Yeah, even the other members of the Intel committee are asking good, on point questions. It’s like they watched the Judicial Committee and decided “Let’s not do whatever in hell that was.”
It’s also in general much less depressing to listen to - republicans at least aren’t just throwing 5 minute shouty fits until their time expires.
What the hell was up with the one republican talking about how nobody in the judicial system has the power to exonerate anyone, so how dare it be in the report? Is this just bullshit?
This was the exchange:
“If your report is to the attorney general and the attorney general doesn’t have the power to exonerate and he does not – he knows that you do not have that power, you don’t have to tell him that you’re not exonerating the president. He knows this already. So then that kind of changes the context of the report,” he said. “The attorney general has the power to exonerate? He has not been given that authority.”
“No,” Mueller replied. “We included in the report for exactly that reason.”
“You have no more power to declare him exonerated than you have the power to declare him Anderson Cooper,” Turner said. “The statement about exoneration is misleading and meaningless and colors this investigation. One word out of the entire portion of your report and it’s a meaningless word that has no legal meaning and it has colored your entire report.”
“Mr. Mueller, would you agree with me that the attorney general does not have the power to exonerate?” Turner continued.
“I’m going to pass on that,” Mueller said.
“Why?” Turner pressed.
“Because it embroils us in a legal discussion. I’m not prepared to deal with a legal discussion in that arena,” Mueller answered.
Yeah, that whole bit kinda threw me for a loop.
Timex
3636
I’ve been interviewing a potential hire all day, so I’ve been out of the loop on this… I’m not surprised that Schiff is the one guy who’s actually getting stuff done though.
That guy actually has courtroom experience. He knows how to ask pointed questions to establish a narrative of what happened.
Most of the folks on these committees, even those who are lawyers, have zero capacity to do this kind of thing, and really should have handed questioning over to professional lawyers as was done in cases like Watergate. Instead, a lot of politicians just want to crow and make themselves seem important.
Glad Schiff is doing his job. I’ll be interested to watch his exchange.
Timex
3637
Did this happen? I’d like to see the video of this.
It did; other people are tweeting that exactly
edit - just adding that we’ve all read impeachable offenses by Trump. This is just a short-form oral version of a handful. But “impeachable” doesn’t mean “impeached,” and we all know how the GOP will vote.
I am not part of the “everything the House Dems do is wrong” crowd generally, but I do agree that the individual questioning was a mistake.
I assume that there were some Dems on the committee demanding their five minutes of soundbite time for local consumption (which is clearly what the GOP crowd wanted themselves; crazy plays great for them at home because of gerrymandering.)
Timex
3640
If democrats were smart, I think like they would immediately move to an impeachment inquiry, this week, as it’ll limit the ability fo the Trump admin to create a false narrative that nothing that Mueller said was important.
Come out and say, “Well, there you go. We’re opening an impeachment inquiry today.”
Not actual impeachment hearings… you don’t need that. Just start a formal inquiry.
You’re smart and this exactly.
You’ll probably run into it repeatedly. NPR is already playing a chunk of that part of the testimony repeatedly, and asking why if this is true that Trump hasn’t been charged yet?
Timex
3643
I mean… we know why. Because he literally cannot be charged with crimes while he holds office.
Also, it’s not necessarily illegal.
To some degree I blame Democrats for that. Every time impeachment comes up, there’s a lot of evasion and deflection, when there should be a single quote that they’ve all been drilled on and reply on loop pointing the finger directly at McConnell and Senate Republicans. Interviewers should be hearing it so much it makes their ears bleed.
Timex
3645
This statement is a very clear statement that Trump obstructed justice. That’s the only reasonable way to interpret this.
Politico’s considered take
KevinC
3648
This is what is wrong with today’s “journalism”. The amount of editorializing in that headline is mind boggling.
Chuckles doesn’t’ want to be left out of the savvy crowd.
CraigM
3650
This makes no effing sense.
‘Meuller stated on record that Trump committed criminal acts, but this looks bad for Democrats’
Seriously, WTF is that?
He’s getting pretty heavily thrashed for it on the Twitters, if that’s any consolation.
Hmm, so Bill Barr is a lying partisan hack who needs to be removed from office. Who knew??
