House Democrats are going to spend 12 hours reading the Mueller report out loud today

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Image)

published 16 May 2019

Prepare for one of the most exhausting sentences in recent House history.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are going to spend an estimated 12 hours reading the 448-page report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller out loud on Thursday. It's apparently in fulfillment of the committee's "constitutional duty to share that truth with the American people," as Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Penn.) put it in a statement to Reuters. But given that the redacted report on Russian election interference has been publicly available for weeks, that explanation doesn't quite add up.

An attempt to explain Thursday's marathon might leave one thinking the committee is trying to make an accessible, audio-only version of the report. But no, Audible already took care of that. Instead, Scanlon thinks of it as an answer to "How do we get that story out there while we are waiting for the witnesses to come in?," she told The Washington Post. After all, as she explained in a release, the report can't be "summarized in a tweet."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Explore More

Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox