Robert Mueller’s faltering and confused performance before Congress on Wednesday was a major surprise for most of the country. But it now appears that senior Democrats, who had personal experience with him, new that he would come across as old and frail.
Republicans are crying foul, saying that the former special counsel and 12-year FBI director was exploited by Democrats for their own ends.
“All I had heard was from one staff person last week is that they thought Mueller may be off his game, but I didn’t hear it from the members, so I don’t know how common that was or not…I would think the Democrats should have known, because I assume they were in contact with his office,” Republican Rep. Peter King of New York told the Washington Examiner. “In that case, they shouldn’t have put him on.”
The day before the hearings House Judiciary Democrats held a mock hearing behind closed doors to prepare for former special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony before the panel Wednesday. Despite preparations, members on the committee still struggled when questioning the former FBI Director.
Democrat Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, whose questions to Mueller needed to be repeated numerous times by her, told the Washington Examiner Thursday that Democrats “were quite aware of how he was going to respond.”
“We were fully involved in the negotiations of getting him here and Democrats should be applauded for working with him and his team and getting a person who felt rightly so on his behalf that he has spoken already to those two volumes. Of course, we had met them as members of the Judiciary Committee maybe others had not,” Jackson Lee said.
She continued, “So we were quite aware of how he was going to respond. And that’s why most of our questions including mine are dealt with, ‘Is this correct?’ ‘Is that true?’ ‘Is this correct?’ And we can look over the landscape of the hearing and find an enormous amount of information.”
Jackson Lee said that Democrats were not going to pass judgment on Mueller and were “not looking for an Oscar-winning performance” from him but wanted him to get his information out.
“I think we had a knockout punch for Democrats on the judiciary and a knockout punch as it relates to those on the Intelligence Committee. All we need is material that we can stand on as we move to hold this president accountable,” she added.
Republican Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said Mueller never wanted to testify before Congress to begin with.
“Mueller said he didn’t want to come in and testify and yet they forced him to do that. I think they continue to force the Mueller narrative. And it didn’t serve our country well didn’t serve Director Mueller well and didn’t serve transparency well,” he said. “Republicans expected him to perform much better than he did right and we prepared for him to be a lot more antagonistic.”
House Intelligence Committee Democrat Rep. Max Quigley of Illinois defended Mueller’s testimony before Congress telling the Washington Examiner, “I think he understood that it’s not easy to do any of those things when people are yelling at you for four hours and not letting you answer a question. He did a lot better in the afternoon when people were more respectful.”
