Robert Mueller will testify before Congress on July 17 after House Democrats issued a subpoena for his appearance, a move that paves the way for a reluctant special counsel to answer questions publicly for the first time about his 22-month investigation into President Donald Trump.
The House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees announced Tuesday that Mueller had agreed to testify after they issued subpoenas for his testimony, and Mueller would appear in public before the two panels next month.
“Americans have demanded to hear directly from the Special Counsel so they can understand what he and his team examined, uncovered, and determined about Russia’s attack on our democracy, the Trump campaign’s acceptance and use of that help, and President Trump and his associates’ obstruction of the investigation into that attack,” House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said in a joint statement.
Mueller’s testimony is poised to be the most-anticipated congressional hearing in years, and represents a huge moment for House Democrats who have wrestled with whether to dive into a politically divisive impeachment process following the Mueller investigation and White House stonewalling of congressional probes.
Trump responded typically:
Odd tweet about the guy who wrote a report that supposedly exonerated him.
The right-wing propaganda machine is on overdrive already:
As Fox & Friends talked about Robert Mueller‘s upcoming testimony before Congress on Wednesday, Brian Kilmeade said at one point that he doubts the special counsel really knows what’s in his report.
“I don’t think he knows the details of the report,” Kilmeade said.
“He better,” Steve Doocy interjected. “His name is on it.”
Kilmeade continued his point with “He is like the King of England on this; he assigns the people. They’re gonna say ‘Why are most of them Democratically affiliated? Aren’t you concerned about the perception if you hire people like that to do this job? Do you understand why some feel there was an agenda in there?’”
Kilmeade concluded by predicting that Mueller’s hearing will spiral out of control, saying “I sense this ping-pong could got other direction.”
Trump went ballistic this morning on Fox, saying (among other things) that Mueller committed a crime because he destroyed some FBI emails between Page and Stzrok:
Trump is yelling into the phone about how Mueller "terminated the emails … he terminated them. They're gone. And that's illegal. That's a crime."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 26, 2019
Bartiromo pretends to know what he's talking about and tries to ask a question. Trump just keeps ranting over her. pic.twitter.com/yBK676eGmn
I would love for Jim Jordon or some other Republican on the House Committee to attack Mueller on this. They will get buried.