The NPR Politics Podcast - Special Counsel Robert Mueller Testifies Before Congress

Episode Date: July 24, 2019

Former special counsel Robert Mueller didn't want to appear in Wednesday's hearings, but lawmakers insisted that he tell his story in public to the House judiciary and intelligence committees. This episode: political reporter Scott Detrow, Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and political national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, I'm Maddie, and I'm a Scripps College student currently interning at the House of Representatives. Right now, I'm first in line outside the House Judiciary Committee hearing room, where I'll be camping out all night long to hopefully attend the Mueller hearing tomorrow morning. This podcast was recorded at... No way! I saw her on Twitter today! Little did you know! Little did I know! Some people just come back around in your life at the least expected time. It is 6.12 p.m. on Wednesday, July 24th. By the

time you hear this, I'll hopefully be in the room where it happens. Enjoy the show. I really appreciate her get up and go get them-ness. Yeah, get some sleep, gal. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover politics. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. So before we get into Robert Mueller's testimony today, I have to say, like, I really hope that when I ask the two of you questions, you don't just stonewall and say, I'm not going to get into that. Otherwise, the podcast is going to be really awkward. I'm just going to give you one word answers like correct.

No. Correct. How about a lot of double negatives? So clearly we're talking about the way that Robert Mueller testified today in front of Congress. He testified before two House committees. This was something that had been talked about, anticipated for months. Sue, what was your big thought on how this all went down? My big question going into today was, will we see or hear anything that moves the needle on impeachment? That's obviously a big question on Capitol Hill that we follow pretty consistently.

I would say I'm not sure that today was something that really moved that needle because there really was no new information divulged. It was, as Democrats intended, to get Robert Mueller to say the things that was in the report. They've sort of lowered expectations going into the hearing that they were even expecting new news, but that it was important for the public who did not read the report and many members of Congress who may have not read the report to hear Robert Mueller confirm on the record on television many of the fundamental conclusions of the report. Carrie, since the day Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel, you have been banging the drum in this podcast that Robert Mueller was not the secret resistance. Robert Mueller wasn't going to take down Donald Trump through magical thinking. Robert Mueller was not going to color outside the lines. And he didn't. And he didn't.

In the most legalistic, halting, sometimes hard of hearing way, Robert Mueller did try to demolish some of the talking points the White House has been putting out there since the investigation began. Under questioning from Democrats and some Republicans, he said this was not a witch hunt. And when Donald Trump called your investigation a witch hunt, that was also false, was it not? I'd like to think so, yes. He said the president had credibility problems in his written responses to the investigators. He said it would have been vital to interview President Trump, but it would take too long. And he said that the cases were valid, that he brought, and that his investigators had a lot of integrity.

But he said in that one public appearance before this that he didn't particularly want to testify. And it seemed pretty clear today he didn't really want to testify. He really didn't want to testify, especially in the morning, the first session, which was about obstruction of justice and President Trump's conduct, or as Democrats would call it, misconduct. He was really, really reluctant to say much. He got more talkative and a little peppier, though, Scott, when we got to the question of Russia's attack on American elections and how, in his view, it's still happening as we're sitting here today. They're doing it as we sit here,

and they expect to do it during the next campaign. Let's walk through the way that both parties approach this. And first, we'll listen to a little bit of an exchange between Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Robert Mueller. The president has repeatedly claimed that your report found there was no obstruction and that it completely and totally exonerated him. But that is not what your report said, is it? Correct. That is not what the report said. So the report did not conclude that he did not commit obstruction of justice. Is that correct? That is not what the report said. So the report did not conclude that he did not commit obstruction of justice. Is that correct?

That is correct. And what about total exoneration? Did you actually totally exonerate the president? No. Though, Sue, this approach of basically saying what you wanted to say with pauses for Robert Mueller to agree with you did not always work this smoothly for Democrats. I feel like there were a lot of times where they tried to lead him down a road and he just wasn't interested in playing ball. There was elements of that theater, too, in which I think they were trying to tease out

Mueller to make more value judgments or say what he thinks should have happened. And he was really dogged about sticking to the script and giving one word answers. He also, which was a point negotiated before this hearing, was he was not willing to read the report to them. And I think there was some attempts by members to try and get him to say these words out loud. He clearly didn't want to do that. You know, I have said in this podcast and before that I know Robert Mueller did not want to come testify, but it is an important exertion of Congress to be able to say you don't get to decide that, right? Like Congress decides who gets to come and speak to them. I do think

