House Judiciary Chair Nadler says Mueller wants to privately testify before Congress

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) revealed on Thursday night that Special Counsel Robert Mueller wants to privately testify before the committee, with the transcript later made public.

When asked by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow why Mueller wouldn't want to testify publicly, Nadler said he's speculating, but it's likely because Mueller "envisions himself, correctly, as a man of great rectitude and apolitical and he doesn't want to participate in anything he may regard as a political spectacle." The House Judiciary Committee thinks it's "important for the American people to hear from him and to hear his answers to questions about the report," Nadler added.

The goal of the panel is to "open all of this up to the American people, and have everybody relevant testify so people can understand what was in the Mueller report, what wasn't in the Mueller report," he said. The White House has stonewalled the committee by not letting current and former staffers who have received subpoenas testify, but "we're going to beat them in court," Nadler said. "It's ridiculous from a legal point of view."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.