Maybe we now know the real reason that Bob Mueller was so reluctant to testify.
With
even liberal commentators conceding that Mueller was a shaky witness
during two House hearings, questions are swirling about his mental
acuity and his ability to handle the job of special counsel.
Let
me say at the outset that I have great respect for Mueller as a
decorated Vietnam War veteran and an FBI director so widely admired that
Barack Obama asked the George W. Bush appointee to serve a second term.
Let
me also say that the hearings shouldn’t be graded only on optics,
although they were, like most hearings, designed as political theater.
But even on substance, Mueller offered almost nothing that was new, and
for all the media hype, that was very much by design.
Still, Mueller’s struggles on the Hill were a real head-scratcher, especially for those who have worked with him.
The New York Times
reported on the front page yesterday that, as the prosecutor in charge
of a two-year investigation of President Trump and Russian interference,
he was not the Mueller of old:
“Soon after the special counsel’s
office opened in 2017, some aides noticed that Robert S. Mueller III
kept noticeably shorter hours than he had as F.B.I. director, when he
showed up at the bureau daily at 6 a.m. and often worked nights.
He seemed to cede substantial responsibility to his top deputies, including Aaron Zebley,
who managed day-to-day operations and often reported on the
investigation’s progress up the chain in the Justice Department. As
negotiations with President Trump’s lawyers about interviewing him
dragged on, for example, Mr. Mueller took part less and less, according
to people familiar with how the office worked.
That hands-off
style was on display on Wednesday when Mr. Mueller testified for about
seven hours before two House committees. Once famous for his laserlike
focus, Mr. Mueller, who will turn 75 next month, seemed hesitant about
the facts in his own 448-page report. He struggled at one point to come
up with the word ‘conspiracy.’”
Mueller,
who asked for questions to be repeated more than a dozen times, even
botched one about which president appointed him as a top prosecutor in
1986.
So if Times reporters (and presumably other reporters) knew
that Mueller was a hands-off leader with dwindling stamina who
increasingly relied on his deputies, how did that remain such a closely
guarded secret?
I don’t want to cast aspersions on journalists who
have doggedly covered the investigation, but the temptation not to
jeopardize their access, and the possibility of future leaks, must have
been considerable. Now that Mueller is no longer special counsel, and
his shortcomings were so glaringly on public display, it’s “safe” to
publish the story.
David Axelrod, who knows him from his time in
the Obama White House, tweeted: “This is delicate to say, but Mueller,
whom I deeply respect, has not publicly testified before Congress in at
least six years. And he does not appear as sharp as he was then.”
Now
I don’t think it’s fair to expect Mueller to know every detail of a
sprawling investigation or every sentence in the report. He was under
tremendous pressure not to get anything wrong, and self-imposed pressure
not to break any new ground.
And I don’t think it’s fair for commentators to speculate or insinuate that he might have some kind of medical condition.
But
in describing his “painful” testimony, the Times said Mueller’s
“halting delivery stood out all the more given his towering reputation
for a command of facts and physical stamina — the stuff of lore among
his former aides and colleagues. Nonetheless, he was unmistakably
shaky.”
And the paper reported that calendars show one of the top
prosecutors, Andrew Weissman, met infrequently with Mueller, except for a
daily 5 p.m. staff meeting. But the calendars say his aide Zebley was
the team leader at these meetings 111 times.
As for the fallout, the Washington Post’s
Dan Balz said Mueller was supposed to be the Democrats’ savior but the
hearings “probably shattered those illusions once and for all. If
Democrats hope to end the Trump presidency, they will have to do so by
defeating him at the ballot box in November 2020.”
Some liberals,
such as pro-impeachment Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, were
candid about what happened. He said the hearings were “a disaster. Far
from breathing life into his damning report, the tired Robert Mueller
sucked the life out of it.”
But some MSNBC opinion hosts seized on
a few words here or there, as if Mueller hadn’t said in his report four
months ago that the report didn’t “exonerate” Trump.
When Mueller
told House Intel chairman Adam Schiff that knowingly accepting foreign
help in a presidential campaign is “a crime in certain circumstances,”
that’s hardly the same as saying the Trump team was guilty of such a
crime, which his report did not find.
Another sound bite popular
at MSNBC was this brief exchange with Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu, who said
the reason "you did not indict Donald Trump is because of the OLC
opinion stating that you cannot indict a sitting president, correct?”
“That is correct,” Mueller said.
Despite
the fact that Mueller started the second hearing by saying he had to
“correct” something—“We did not reach a determination as to whether the
president committed a crime”—some at the cable network seemed to place
more weight on the first answer.
What
the bobbled response also showed was a witness who was not quite up to
the task, something we’re now learning was an open secret in at least
some Washington circles.
