Republican Ken Buck Scores Massive Own Goal in Mueller Questioning
WASHINGTON — Rep. Ken Buck, a Republican from Colorado, thought he had former Special Counsel Robert Mueller cornered on Wednesday. It backfired spectacularly.
Before Buck, the marathon grilling of Mueller had followed a familiar pattern: Democrats fired off quick questions designed to elicit yes or no answers regarding some of the most damning passages of the special counsel’s 488-page report, while Republicans tried to catch Mueller in a lie or call out his supposed hypocrisy for not investigating the far right’s favorite bugbears like the so-called Steele Dossier or the opposition research firm Fusion GPS.
When it was his turn to speak, Rep. Buck pressed Mueller on why he reached a conclusion on whether members of the Trump presidential campaign conspired with Russian officials (they did not, according to Mueller) but did not reach a similar determination on whether President Trump obstructed justice.
By highlighting the fact Mueller did not recommend bringing or declining charges, Buck aimed to bolster his accusation that Mueller had flaunted DOJ rules by throwing “a bunch of stuff up against the wall to see what would stick” — moving from the legal realm to the political one.
But Mueller, who disputed Buck’s characterization of the obstruction piece of the report, said the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel had made it clear that a sitting president could not be charged with a crime. “So one of the tools a prosecutor would use is not there,” he said. Mueller and his team did not conclude whether the president committed obstruction — they could not. That didn’t mean the president was innocent; as Mueller explained earlier in the hearing, his report also did not exonerate the president of obstruction either. (Later in the day, during his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Mueller cleared up a misconception from his previous remarks that suggested the special counsel’s office found Trump had committed obstruction but couldn’t indict because of DOJ policy. In fact, Mueller clarified, the special counsel’s office “did not reach a determination as to whether the president committed a crime.”)
But Buck, a former prosecutor in the Justice Department, wasn’t finished with his questioning.
“Could you charge the president with a crime after he left office?” Buck asked.
“Yes,” Mueller replied instantly.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/robert-mueller-ken-buck-hearing-trump-obstruction-862902/
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Which is why I did this bumper sticker a couple years ago:
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