Slate "This Was No Watergate"
Congressional hearings helped uncover Nixon’s crimes. In the Trump era, they’re about getting politicians on TV.
By FRED KAPLAN
JULY 24, 2019
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/mueller-watergate-testimony-congress.html
President Donald Trump, his supporters, his critics, and every news network had high hopes, or nervous fears, about former special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony on Wednesday, likening its possible impact to that of the 1973 Watergate hearings, which resulted in the toppling of Richard Nixon.
It was clear, less than halfway into the seven hours of hearings before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, that the predictions, on all sides, were way overblown.
If the Democrats intended the hearings to be the prelude to a full-blown impeachment investigation, Mueller proved to be a less-than-compelling witness. Rep. Adam Schiff, the intelligence committee chairman, had promised that Mueller would bring his dusty, thick report—which few Americans have read—“to life.” Instead, he made it dustier still.
Mueller had already said, at a press conference in May, that, if called to testify, he would say nothing beyond the text of the report. The warning turned out to be more literal than anyone could have expected. On a few occasions, a lawmaker asked him to explain some obscure bit of legalese in plain English; one of these bits would have amounted to a suggestion, if not quite an endorsement, of impeachment as a possible measure that Congress could take. But Mueller declined to do even that.
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It’s unclear where Nadler and Schiff go from here. They could call—and could compel testimony from—Don McGahn, the former White House lawyer, who was in the thick of whatever it was that Trump was doing to interfere with the investigation and who revealed much to Mueller’s staff. He may be the one person who could most grippingly bring the Mueller report to life. They could also order the arrest of some of the officials and ex-officials who have defied subpoenas to testify; that might get some of them to take this business seriously. They could, more to the point, run a real investigation, one designed to reveal to the public what they already know—and unlock secrets they don’t yet know—rather than simply put their colleagues on television.
(well worth a full read - I am not sure all here will agree with this take, but it is a pretty valid one, to me)
= new reply since forum marked as read
