Media, Democrats reveal excitement over Robert Mueller's upcoming congressional testimony
Former special counsel Robert Mueller agrees to testify on Capitol Hill; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'
Anyone counting on former Special Counsel Robert Mueller to drop a political bombshell that will lead to President Trump’s impeachment when Mueller testifies before two House committees July 17 is in for a big disappointment.
Mueller has made it absolutely clear that his only public remarks on his investigation of Russia’s interference in our 2016 presidential election and allegations of obstruction of justice by Trump will be taken directly from his 448-page report. The vast majority of the report has already been made public.
“Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report,” Mueller said in his only public statement on his report, which was written after an exhaustive investigation that took nearly two years. “It contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made. We chose those words carefully and the work speaks for itself. And the report is my testimony.”
TRUMP CALLS MUELLER TESTIMONY A ‘DIVERSION,’ SAYS ‘SCANDAL IS ON THE OTHER SIDE’
House Democrats will call on the former special counsel to answer questions regarding the context, clarity, and conclusions of his investigation. But we can expect them to be frustrated when Mueller refuses to provide any information beyond what is already contained in his report.
The Democrats are sure to press Mueller on why he decided not to reach a conclusion on whether Trump should be charged with obstruction of justice, if not for a Justice Department legal opinion that a sitting president can’t be charged with a federal crime.
It would be a profound mistake for Democrats to yet again lose sight of what voters are concerned with and put all of their hopes on Robert Mueller to either impeach Trump or defeat him for re-election in 2020.
More than 1,000 Republican and Democratic former federal prosecutors have signed a letter saying that there is an ironclad case for obstruction of justice charges to be filed against Trump if he wasn’t president.
Additionally, it is evident that Attorney General William Barr’s four-page characterization of the Mueller report was at the least misleading about the conclusions that the special counsel reached. Mueller will definitely be called upon to provide greater clarity into the more nuanced findings in his report.
To be sure, while American people deserve transparency from a process that has been muddled by partisan politics and a biased media, it is also clear that voters are tired of all the investigations of Trump, his presidential campaign and his administration.
Polls consistently show a strong majority of the country opposing impeachment of the president. And importantly, even if the Democratic majority in the House succeeds in impeaching Trump, there is virtually no chance the Republican-controlled Senate would convict the president in an impeachment trial and force him out of office.
Democrats and independents aligned with Democrats control 47 of the 100 seats in the Senate. But it would take 67 votes in the Senate to convict Trump of impeachable offenses – meaning even if every Democratic senator voted to convict the president (by no means a certainty), 20 Republican senators would have also vote to convict and tell Trump, in effect: You’re fired!
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., understands therefore that any impeachment effort is doomed to die in the Senate. She has spoken out against impeaching Trump, to the dismay of many far-left Democrats.
“Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country,” Pelosi said earlier this month.
Mueller’s report found that there wasn’t enough evidence to conclude that Trump or his presidential campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government to win the 2016 presidential election.
In addition, while the Mueller report drew no conclusion on whether Trump has obstructed justice regarding the investigations of him and his campaign, it stated that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
However, Barr and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded after studying the Mueller report that “evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense,” Barr stated in a March 24 letter to members of Congress.
In the absence of clear and irrefutable evidence that President Trump committed a crime while in office, Democrats should be prepared to move on from their investigations of Trump to address the issues that matter most to voters – including health care and the humanitarian crisis at our border.
According to a recent Gallup Poll, Americans are more concerned about immigration than ever before in our nation’s history. A shocking 23 percent of Americans have said that immigration and the ensuing crisis at our border are the most important problems facing our country. This is an issue that matters to the American people and is an important issue that our elected officials must address.
I am not opposed to Mueller testifying before Congress. But if Democrats are hoping to reclaim White House in 2020, they will need to focus their attention on the issues that voters actually care about – and not continue to pursue closed cases.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
It would be a profound mistake for Democrats to yet again lose sight of what voters are concerned with and put all of their hopes on Robert Mueller to either impeach Trump or defeat him for re-election in 2020.
Ultimately, if all the Democrats are looking for is to put on a televised political spectacle when Mueller testifies before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, the only thing they will end up with is four more years of Donald Trump in the White House.
Get the recap of top opinion commentary and original content throughout the week.