Mueller testimony yields nothing new as GOP and Dems claim wins

By Askia Muhammad -Senior Editor- | Last updated: Jul 31, 2019 - 1:19:38 PM

WASHINGTON—After 124 days since he handed in his report on Russian interference in the 2016 elections, special counsel Robert Mueller gave his much-anticipated testimony to the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.

While Mr. Mueller was explicit, that despite the President’s claims to the contrary, he had not exonerated Mr. Trump of obstruction of justice in his report following a 22-month investigation, Democratic lawmakers may have come away disappointed that Mr. Mueller’s appearance didn’t provide any knockout testimony that would bolster their case for impeachment.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller is sworn in before testifying to the House Judiciary Committee about his report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election on Capitol Hill on July 24, 2019, in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Mueller rejected the President’s claim the probe was a witch hunt; warned that Russia is still actively trying to interfere in U.S. elections; and he refused to exonerate Mr. Trump of obstruction of justice.

During his opening statement, Mueller laid out some key findings of his report during the July 23 testimony. “First, our investigation found that the Russian government interfered in our election in sweeping and systematic fashion. Second, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Mr. Mueller’s answers were often very brief and apparently disoriented. On 198 occasions during the combined hearings he asked for a question to be repeated. He made no assertions, only confirming sections of the report read by Congress members. “Director 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?” Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) asked to open the hearing.

“Correct, that is not what the report said,” Mr. Mueller replied.

“Now, reading from page 2 of volume 2 of your report,” Mr. Nadler continued, “you wrote, quote: ‘If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts, that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment,’ close-quote. Now, does that say there was no obstruction?”

“No,” said Mr. Mueller.

“And what about total exoneration? Did you actually totally exonerate the president?”

“No,” said Mr. Mueller.

“And your investigation actually found, quote, ‘multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian interference and obstruction investigations.’ Is that correct?” he asked.

“Correct,” Mr. Mueller responded.

Still, Mr. Trump and the Republican Party leadership celebrated that no “smoking gun” was exposed. The Republican National Committee issued a statement describing the Mueller hearings as “a disaster for Democrats.”

“After three years, millions of taxpayer dollars and countless lies from Democrats, Mueller just reaffirmed what we’ve known all along: There was no collusion and no obstruction. Case closed,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) expressed sympathy for the “poor president” having had to suffer through the last three years of investigations. Asked whether he has any concerns about Mr. Trump’s behavior described in the report, Mr. Mc-Carthy said, “No, I do not. This president has not done anything wrong.”

“You know the Mr. 45 has been very successful in painting himself as a victim being picked on being aggrieved by fake news and all of that narrative in some ways,” Dr. Julianne Malveaux, former president of Bennett College for Women told this writer in an interview on Pacifica Radio, WPFW-FM. “This hearing feeds into his narrative about being picked on, and the Democrats did not do anything to really provide an antidote to that.” Other analysts agreed.

“I mean being a victim is part of the common ordinary discourse of the Republican Party,” said Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. “I happened to be watching Fox News the other night and they were talking about police officers being victims.

“This was during a time when a Black man on Staten Island was suffocated on camera and killed by a police officer and yet the police officer to this date has faced no consequences. In fact I think if you go back and look at right wing regime, the way they justify their persecution of others is that they portray themselves as the ones being persecuted. And that’s a very somber and sober note that we need to contemplate.

“The Democrats, I give them a ‘B’ maybe a ‘B-minus,’ Dr. Malveaux continued, grading the hearing. “I don’t think they made very many headwinds. I mean they tried to pin (Mr.) Mueller down but he did what he said he was going to do. And the Republicans, I mean I give them a ‘D-minus.’ They are hypocrites and they have two different standards of behavior,” said Dr. Malveaux.

