Rep. Adam Schiff said he was surprised by special counsel Robert Mueller’s shaky testimony about his Russia investigation last summer.
The House Intelligence Committee chairman agreed when asked whether he was “shocked” during a Daily Beast podcast last week.
“I have known Bob Mueller for a long time. I have tremendous respect for him. I think he is just an amazing human being and public servant,” the California Democrat said. “He was not the man that I knew just in terms of his strength of presence, and so it was quite surprising.”
Republican political consultant Rick Wilson, one of the hosts of The New Abnormal podcast, offered his take on why “a lot” of people felt the same way.
“I do think a lot of folks had projected on Mueller a level of aggression that was not present in that testimony — in that hearing,” he said.
They did not discuss it in the podcast, but Mueller’s mental acuity was heavily scrutinized after he testified to Congress about the Russia investigation and appeared not to know key facts about the inquiry. He was previously considered to be sharp and competent.
People “very close” to Mueller, now 75, claimed they believed “something happened” to the former FBI director over the course of the two-year Russia investigation, Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig said in January.
Schiff also said Mueller’s team made mistakes, “as good a group of persecutors as they were,” including not interviewing President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
Mueller’s “cardinal mistake,” Schiff said, was “not demanding to interview the president.”
Instead, Trump submitted written answers to questions posed by Mueller’s team.
Mueller’s report, released in April of last year, showed his team was unable to establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Schiff insisted there is “significant evidence” uncovered by his panel’s own Russia investigation exposing the “Trump campaign efforts to seek, make use of, and cover-up Russian help in the 2016 presidential election.”
He did so last week after the House Intelligence Committee released dozens of witness interview transcripts showing several top intelligence, law enforcement, and national security officials from the Obama administration all denied seeing evidence of collusion.
