former special counsel said the Justice Departmentâs legal rules donât shield Trump from criminal charges after heâs out of the White House.
âCould you charge the president with a crime after he left office?â Buck asked.
âYes,â Mueller replied.
âYou believe that he committedââyou could charge the president of the United States with obstruction of justice after he left office?â Buck asked.
âYes,â Mueller replied.
House Judiciary Committee Democrats, including Rep. Jamie Raskin, nodded excitedly through the exchangeâthe closest Mueller came to explaining the significance of his refusal to exonerate the president in his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction by the White House. It followed a similar, shorter exchange earlier with the Democratic Judiciary chairman, Rep. Jerry Nadler.
Muellerâs testimony had something for everyoneâand something to upset everyone.
The former special counsel refused to read portions of his report aloud and wouldnât say if he would have charged the president if Justice Department DOJ rules had allowed it; at one point, he inadvertently said he would have charged the president, but then corrected himself later.
Democrats hoping for viral drama were disappointed.
But Muellerâs testimony wasnât without substance: H; he blamed Trump for boosting Wikileaksâ illegal activity and said the Kremlin is already looking to interfere in the 2020 election.
He torpedoed two of Trumpâs favorite lines.
Nadler asked Mueller if it was true that his report did not clear the president of obstruction of justice. Mueller answered, âCorrectâit is not what the report said.â
âWhat about total exoneration?â Nadler asked, referring to a phrase the president has tweeted many times. âDid you actually totally exonerate the president?â
âNo,â Mueller replied.
He also confirmed that Trump refused to sit for an interview with his team and explained that he did not subpoena Trump because such a move would get tied up in time-consuming litigation.
Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) asked about Trumpâs written answers to Muellerâs questions.
âIsnât it fair to say that the presidentâs written answers were not only inadequate and incompleteâbecause he didnât answer many of your questionsâbut where he did that his answers showed he wasnât always being truthful?â Demings asked Mueller.
"I would say, uh, generally," Mueller replied.
Republicans, meanwhile, looked to damage Muellerâs credibility and paint him as a partisan. Herefused, for the most part, to engage with their critiques.
In back-to-back hearings that unspooled over seven hours, Mueller spoke slowly, and his speech was sometimes haltingâwhich his critics seized on in social media posts and television appearances
In one back-and-forth, he had to ask the fast-talking Georgia Republican Rep. Doug Collins to repeat himself multiple times. He consulted the report throughout questioning, often pausing to scrutinize the book-length document.
In his exchange with Collins, he struggled to explain how his report distinguished between conspiracy and collusion. And at one point, he called the president âTrimpâ instead of âTrumpâââa verbal slip-up that damaged what could have been a valuable video clip for Democrats.
As the first hearing neared its close, The Daily Beast texted Republican Rep. Matt Gaetzâone of Trumpâs top Congressional alliesâfor his view of how it was going. âFor Democrats?â Gaetz wrote, and then sent a gif of a mushroom cloud.
In one tense and awkward moment, Mueller opted not to defend himself against. Rep. Louie Gohmert. A famously bombastic Republican from Texas, Gohmert laid into Mueller over his handling of the anti-Trump texts one of his investigators, Peter Strzok, sent to another FBI employee with whom he was having an affair. Gohmert, raising his voice, told Mueller he had âperpetuated injustice.â Then Gohmertâs time ran out, and Nadler told Mueller he could reply to the incendiary accusations. But he didnât.
âI take your question,â Mueller said, and left it at that.
One new tidbit of information came out in Gohmertâs questioning, though: Mueller said that when he met with Trump in early 2017 about his search for a new FBI director, he was not a candidate for the position. Trump has long maintainedâand tweeting during the hearingâthat Mueller tried to get the job and resented Trump for not hiring him.
In moment after moment throughout the hearing, Mueller refused to throw political bones to Democrats. A striking instance came when Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a member of House Democratic leadership, pressed him on whether or not the president could be charged with obstruction of justice.
âThose are the elements of obstruction of justice,â Jeffries said, after describing how Trump ordered the White House Counsel to fire Mueller. âThis is the United States of America. No one is above the law. No one. The president must be held accountable one way or the other.â
Mueller didnât buy itââsort of.
âLet me just say, if I might, I don't subscribe necessarily to yourââto the way you analyze that, I'm not supportive of that analytical charge,â he said, without elaborating.
Mueller also refused to read aloud from his report, another disappointment to Democrats who had hoped such moments could create viral video clips. When Rep. Ted Lieu, a firebrand California Democrat, asked him to do so, he refused.
âIâm happy to have you read it,â Mueller said with a smile.
In that same exchange, Mueller indicated to Lieu that he would have charged Trump if not for a DOJ rule barring the prosecution of sitting presidents. But in the opening statement of the second hearing, this time before the House Intelligence Committee, Mueller corrected himself and said he did not make a charging decision either way because of the rule.
There were few decorum-breaking moments during the first of the two hearings, but there were some groans. When Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) attempted to make the point that Muellerâs findings were informed by the mediaâby comparing citiations of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Fox News clipsâDemocrats smirked and rolled their eyes.
