The Robert Mueller Show won’t catch the Phantom of the Opera as the longest-running performance on Broadway, but congressional Democrats may try. The latest extension of its run is the announcement that the Robert Mueller Show will be performing at the House Judiciary Committee on July 17.
Democrats want to push the Robert Mueller Show’s run into the 2020 presidential race. Representatives Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairmen of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, and the deranged anti-Trump left, are convinced that after just a few more performances, the languishing story will finally break through.
So far, the Mueller Show resembles Taboo, the Rosie O’Donnell-Boy George Broadway flop that never connected with audiences and was a total loss despite high expectations on the cultural left.
Rabid anti-Trump Democrats still believe Mueller can give them what they need to impeach Donald Trump and overturn the results of the 2016 election. For many, it has become a psychosis that consumes them.
July 17 is circled in red on their Sierra Club calendars.
Don’t expect much from the July 17 performance of the Robert Mueller Show at the House Judiciary Theater.
Most performances at the congressional theater go like this: Opening statements by Mueller and a Democrat will have one or two pull-quotes that will be repeated on an MSNBC loop. One Democrat’s question and Mueller’s answer will be added to the loop. And on Fox News – and no other station – Q and A by Republicans that undermines the entire premise of the Robert Mueller Show will air.
That’s it, your advance preview.
But Nadler and Schiff are determined to turn the Robert Mueller Show into something it can never be. Their unwillingness to accept the conclusions of the first half of the Mueller report on the Russian/Trump campaign election collusion claim means everyone knows how this story already ends.
Nadler and Schiff say that Americans have “demanded to hear directly” from Mueller “about Russia’s attack on our democracy [and] the Trump campaign’s acceptance and use of that help.”
Yow. The Trump campaign’s “acceptance and use of that help?!”
In fact, the 500-page Mueller report came to the exact opposite conclusion on this false claim that the Trump campaign accepted and used the help of the Russian government or its operatives in the 2016 election. The report says, “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Maybe they are hoping for a rewrite on July 17. They’ll need one, a big one.
In the press conference he held on May 29 at the Justice Department, Mueller made it very clear to everyone, including Congress, that if he was called to testify, his testimony “would not go beyond” the report prepared by his office. That report, Mueller said, “contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made.” The words in the report were chosen “carefully and the work speaks for itself.” The “report is my testimony.” Mueller added that if he was called before Congress, “I would not provide information beyond that which is already public.”
As to Volume II of the Mueller report, his office laid out the evidence they had about possible obstruction of justice without coming to a conclusion on whether there was sufficient evidence to support a criminal charge or making any recommendation on this issue. Mueller left that to the attorney general. After reviewing the evidence, Attorney General William Barr and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein both concluded that the “evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
If Nadler and Schiff think there is a hidden storyline inside the investigative work of the Office of the Special Counsel that will show that the Trump campaign actually colluded with the Russians, they are bound to be disappointed. If something like that had existed, Muller would have already published it.
Even if he didn’t, leakers in his unit would have given it to the New York Times.
On the obstruction of justice issue, do Nadler and Schiff really expect that Mueller will somehow add anything above and beyond what is in the report? Or, that Mueller will somehow venture an opinion that contradicts the attorney general?
Mueller is a long-time veteran of the Justice Department, someone who seems devoted to the chain of command and the regulations that govern the work of prosecutors. He has made it clear he is not going to go beyond what the report already says.
Expect lots of media frenzy and overwrought media coverage when the Robert Mueller Show comes to Congress on July 17. The problem for Nadler and Schiff – and their frothing base – is that we all know how the story ends.
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