Mueller has been very mindful of the fact that he does not want to be used as a political football and giving terse one word answers makes it a lot harder to politicize what he said. Yeah. At the same time, though, when Republicans asked him some questions, I think a Republican from Colorado asked Mueller a question about whether President Trump could be prosecuted after leaving office, since the DOJ says you can't prosecute a sitting president. Mueller was quite clear. He said, yes, presidents can be prosecuted after leaving office. That was a question that kind of backfired in some sense. And it was a simple yes or no. Is there anything that either of you learned from Robert Mueller's answers that you didn't

know before? I don't think we learn new information in terms of facts. I think one of the moments that was very interesting to me was in his testimony before the Intelligence Committee, where, as we said, he was so reluctant to make value judgments or speculate, but was asked about WikiLeaks and the president's praise of WikiLeaks. And it was the first and pretty clear sort of value judgment he weighed in about the president praising WikiLeaks, saying it was disappointing, saying that it was not good to see people in a position of power praising people that are essentially trying to undermine elections. This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove.

Illinois Democrat Mike Quigley. Donald Trump, October 31st, 2016. Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks. Donald Trump, November 4th, 2016. Would any of those quotes disturb you, Mr. Director? I'm not certain I would say. How do you react to that? Well, problematic is an understatement

in terms of what it displays, in terms of giving some, I don't know, hope or some boost to what is and should be illegal activity. You know, I actually learned a few new things. Robert Mueller was asked, did anybody at the Justice Department instruct you not to investigate the president's personal finances? He said no, he did not get directed not to investigate that. But he was asked and didn't answer whether he got Trump's tax returns. Mueller also said there's an ongoing FBI investigation into people close to President Trump, his current or former aides, I guess former aides, and whether they were

vulnerable to blackmail or compromised by the Russians. An ongoing investigation. An ongoing investigation. Interesting. That was new. So we talked about the Democratic approach here. They were really hoping to, I don't know if defibrillators or like jumping the car is the best metaphor for the ongoing effort. Trying to get some steam back into the push for impeachment was some of their goals. And also just highlighting a report they feel like has not been getting the attention it deserves. Republicans had a very different approach.

Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, had a different metaphor. Welcome, everyone, to the last gasp of the Russia collusion conspiracy theory. Politically, I will say this. Both of these committees, both the judiciary and intelligence committees, are filled with Republicans who are some of the president's strongest defenders. Devin Nunes is one. Jim Jordan is another. What we heard from them today was largely an echo chamber of the president himself and his attacks against the Justice Department, against the special counsel's investigation, and against what started it all. They existed today as a backstop for the president. Let's remember this. In 2016, the FBI did something they probably haven't done

before. They spied on two American citizens associated with a presidential campaign, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. With Carter Page, they went to the FISA court. They used the now famous dossier as part of the reason they were able to get the warrant and spy on Carter Page for a better part of a year with Mr. Papadopoulos they didn't go to the court they used human sources all kinds of from about the moment Papadopoulos joins the Trump campaign you got all these people all around the world starting to swirl around him names like Halper Halper, Downer, Mifsud, Thompson, meeting in Rome, London, all kinds of places. The FBI even sent, even sent a lady posing as somebody else, went by the name Asra Turk, even dispatched her to London

to spy on Mr. Papadopoulos. You follow Jim Jarden or Devin Nunes in these hearings. At times, they were hard to follow, right? They are bringing the attention to a lot of things that weren't in the report. It is not surprising if you listen to conservative media, if you listen to how this investigation has been covered, it is very much in the conservative view that the root origin story of this investigation was flawed from the start. And we're not, we haven't heard the end of that yet. Remember, the inspector general at the Justice Department is investigating some of this intelligence. And so is John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, who's doing some kind of unspecified review of what the intelligence community knew and did in 2016. Moreover,

