Confirmed: Robert Mueller ‘Is Going To Testify’
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Representative Adam Schiff confirmed on Sunday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will indeed testify, ABC News reports. Schiff, a Democrat from California, made the statement during an appearance on ABC’s This Week. During his appearance on the show, the congressman stressed the importance of the American people hearing from Mueller with regard to his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including possible coordination between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign.
“The American people have a right to hear what the man who did the investigation has to say and we now know we certainly can’t rely on the attorney general who misrepresented his conclusions,” Schiff said. “So he is going to testify.”
Also during his appearance on This Week, Schiff defended the possibility of contempt charges for certain members of the Trump administration, stressing that such measures, while extreme, were necessary, even if they would ultimately require a messy and largely unprecedented battle within the court system.
“We’re are going have to use that device if necessary, we’re going to have to use the power of the purse if necessary,” he said. “We’re going to have to enforce our ability to do oversight.”
During the show, when speaking to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Senator Rand Paul characterized the behavior of congressional Democrats — including the various investigations against Trump and his associates — as politically motivated. Paul, a Republican senator from Kentucky, serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
As House Democrats weigh imposing fines on Trump administration figures to try to force officials to obey subpoenas, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff argued for having special prosecutor Robert Mueller testify before Congress. https://t.co/8h578vO09s pic.twitter.com/5wpeXtm4YC
— ABC News (@ABC) May 12, 2019
In his remarks, Paul stressed that Schiff and his Democratic colleagues don’t seem to understand that prosecutorial allegations should not continue, especially after a decision has been made not to seek an indictment. Paul continued on to say that he believes that the majority of Americans would disagree with what hundreds of federal prosecutors have contended: that Trump would have been prosecuted if he were not a sitting president.
“People are horrified by the idea that you could put someone in jail for obstructing justice on something where you didn’t commit the crime,” Paul said.
In the days following Trump’s assertion of executive privilege over redacted portions of the Mueller report, Schiff and Paul were each pressed to respond to allegations that they are being inconsistent in the standards that they are applying to Trump, when compared to their respective opinions on similar assertions of executive privilege made by Barack Obama during his terms.
Both men attempted to draw circumstantial differences that would explain their differing positions as matters of substance, as opposed to mere partisanship.
