Just minutes into questioning former special counsel Robert Mueller, House Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee made their exasperation apparent.
Mueller was repeatedly asking members of Congress to reiterate questions and revisit specific portions of the 448-page report. Lines of questioning were repeatedly stymied by his refusal to address vast swaths of topics still under ongoing review by the Department of Justice.
And this ought to shock absolutely no one. Outside of the depths of the Swamp, the question of President Trump’s relationship with Russia is a closed case, and the obstruction question, punted by Mueller, has hence been rendered nearly irrelevant to public opinion. But Democrats hoping to revitalize the Mueller report by making Mueller himself testify didn’t just miss the country’s overwhelming indifference to the Russia question. They forgot that bringing a 74-year-old consummate career prosecutor to a show trial for political points would actually be extremely boring.
Mueller has spent half a century serving the country, first joining the Marine Corps in 1968, then earning a Purple Heart and Bronze Star Medal for serving in the Vietnam War, spending a dozen years in U.S. attorney offices, and running the FBI for another dozen. He could’ve ridden off into the sunset to enjoy his much deserved golden years. He certainly didn’t need another item on his resume to go down in history as a great American patriot. But, at age 72, when tapped by former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to run the special counsel investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections, Mueller stepped up to the plate.
There’s no question that nefarious actors within the intelligence community’s ranks allowed politics to taint elements of the investigation. But there’s not one shred of evidence that Mueller did his job with any less of the professionalism that colored the first 50 years of his career. The only, though still significant, misstep that Mueller unilaterally made was his decision to punt the obstruction question and continued equivocation on whether he only did so per the standards of the Office of Legal Counsel or whether another factor was involved.
Mueller spent two years and more than 400 pages saying his piece. After the report’s release, he explicitly told the public, “Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report.” He made it abundantly clear that he would become no one’s political pawn and any congressional hearing would prove utterly redundant.
Yet Democrats demanded their show trial anyways. Of course it’s a dud.
For one thing, even if Mueller’s mental faculties are as pristine as ever and there’s no evidence to believe otherwise, 74-year-olds tend to have slower physical fine-motor skills and diminished hearing. That does not lend itself well to hearings that beclown themselves as more analogous to WWE-style screaming matches than any serious legal inquisition. Furthermore, Mueller’s a prosecutor, not a politician. He deals in specifics and legal stipulations, not sound bytes. So when Democrats and Republicans alike scream at breakneck speed for Mueller to comment on highly detailed verbiage from the report, of course he wants to reread, ponder, and then answer. It’s highly professional. It’s also highly boring.
Beltway politicos minds have been made up on the Trump-Russia question since the summer of 2017, and the rest of the country has ceased caring. For the love of God, let Mueller and the American people move on from these inane theatrics.
