The Patriot Post® · Executive Summary: Mueller's Capstone Testimony
Special Counsel Robert Mueller provided what should be capstone testimony yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee. However, for Democrats, it could better be described as “tombstone testimony” regarding their 30-month old political charade alleging that Donald Trump “colluded” with Russia to win the 2016 election. Fact is, the whole farce was a setup by Hillary Clinton’s campaign (AKA Hilrya Rodhamovich Clintonov).
After submitting a 448-page report in March, Mueller gave a press conference in May in which he intended to put the investigation to bed. Democrats spent the first two years Donald Trump was in office “investigating” the fake collusion story in order to take the House in the 2018 midterm elections, despite the Trump administration’s extraordinary MAGA record. In an effort to keep that momentum alive into 2020, they insisted on Mueller’s testimony.
As we noted yesterday, before he had completed his testimony, it was a train wreck for Democrats. The widespread consensus among politicos and even Leftmedia pundits is that 74-year old Mueller looked old, haggard and confused, and that he didn’t have a full mastery of the questions. However, beyond the failed optics for Demos, fact is the investigative report was written by a team of much younger and more energetic investigators, and notably, almost all of whom were supporters of Hillary Clinton. Recall that six of his 15 investigators were actually Clinton donors.
Rep. Al Green (D-TX), who forced a House vote on impeachment last week, concluded, “Some [of us] were hoping for a ‘wow’ moment. It didn’t happen.” That is an understatement. Leftist Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe declared, “Much as I hate to say it, this morning’s hearing was a disaster. Far from breathing life into his damning report, the tired Robert Mueller sucked the life out of it.” David Axelrod, former senior adviser to Barack Obama, observed, “This is very, very painful.” (Wonder how long it will take for Demos to ask for a do-over because “Mueller was not up to the task.”)
Many of Mueller’s most memorable lines were to the effect of “I can’t speak to that,” “That’s out of my purview,” or “I can’t answer that.” Muller said more than 200 times that he could not answer the question he was being asked — providing plenty of fodder for Democrats to pursue their dead-end line of allegations. But one reason Mueller refused to answer some questions is, of course, that there is still an ongoing lateral investigation, the results of which may lead in a direction very damaging to Hillary Clinton and, by extension, all those Demos who have perpetuated the collusion myth.
On the question of whether Trump committed obstruction of justice, the Mueller report itself states: “Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
Regarding Democrat suggestions that Trump tried to obstruct the investigation, Mueller was asked by Rep. Doug Collins, “At any time … was your investigation curtailed or stopped?” Mueller answered, flatly, “No.”
House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) wanted to make hay anyway, because it’s all Democrats have: “Did you actually ‘totally exonerate’ the president?” Mueller answered, “No,” adding, “The finding indicates that the president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed.”
A first year pre-law student can tell you that in our justice system, special prosecutors don’t announce an exoneration of someone. You are either guilty or not guilty, and juries make that determination.
To drive that point home, former federal prosecutor, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX), asked Mueller, “Which Department of Justice policy sets forth a legal standard that an investigated person is not exonerated if their innocence is not conclusively determined?” Of course, Mueller could not answer that question because as Ratcliffe noted, “It doesn’t exist.” Continuing, he correctly noted, “It was not the special counsel’s job to conclusively determine Donald Trump’s innocence or to exonerate him because the bedrock principle of our justice system is a presumption of innocence.” Ratcliffe also thundered, “Donald Trump is not above the law, but he damn sure shouldn’t be below the law.”
In other words, they saw nothing that would be an indictable offense, and the “exoneration” question, which assumes “guilty until proven innocent,” is just a Democrat soundbite to imply to their mass constituents that there must be something else in order to keep their impeachment circus circulating.
On the question of “obstruction,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) led the witness: “The reason, again, that you did not indict Donald Trump is because of [an Office of Legal Counsel] OLC opinion stating that you cannot indict a sitting president. Correct?”
Mueller: “That is correct.”
But in the second hearing, Mueller went back to this question to correct the record. “I want to go back to one thing that was said this morning by [Representative Ted] Lieu, who said, and I quote, ‘You didn’t charge the president because of the OLC opinion.’ That is not the correct way to say it,” Mueller said. “As we say in the report, and as I said at the opening, we did not reach a determination as to whether the president committed a crime.”
In other words, there was no evidence to indict, one way or the other, despite Demo efforts to spin it the other way.
On collusion, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, noted: “There is collusion in plain sight… The Democrats colluded with Russian sources to develop the Steele dossier and Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya colluded with the dossier’s key architect, Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson.” Yet when Mueller was asked about the fake dossier, he said he did not investigate it.
So, Robert Mueller was appointed as a special counsel because a fake dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign and sourced by Russians, was considered sufficient evidence of collusion to kick off the entire investigation, but he did not investigate the veracity of that dossier or its source? This was the primary evidence underpinning the whole investigation, and it is such evidence that either makes or breaks a case, but Mueller’s team did not investigate it?
Rep. Nunes concluded, “The Democrats have refused to accept reality. They live in an alternate universe. This is over.”
“None of the evidence has panned out,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said. Democrats “know this is not what they wanted to see today. This is not what they wanted to hear. This should end the chapter of this book we put America through.”
After the hearings, former federal prosecutor and Rep. Trey Gowdy declared, “Before Bob Mueller had uttered a single syllable of the report, 60 House Democrats moved to impeach [President Trump]. What they wanted was Mueller to come in and do their job for them — to issue this roadmap that could lead them to impeachment.” Again, for Democrats, it’s guilty until proven innocent.
Our conclusions…
First, while Democrats are still insisting that Russian interference helped Trump win in 2016, the fact is the overwhelming political beneficiaries of the Russia collusion delusion were Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections when they retook the House.
Second, in regard to corruption of our elections, it’s the Democrats who are endeavoring to corrupt the political process with their open-borders policy, refusal to allow the citizenship question on the census, and opposing voter IDs. Democrats are doing far more to undermine the integrity of U.S. elections than the Russians have ever done.
Third, as we have noted previously, it is astounding that Mueller did not investigate the fake dossier funded by Clinton, but that investigation may come next – it is time for a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton and the DNC.
And finally, this entire Trump setup began with a small group of powerful anti-Trump bureaucrats who in effect attempted a coup d'état to take Trump down.