Has anyone asked Zebley anything yet?
Translation: “My boss wouldn’t let me say that”.
There’s this, which isn’t actually a question:
Schiff to Mueller deputy Aaron Zebley, who has also been sworn in to testify to the Intel Committee: “I realize, as you probably do, Mr. Zebley, that there is a angry man down the street who is not happy about your being here today.”
(Quoted from: https://mobile.twitter.com/kylegriffin1 )
The long-awaited Mueller hearings: parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. As one commentator notes, the only winner here besides Trump is Nancy Pelosi. Impeachment is a dead duck.
Mueller tried to defer to Zebley to answer a question, and the Republican said, “No, I’m asking you.”
Mueller looks much older than he did a few months ago.
For now, at least.
Gonna put him on my 2020 death pool, I am!
Hell, older than he did a few hours ago.
And there it is – The Feckless Punt.
This will be the only headline that is played on State TV and repeated by every pro-Trump minion.
Thanks, Mueller. You’ve been almost helpful. Please go now.
It does dispute Barr’s characterization of his report, so it’s still “useful” in that sense. And it doesn’t really directly contradict what he said earlier, it just muddles it a bit.
“…we did not reach a determination as to whether the president committed a crime…”
Is in response to the suggestion that there was only one reason why Trump wasn’t indicted, the OLC directive. IMO the above statement does a lot more that muddy the waters.
On that point, that was rather concerning that he couldn’t think of the word “conspiracy”.
“That word we use in place of collusion.” :dubious:
Q: Did the President ever claim the 5th Amendment?
A: I’m not going to get into that.
Interesting. I feel like he would have said ‘no’, if it was ‘no’.
Why muddle things in this crucial moment where clarity is of the essence?
If he is saying that the DOJ regulation prohibited him from reaching a conclusion, he could easily have said that. In fact, he said exactly that (…as did Barr). And then deliberately rolled it back. In service of what?
Mueller has made it clear that if it’s not already in the report he’s not going to get into it.
Has anyone straight up asked Mueller why: “…we did not reach a determination as to whether the president committed a crime…”?
I think he’s trying as hard as possible to not say anything that goes beyond the report. Whether by mistakenly telling too much truth or just a slip of the tongue, he went beyond the report in that answer to Lieu, so he tried to re-muddy it. Or something like that.
Mueller really didn’t want to do this, and he’s not particularly interested in helping the Democrats (or the Republicans, for that matter).
Whatever he says beyond what is in the report is going to be twisted into a thump-supporting sound bite. Like earlier when he used the words “Comey” and “friends” together in a sentence that specifically said they were NOT close friends, but business associates.
Then why take on the job if he is so ambivalent? Either he is getting some sort of personal satisfaction from this (unlikely given his objections to Barr’s mis-characterizations), or there is more to this than meets the eye, maybe with respect to the 14 separate ongoing investigation that were referred by his office. Perhaps to avoid the appearance of influencing them in some way?
I don’t know. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But he’s not making it easy.