Why Robert Mueller’s testimony was so disappointing

Former special counsel Robert Mueller has testified in front of two House Committees on his investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential elections - but his answers left many disappointed.

For a few hours on Wednesday, most mainstream media outlets in the US led hopefully with headlines on Mueller’s admission that his report does not exonerate President Donald Trump over his attempts to obstruct the investigation.

They were soon replaced by more sober analyses.

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This was the first time Mueller had answered questions in public since taking over the investigation in May 2017, and from the Democrats to the Republicans, and from the media to the general public, the eagerly anticipated testimony on Capitol Hill did not live up to expectations.

What did the Democrats want?

Some Democrats, particularly those in Congress, believe there is sufficient evidence of wrongdoing in the Mueller report to land a political blow on the president. They think the reason the blow hasn’t landed yet is the complexity and impenetrability of the report itself.

By getting Mueller live on television, they hoped “to channel the intense focus on Mueller's congressional testimony Wednesday into a public outcry against President Donald Trump,” reported Politico before the hearing. “For weeks, Democrats have painted Mueller's public hearings before the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees as a chance to bring his dense, 448-page report 'to life' for Americans.”

Unfortunately for them, as Fox News describes, “far from an operatic rendition of the Mueller report that Democrats hoped would paint a clear picture of pernicious misconduct by the president, the testimony resembled more a spoken-word album - halting, at times awkward, with scant dramatic flair.”

“Instead of answering any of the questions we Americans had hired him to answer, Mueller pleaded ‘no contest’,” contends Drew Westen in CNN. “This was not a ‘neutral’ political move. It provided Republicans good reason to argue that the investigation was a two-year, multimillion-dollar waste of time.”

At one point, the Democrats looked like they may have the bombshell they were after, when Mueller told Democrat Ted Lieu “that he hadn’t charged the president with a crime because of a Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted, implying that but for the policy, he would have brought charges”. However, reports the LA Times, “he later said that he misspoke: ‘We did not reach a determination as to whether the president committed a crime,’ he said.”

What did the Republicans want?

Mueller’s determination to deny his interrogators any soundbite hurt the Democrats, but also made life hard for House Republicans.

Their strategy was to undermine the legitimacy of the investigation itself, and to do this, in part, they sought to question how and why it came about.

However, as CNN reports, “In his opening statement, Mueller made clear that he would be unable to address anything related to the origins of the counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election or the so-called 'Steele dossier', an opposition research document put together by former British spy Christopher Steele.”

Mueller held firm to this commitment throughout the day, taking Republicans’ major line of attack off the table.

Why was Mueller so reserved?

In Mueller’s sole public appearance following the publication of the special counsel’s report, he was clear: the report “speaks for itself”, he said. And, he said, he “would not provide information beyond that which is already public”.

As Russell Berman writes in The Atlantic, “For months, the former special counsel told them in every way he could… that he did not want to testify before Congress, and that if he did, his appearance would be a dud. Today, Mueller fully delivered on that promise.”

Berman continues, “Over the course of more than six hours of testimony before two House committees, Mueller sidestepped, ducked, deflected, and generally frustrated lawmakers of both parties... The chief goal for Democrats, whether they admitted it or not, was to elicit from the former special counsel some bit of new information, or at least a damning sound bite... Mueller’s entire goal was to avoid doing either, and he largely succeeded.”

The New York Times tries to explain Mueller’s halting performance in another way. “Once famous for his laserlike focus, Mr. Mueller, who will turn 75 next month, seemed hesitant about the facts in his own 448-page report. He struggled at one point to come up with the word ‘conspiracy’.”

Donald Trump was quick to join the fray with a similar theory, albeit less tactfully:

What are the chances of impeachment now?

“Mueller’s appearance today had a significance that outstrips any single thing he said,” contends Lawfare, a blog published by the Lawfare Institute in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. “His testimony is not ultimately important for any bombshells or any revelations - of which there were none, in any event. Its significance, rather, lies in the hearings’ initiating of the long-belated creation of an Article I record of the president’s conduct - a shifting of the investigative locus from the executive branch to the legislative branch. That should have happened months ago. It finally happened today.”

This may prove to be the case but, as the LA Times points out, Nancy Pelosi (who as leader of Congressional Democrats will sign off on any impeachment of Trump) “has argued that pursuing impeachment without bipartisan and broad public support would be fruitless and perhaps even embolden the president.”

In truth, this was the Democrat’s show, and it was incumbent on them to unearth a bombshell moment. Mueller, dogged in his colourlessness, was resolute and skillful - or perhaps just tired - enough to deny them what they sought.

As the National Review summarises, “Robert Mueller’s much anticipated congressional testimony wasn’t the end of the beginning as Democrats had hoped - the start of a new, more serious phase in the fight to impeach Trump - but very likely the beginning of the end.”