On Friday, Greg Sargent made a concise point: “President Trump’s latest position on the Mueller report is that it both totally exonerates him and is fatally flawed at its very core — because it doesn’t totally exonerate him.” Sargent went on to make many of the same points I had fleshed out the day before in my The Absudist Logic Behind Our Constitutional Crisis article. The administration’s position is both schizophrenic and ridiculous.
The next phase of this saga should begin when Robert Mueller testifies before Congress. It’s not yet clear when (or even if) that will happen. Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, who serves on the House Judiciary Committee, made an appearance of Fox New Sunday and announced that Mueller had agreed to make an appearance on May 15th, but he quickly walked that back and clarified that Mueller had been invited to testify on the 15th but had not yet formally accepted.
This must have alarmed the president, because he quickly took to Twitter to suggest that Mueller should not testify at all.
President Trump on Sunday said special counsel Robert Mueller should not testify on the findings of his probe into Russian election interference, suggesting it was an attempt by Democrats to renew scrutiny on the White House after the release of Mueller’s long-awaited report.
“After spending more than $35,000,000 over a two year period, interviewing 500 people, using 18 Trump Hating Angry Democrats & 49 FBI Agents – all culminating in a more than 400 page Report showing NO COLLUSION – why would the Democrats in Congress now need Robert Mueller to testify,” Trump said in a pair of tweets.
“Are they looking for a redo because they hated seeing the strong NO COLLUSION conclusion? There was no crime, except on the other side (incredibly not covered in the Report), and NO OBSTRUCTION. Bob Mueller should not testify. No redos for the Dems!”
This was a reversal of what he told the press on Friday when he said he’d leave the decision on Mueller up to Attorney General William Barr. Barr has more than once stated that he has no objection to Mueller talking to Congress. He reiterated that point when he testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
I’m not sure if Trump is prepared to take legal steps to prevent Mueller from speaking publicly under oath. I’m not sure what Mueller would do if Trump asked him not to testify. I do know that the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, has formally invited Mueller to appear.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is inviting special counsel Robert Mueller to testify about his phone call with Attorney General William Barr in which the two discussed Barr’s four-page memo outlining the conclusions of Mueller’s Russia probe.
Graham sent Mueller a letter on Friday asking him if he would like to testify about “any misrepresentation” of the call, following Barr’s remarks on the issue during his Judiciary Committee hearing this week.
“Please inform the Committee if you would like to provide testimony regarding any misrepresentation by the Attorney General of the substance of that phone call,” Graham said in a letter to Mueller.
If Graham had been under the impression that Trump was planning to block Mueller’s testimony, he would not have extended that invitation. So, it seems the president is freelancing again and there isn’t any preexisting plan. I think he has watching Fox News on Sunday morning saw Rep. Cicilline say that plans for Mueller’s testimony were firming up. That’s when the terror hit.
Trump knows he’s guilty. He knows he’s been going around saying that Robert Mueller totally exonerated him. He knows that is a lie.
It’s not hard to figure the rest out.
But what will happen now?
From the blusterer in chief: more fire and fury, signifying nothing. If he puts more effective pressure on Mueller not to appear, it will simply reinforce that he and Barr were lying all along.
I guess the overarching question in my mind is, “Is it within the power of the President to perpetually stonewall, obstruct, and block witnesses from publicly testifying to what they know”? It is already confirmed that the Republican Party is more than willing to ally with the President on all of these things, and I simply don’t find it believable that they would permit things to happen that will risk exposing the President’s actions through all of this. To even consider the possibility that the GOP would act in good faith out of concerns for the rule of law and our Constitutional processes seems laughable to me.
If it is the case that he can do these things, in alliance with his party, what is there, really, that the Democrats can do? It seems as if there is nothing. They can fight from a legal perspective on those things for which there is legal standing. And Trump is probably willing to allow that to happen, because he knows that at worst, it will linger in the system for a very long time, with no potential danger to him for the foreseeable future. Even the threat of impeachment hearings seems to be a relatively toothless threat, as everyone will simply continue to ignore the requests and the public outrage from Congressional Democrats.
It really does feel as if there is enough inherent institutional ammunition on the President’s side that he can just refuse to go along. And now, he’s publicly talking about a two year extension on his term, simply to prime his base for armed revolution against his enemies, should he lose in 2020. This shit is going to get very real, very quickly.
If Mueller resigns from DOJ I don’t believe Trump can keep from testifying.
It’s hard for me to imagine that Mueller would resign in order to be able to voluntarily testify. Which means it is highly unlikely that he will ever come before Congress. Which means Trump continues to skate, for as far as I can see into the future.