House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report shows members of the Trump campaign, including President Trump, were disloyal to the country, even if they were not criminally charged in the investigation.
“Disloyalty to country. Those are strong words, but how else are we to describe a presidential campaign which did not inform the authorities of a foreign offer of dirt on their opponent, which did not publicly shun it, or turn it away, but which instead invited it, encouraged it, and made full use of it?” Schiff said in his opening statement in his panel’s hearing Wednesday afternoon.
“That disloyalty may not have been criminal,” the California Democrat continued. “Constrained by uncooperative witnesses, the destruction of documents and the use of encrypted communications, your team was not able to establish each of the elements of the crime of conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt, so not a provable crime, in any event. But, I think, maybe something worse. A crime is the violation of a law written by Congress. But disloyalty to country violates the very oath of citizenship, our devotion to a core principle on which our nation was founded, that we, the people, and not some foreign power that wishes us ill, we decide, who shall govern, us.”
Schiff also said that Mueller’s report “tells a story about lies” which included, in his view, lies about the abandoned Trump Tower Moscow, discussions with the Kremlin, the firing of FBI Director James Comey, the desire to fire Mueller as well, WikiLeaks, hush money payments, and the meeting at Trump Tower in New York in the summer of 2016.
Mueller spent the morning testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee, with Mueller often seeming hesitant and uncertain under questioning and, at times, even seeming unfamiliar with aspects of his own report. Where the Judiciary Committee focused mostly on issues related to obstruction of justice and other aspects discussed in Volume II of Mueller’s report, it is likely that this afternoon’s follow-up hearing will deal more with Volume I, which focused much more on Russian interference and the Trump campaign’s foreign contacts.
The White House argued that Mueller’s morning testimony was bad politically for Democrats. “The last three hours have been an epic embarrassment for the Democrats. Expect more of the same in the second half,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
Until Wednesday, Mueller’s only public statement on the investigation occurred during a brief press conference in May, where Mueller expressed his hesitance about testifying.
“Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report — it contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made,” Mueller said at the time. “The work speaks for itself and the report is my testimony. I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress.”
Mueller reluctantly agreed to testify following subpoenas from the Democrat-led House Judiciary and Intelligence committees.
The eve of the hearing saw some last minute drama as the Justice Department instructed Mueller not to go beyond what has already been made public in his report and as Mueller requested that his chief of staff Aaron Zebley be allowed to appear alongside him.
Following the firing of Comey, Mueller was appointed special counsel in May 2017 to investigate any ties between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. Mueller’s 448-page report concluded that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election, but he did not establish any sort of conspiracy or coordination between the Kremlin and any Trump associates — or any Americans, for that matter.
Mueller declined to reach a decision on obstruction of justice, but did outline 10 different episodes of possible obstruction committed by Trump during the FBI’s initial Russia inquiry and during the special counsel investigation, including Trump’s alleged request to then-White House counsel Don McGahn to have acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein fire Mueller. Attorney General William Barr and Rosenstein determined Trump had not obstructed justice.
Mueller’s investigation swept up a number of Trump associates, including: former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was convicted on bank fraud and financial fraud and pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice; former Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos, who also pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI; former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who also agreed to a guilty plea deal in connection to lies he told to agents; and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and was found guilty of campaign finance violations. Longtime Trump associate Roger Stone is charged with witness tampering and making false statements, and faces a trial later this year.
Mueller also indicted 12 Russians and alleged members of the GRU for their role in the hacking of the Democratic emails and the dissemination of those emails to WikiLeaks in 2016. Mueller indicted another 13 Russians and three Russian companies — including the Internet Research Agency — for their alleged role in social media disinformation campaigns during the election.
