Sure. Trial lawyers ask these “Yes or No” or “You would agree that is correct” type of questions all of the time to get an answer like that. Why? Because it works. You can put words in peoples’ mouths. And in all seriousness, that was the only point of this hearing to get Meuller to say something that sounded bad, to get that clip for replay on CNN or MSNBC.
ETA: And they work when you say things like “as we have heard” or “as you said earlier” the witness feels very uncomfortable disagreeing with you because it seems as if he or she would be going against what was already said if the proposition is denied.
LIEU: “To recap what we’ve heard, we have heard today that the president ordered former White House counsel Don McGahn to fire you. The president ordered Don McGahn to then cover that up and create a false paper trail, and now we’ve heard the president ordered Corey Lewandowski to tell Jeff Sessions to limit your investigation so that he – you stop investigating the president. I believe a reasonable person looking at these facts could conclude that all three elements of the crime of obstruction of justice have been met, and I would like to ask you the reason again that you did not indict Donald Trump is because of OLC opinion stating that you cannot indict a sitting president, correct?”
I thought I heard C-SPAN say that this was the 90th time Mueller has testified before Congress. He knew what he was doing by sucking to the report and giving very little information beyond that. The hearings were not about him. They were about giving members of the House face time and sound bites.
I was watching Samantha Bee’s recap of the Mueller testimony. At one point she referred to the Democratic Party motto as “Somebody really ought to do something. But first let’s make sure it’s OK. Oops, too late. Aw, shit.”
I couldn’t listen to Mueller’s testimony live, so I have only heard various individual exchanges. My opinion is almost certainly colored by that.
I agree that there was not much new that came out of the Judiciary Committee hearing. There weren’t any good Mueller soundbites, no great revelations, and nothing that will move the needle much either way. I doubt that very many people were swayed from their previously-held positions. I did think a couple of the back-and-forths about Trump’s directions to McGahn were damaging to the President, but I suspect they won’t get the airtime or attention that maybe they deserve.
I thought the Intelligence Committee hearing was a little more publicly damning for the President, even if not in a strictly criminal manner. Adam Schiff, in particular, was able to get Mueller’s concurrence that accepting foreign help for your campaign is unethical and worthy of investigation; that secret meetings or lying about that foreign assistance opens a person to compromise form the foreign government; and that lots of people involved in the Trump campaign lied to the Special Counsel’s Office, were trying to monetize their positions in the campaign, and were open to potential compromise by Russia.
Schiff’s prosecutorial background shows - he kept his questions short and in a form so that Mueller could answer either, “yes,” or, “no.” I thought there were a couple of times that Mueller actually sounded eager to work with Schiff to draw out the points Schiff was trying to make. Schiff should run clinics for his fellow committee members on how to solicit testimony.
We’re so fucked when we have a Republican investigator say that the president sought out help from Russia, benefited from it, lied to cover it up, and obstructed justice to hinder the investigation and a significant number of people think not only that it’s not a big deal, but that it’s a huge win for the Republicans.
Trump supporters have pretty much gone from denying Trump’s culpability to chortling that he got away with it. I can’t believe what I’m seeing, either.
It fits and makes sense if you posit that the main motivation of the hardcore Trump supporters is grievance against liberals/progressives/Democrats, rather than any actual issue or policy.
The thing that makes it a huge win for the Trumpublicans is House Democratic inaction. They’re not going to hold Trump accountable. He has license to do whatever he damn well pleases, and yesterday they renewed his license.
If I were Trump, I’d be celebrating my ass off. And laughing at those ridiculous, impotent Dems.
They’re going with whatever story works best in a given context. But this one is particularly effective: the narrative of the folk hero who can commit crimes right under the noses of the clownish authorities, and get away with it.
He’s no Robin Hood, but the Dems are doing a good enough job as the clownish authorities that his followers can pretend he’s Robin Hood.
I’m not going to answer that.
I’m not going to answer that.
I’m not going to answer that.
Yes, definitely.
I’m not going to answer that.
I’m not going to answer that.
I’m not going to answer that, and that time I said, “Yes, definitely,” I meant, “I’m not going to answer that.”
Hypothetical:
What if Mueller had pointedly said exactly the following words yesterday or words conveying exactly this message,
“Our investigation found beyond a shadow of a doubt that President Trump was and is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors and the only reason we didn’t charge him was because he was/is a sitting president.” And then he went on to list the crimes in clear, direct, unequivocal condemnatory language.
Question:
Would such a statement from him move the impeachment ball forward today or not?
More specifically, what would be the Republican (e.g., thump) response and what would be the Democratic (e.g., Pelosi) response?
*You have all day to answer the question. Use black ink and double-space. Blue books will be collected at suppertime. Begin. *
I had to turn this off after the first hour because of the stupid lines of questioning. While he probably wouldn’t have answered it, did anyone at least ask “if not for the OLC guidelines, would you have indicted Trump?” or “If a CEO told a corporate lawyer to lie to federal investigators investigating the CEO, would that generally be considered obstruction?”
I don’t understand what it is you want them to do. They can impeach, but cannot convict. A pointless House vote would not accomplish anything, and would very likely just result in Republicans saying he’d been"exonerated."