Lindsey Graham, who runs the Senate Judiciary Committee, says he wants to call George Papadopoulos as a witness in his own inquiry. So we're going to go farther and farther down this path whether we want to or not. But doesn't that greatest hits of critiques of this investigation undercut the simultaneous argument that, look, it exonerated President Trump? Not necessarily. I think where Republicans would say the report did exonerate President Trump, which is a separate question from what happened in the Justice Department to lead to the beginning of the special counsel investigation. It is a very broad attack against every aspect of coming at the president. And just to be clear, Robert Mueller today said. Here's Ohio Republican Steve Chabot. lines of, here's why President Trump deserves to be impeached, much as Ken Starr did relative to President Clinton back about 20 years ago. Well, you didn't. So their strategy had to change. Now they allege that there's plenty of evidence in your report to impeach the president, but

the American people just didn't read it. And this hearing today is their last best hope to build up some sort of groundswell across America to impeach President Trump. That's what this is really all about. The congressman has a point in that, yes, these hearings are being used about the question of whether they will move forward with impeachment. As of the NPR count, we have 95 lawmakers right now on record supporting impeachment, 94 Democrats and one independent, Justin Amash. He was a Republican who left the party partly over its response to this investigation. Only one of them have come out since the hearing. So it hasn't exactly, you know, released the floodgates of Democrats getting on the impeachment train. And we will talk a lot more about that and what happens next after this quick break.

On this season of Rough Translation from NPR. Yeah. We are following people who break the rules. I mean, lying is part of the business. In my opinion, the best revenge against ISIS is to be humane. Am I supposed to punch her? Yeah, yeah.

New episodes every other Wednesday. Subscribe. And we are back. It was pretty clear that President Trump was going to be watching these hearings all day. Once Robert Mueller wrapped up, President Trump came out of the White House on his way to an event and had this to say. So we had a very good day today, the Republican Party, our country. There was no defense of what Robert Mueller was trying to defend, in all fairness to Robert Mueller, whether his performance was a bad one or a good one.

I think everybody understands that. I think everybody understands what's going on. There was no defense to this ridiculous hoax, this witch hunt. The thing about Robert Mueller's performance is that it seemed to me he wasn't really invested in the outcome of whether this gave momentum to the impeachment push like a lot of Democratic leaders were. Sue, we were talking about this real quickly before the break. What happens next with that? Well, it's important to remember that this wasn't a one and done episode on Capitol Hill, right? You know, there are five or six committees investigating any number of behavior in the in the White House and with the president.

Also beyond the scope of the Mueller investigation on things like the president's personal tax returns that they're trying to get. I will say that Speaker Pelosi and the chairman had a press conference Wednesday evening. Chairman Nadler spoke to those next steps. He did note that Congress is in the courts right now trying to fight many of these issues. The two questions up next, he said, were they're in court trying to get grand jury evidence that was in the Mueller report that has not been turned over to Congress, as well as a what could be a protracted fight over getting similar testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn. Carrie, do we have any sense what the timing could be on those court cases? I think that they may have a hard case to make with respect to getting the grand jury material, in part because they haven't formally launched an impeachment inquiry. If they did that,

they'd be on much firmer ground in convincing a federal judge in here in D.C. to turn over that information to them. They haven't done it yet. With respect to Don McGahn, Don McGahn is also a really, really reluctant witness. He has hired his own lawyers and he will try to fight this, too. I'm wondering if either of you think on the political side of this, on the public opinion side of this, a bunch of Democrats came forward for impeachment when the report first came out. Several more came forward when he first spoke publicly, but only one person came forward today. Like if this didn't move the ball, do you see anything else moving the ball? I don't know. It's hard to be predictive. I will say that I do think the two people that Democrats have always said they need to hear from before they can draw a definitive conclusion about impeachment is Robert Mueller and Don McGahn.

So I think if there is a victory in the court where where a judge says executive privilege does not apply to Don McGahn's testimony on this matter and they can get him up on Capitol Hill, that will be another moment. Similarly to today in which, you know, the public and the media and everyone is looking to see what Don McGahn says. I was really struck by the statements of Elijah Cummings, who runs the House Oversight Committee at this news conference on Wednesday evening. He said he's begging the American people to pay attention. He says this is not just a fight about now, but it's a fight about democracy and that in 300 or 400 years, people are going to be studying these issues. I wonder how those remarks fell on the ears of people who run the Democratic Operation in-house, standing next to him, who are reluctant to initiate impeachment proceedings. All right, that is going to do it for today's podcast. We will be back tomorrow with our weekly

roundup. If you missed it, this is actually our second podcast today. Nina Totenberg and Domenico Montanaro interviewed Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. If you missed it, this is actually our second podcast today. Nina Totenberg and Domenico Montanaro interviewed Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. If you check your podcast feed, that interview is there. She had some serious critiques for the 2020 presidential candidates. It was an interesting conversation to listen to. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover politics. I'm Susan Davis.

I cover Congress. And I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.