The televised hearing drew a smaller audience than other hearings and even the Democratic candidate debates, and they did not produce a groundswell of angry viewers calling for the president’s impeachment. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has been reluctant to launch impeachment proceedings, signaled that her position had not changed after Mr. Mueller’s testimony. “We still have some outstanding matters in the courts,” she said at a news conference. “It’s about the Congress, the Constitution and the courts.” Only a half-dozen more Democrats—bringing their total above 100—joined the call for impeachment proceedings after the hearing.

The circumstances of these charges and the ideological role-reversals are complex. The FBI, since its founding director J. Edgar Hoover illegally conspired to destroy the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) and its founder the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey more than a century ago, has openly sought to disrupt the Civil Rights Movement and militant Black advocacy organizations ever since, is now cast as a hero, investigating a tainted president.

But even though the FBI does not itself have “clean hands” concerning the violation of citizens’ rights with their past investigations does not mean that they are not truthful in what was discovered in the Trump investigation, according to Mr. Fletcher. “We should never trust them but that doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily wrong, but we should never trust them,” he said. “It’s not like we should glamorize them at all. The question is what are the facts? That’s what we should be looking at and understanding.

“Also, there’s certain things I don’t think that we’re going to find out anytime soon because it really does go to what was revealed to U.S. intelligence agencies. There was something that got 14 different agencies really nervous about the 2016 election and that’s not what’s being discussed in Congress today,” he continued.

“And this is also part of this double standard that we see in the United States of America that is to say that it’s our world is it not that for years you have folks on the left persecuted for alleged and asserted ties to Moscow by the right.

“A lot of folks aren’t accepting that this really is a different world,” said Mr. Fletcher. “The Russia that we’re looking at has more in common with Tsar Nicholas than it does with anything happened between 1917 and 1991,” the Communist revolutionary period.

“And so we’re (now) dealing with a Russian ruling group that is very White supremacist, is very much in lockstep with the conservative Orthodox Church, is incredibly misogynist, and is very much of a twin of the Trump administration. These two, Putin and Trump really are the ideological godfathers of global right wing populism. So the Russia that we’re dealing with is completely different from a Cold War scenario. The Russians clearly wanted Trump in, and they want him in again, and they’re going to do whatever they have to do.

“I guess the other thing that we should say is look at what the Russians are alleged to have done, which (Mr.) Mueller documents very well in the 2016 election, is absolutely what the United States has done around the world in undermining governments’ elections that they undertook against a (President Salvador) Allende in Chile in ’73, or currently against Venezuela or other places.

“But the fact that the United States has done this does not mean that you turned a blind eye to what the Russians are doing. The Russian government does not represent our friends,” said Mr. Fletcher. “They are not advancing democracy. And that’s one of the things that I think that our listeners have to keep in mind.”

“But the purpose of this hearing as I understand this was to create momentum for impeachment,” said Dr. Horne. “And I’m not sure if that momentum was created. The political problem is that even if the House under a Democratic administration feels that it is incumbent to move forward with an impeachment resolution, it’s apparent that the Senate under Republican Party domination will not convict. And then the question becomes was that just a wasted effort?

“Then the other political question (is) that Mr. Trump’s base is not crumbling. Recall that his popularity went up after he made those racist tweets with regard to the four Congress women known as ‘The Squad.’ There is reason to suspect that the Republican Party base may be actually to the right of the leadership which is a political problem that we all have to confront sooner rather than later, because both sides are dug in.”

The good sign coming from the hearing, according to Dr. Horne, was seeing many talented, new Congressional Black Caucus members effectively questioning Mr. Mueller.

“If you’re a casual consumer of news you saw the multiracial representatives of the Democratic Party majority—Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.); Karen Bass (D-Calif.); Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) interrogating Mr. Mueller,” said Dr. Horne. “And you saw this monochromatic Republican Party, and they would draw the inference that (the Trump supporters) are going to stay not with the multiracial Democratic majority but with the other side.

“I mean that’s the political problem that we see that it is the lack of political education about racism combining to give the current incumbent, the current occupant of the White House, an extended lease on political life.”

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