Here’s the live stream of Special Counsel Mueller testifying before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Just a quick note about all the hot takes on how Special Counsel Mueller performed this morning to keep in mind as he testifies this afternoon:
Mueller was, and will be again this afternoon, the quintessential example of a career DOJ official. He says no more than he feels he should and that’s it. He also now has serious old man voice. Together this presents as visually reticent to befuddled, but it isn’t. You’ll notice when he’s had his team’s integrity impugned, he’s been more animated. No disrespect to Jeremy Bash, but he’s a political appointee, not someone whose made a career in National Security positions of different types. His understanding and approach and expectation of how you respond to these things is different than the one Mueller learned and has abided by during his long career first as a civil servant and then as an appointed senior leader. And Frank Figliuzzi’s explanation of this reality was spot on. The news media screaming that he didn’t give them the juicy media clips they want is just garbage. Finally, this format that the committee’s use for these hearings wasn’t and isn’t designed to actually produce detailed, delineated, thoughtful responses. If the Democrats on the committee, or Democrats in Congress, or anyone else wanted that, then committee counsel should have been given the first two hours, 1/2 hours each rotation for the Democratic and Republican counsels, to ask appropriate questions and elicit detailed answers in follow ups. The final hour to 90 minutes could be reserved for individual member questions. Optimally, the whole hearing would have been done by the committee counsel and the members would have sat there and taken notes.
Open thread!