Mueller himself, long portrayed as the picture of stoicism, did show some flashes of emotion. Cut off by Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA), he slightly rolled his eyes, exasperated. He raised a finger to begin countering Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) accusation of bias toward Democrats, but Johnson continued with a four-minute monologue slamming Democrats and his investigation.
Even before the first hearing began, the atmosphere in 2141 Rayburn on Wednesday morning matched the immense hype. Perennially late lawmakers were in their seats long before Mueller arrived in the room, chatting, joking, and in at least one case, literally biting their nails.
One of Muellerâs chief antagonistsâRep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), the chairman of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, who does not sit on the committees that would question Muellerâsauntered into the room and took a seat in the audience, just a few feet behind the former special counsel.
While other GOP lawmakers tried and failed to get a seat in the room, Capitol Hill interns and members of the public waited overnight, sleeping in the marble hallways of Rayburn to make sure they snagged one. One seat opened up quickly when a man with his hair in a bun and a checkered keffiyeh started shouting about encrypted messages and Trump Tower Moscow as soon as Mueller entered; he was immediately escorted out by police.
As she walked into a room packed full of lawmakers, press, and cameras, Rep. Debbie Lesko, a freshman Republican from Arizona, succinctly summed up the vibe.
âThis,â she said, âis a bit insane.â
The Capitol Hill doubleheader was the culmination, and all-but-certain conclusion, of Muellerâs work as special counselâa job that started more than two years ago at a moment of extraordinary national tumult.
After the Intelligence Community released an assessment in January 2017 that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 election to try to help Trump win, then-FBI Director James Comey revealed that the bureau was scrutinizing Trump Worldâs Russia ties. The disclosure enraged Trump, who then fired Comey, sending the Justice Department into emergency mode.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions had already recused himself from the Russia probe because of his role on Trumpâs campaign. So Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who was supervising the probe, named Mueller as special counsel and directed him to take it over. (Rosenstein told The Daily Beast he did not watch Muellerâs testimony. âI am out of town on a road trip with my family. I already read the report. I am not watching the hearing. America is still here outside the beltway.â) Mueller soon assembled a team of prosecutors and investigators to comb through all things 2016.
Naturally, controversy ensued. Republicans pointed to the fact that some members of Muellerâs team had donated to Democratic campaigns, and to the controversial career of Andrew Weissmann, a top Mueller deputy. And congressional committees opened parallel probes, questioning witnesses, subpoenaing documents, and swimming in their own seas of controversy.
Over the next two years, Mueller plowed away. He questioned hundreds of witnesses and issued thousands of subpoenas. By the time he called it quits, his team had indicted more than 30 people and secured a host of guilty pleas, including from the presidentâs former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and from George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign. Longtime Republican operative Roger Stone is facing charges. And Paul Manafort, Stoneâs former business partner and Trumpâs former campaign chief, is serving a four-year sentence for crimes committed before the election season.
Mueller also charged a host of Russian nationals with breaking laws to influence the election. He zeroed in on the Internet Research Agency, a government-backed troll farm whose workers impersonated Americans to spread incendiary viral content via Facebook and Twitter. The trolls even organized real-life political rallies in the U.S., according to the report Mueller would later release.
The special counsel also farmed out a host of cases to different U.S. attorneyâs offices, including a probe of the presidentâs inaugural committee.
After concluding his investigation, Mueller submitted a report on his work to Attorney General Bill Barr. Barr then released a brief letter downplaying its contents, which Mueller privately blamed for spreading âpublic confusion.â Members of Congress demanded the reportâs immediate release, but it was several weeks before Barr, after putting it through a rigorous legal review, made it publicâminus some redactions. But before the report dropped, Barr gave an unusual press conference that was widely viewed as an effort to spin the document in the most favorable way for the administration.
âPresident Trump faced an unprecedented situation,â Barr said at the press conference, appearing to defend Trumpâs efforts to shutter Muellerâs probe. âAs he entered into office, and sought to perform his responsibilities as president, federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct before and after taking office, and the conduct of some of his associates. At the same time, there was relentless speculation in the news media about the presidentâs personal culpability. Yet, as he said from the beginning, there was in fact no collusion.â
The report detailed a host of contacts between Russian nationals and the Trump campaign, as well as efforts by third parties to set up talks. Mueller found no evidence that denizens of Trump World conspired with the Russians who interfered in the election. He left the door open, however, to the possibility that Trump broke the law by obstructing justice. And his report detailed a host of steps Trump took to interfere with Muellerâs work, including multiple efforts to get subordinates to fire the Special Counsel.
Despite those moves, Mueller did not charge Trump with a crime. Explaining his decision, he pointed to a Justice Department legal finding that concluded prosecutors cannot charge sitting presidents with a crime.
â[I]f we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,â Mueller said in his only public statement on the probe, at a question-free press conference.
âWe did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime.â
The subtext: The ball is in Congressâs court. Muellerâs done.
This story has been updated to correct a mischaracterization of the nature of third-party outreach to the Trump campaign.
