Democrats are in talks with Robert Mueller to get him to testify before the House Judiciary Committee within the next two weeks.
Mueller could testify within the next two weeks
The AP’s Jonathan Lemire said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe:
In terms of Robert Mueller, what we have here is a few things. Robert Mueller, when the investigation wound down, there was talk from his spokesman that he was going to soon be leaving the Department of Justice. They didn’t give an exact timeline, but they said it would sooner than later. He hasn’t yet. He’s still an employee of the Department of Justice. And as long as he remains there, it’s much easier for the executive branch, for the president, to try to curtail to prevent him from testifying. Democrats still obviously want to see him there. Nadler, as you said, on Friday, suggested it wouldn’t be this week as they originally hoped, but there are still talks ongoing. We could see him as soon as next week or the week after. This is still very much an active hope to have him there.
The president has suggested publicly that he would be okay with Robert Mueller testifying. But as we’ve been reporting, privately, he’s saying something very different. And eventually, he did shift his tone publicly as well. He’s afraid of what that spectacle will look like. He remembers. He’s told people around him, he remembers how the media basically stopped when Michael Cohen went before Congress. And it was days worth of coverage, very damaging and embarrassing for the president. It upstaged a summit with Kim Jong-un in Vietnam at the time. And he thinks with Mueller, someone who has been, in the president’s belief, unfairly lionized for years, in the media, that when Mueller gets before Congress, even though Mueller is an institutionalist, seems unlikely to really turn a flame thrower to the department of justice, but the president is still concerned that if he’s there and commands the nation’s and world’s attention that nothing good of that will come for the president. And his political future, his prelim standing has always been his paramount concern more than the due process of law and investigation.
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Mueller is going to testify eventually
Democrats are so confident that Robert Mueller will testify because the special counsel is leaving the DOJ, and will be a private citizen. It will be much more difficult for Trump to stop Mueller once he is no longer employed by the Executive Branch. Robert Mueller is going to testify. As has been seen with other witnesses, terms have to be negotiated, and those negotiations take some time. Mueller could be in front of Congress before Memorial Day, which means that some of Trump’s biggest fears are about to come true.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
