'Not a Witch Hunt': Mueller Defends Investigation Under Tough Questioning from California Lawmakers

Nine Californians were among the lawmakers on the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees who questioned former special counsel Robert Mueller Wednesday during two separate hearings on Capitol Hill.

Mueller, as promised, stuck to what he already laid out in his 448-page report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. But under questioning by House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, the prosecutor agreed that President Trump’s repeated characterization of the investigation as a “witch hunt” was not accurate.

“It is not a witch hunt,” Mueller said.

Mueller demurred when asked to summarize or read from the report — prompting Schiff to fire off a series of questions aimed at getting him to confirm the major findings of his investigation. In response, Mueller confirmed that the report, in Schiff’s characterization, “describes a sweeping and systematic effort by Russia to influence our presidential election,” and that the Trump campaign welcomed that help.

“We did not come to a conclusion as to whether the president committed a crime,” Mueller told the committee.

Schiff’s brisk line of questioning also included this cataloging of the many indictments and convictions that emerged from the investigation:

Schiff’s questioning came just hours after Mueller made an unexpected comment during the morning’s Judiciary Committee hearing, when he agreed with Rep. Ted Lieu, another Los Angeles-area Democratic congressman, that the special counsel’s office didn’t charge Trump with obstruction because Justice Department policy prohibits charges against a sitting president.

But in his opening remarks to Schiff’s Intelligence committee, Mueller backtracked on that comment and said he had misspoken.

“We did not come to a conclusion as to whether the president committed a crime,” Mueller told the committee.

Only two California Republicans sit on the two committees — Rep. Devin Nunes of Tulare, and Rep. Tom McClintock of Elk Grove. Nunes largely focused his questions on the so-called Steele Dossier, a private intelligence report that Mueller repeatedly refused to answer questions about.

McClintock, much like his other Republican colleagues, also used his time to try to discredit Mueller and his team as partisans with an interest in damaging Trump. He accused Mueller of misrepresenting evidence in the report, noting that it ties Russian online “troll farms” to the Russian government, even as a judge in a related case questioned that claim and “excoriated” prosecutors for making the link without sufficient proof.

“The fundamental problem as I said — we’ve got to take your word [that] your team faithfully, accurately, impartially and completely described all of the underlying evidence in the Mueller Report. And we’re finding more and more instances where this just isn’t the case,” McClintock said.

“And it’s starting to look like, having desperately tried and failed to make a legal case against the president, you made a political case instead,” he added. “You put it in a paper sack, lit it on fire, dropped it on our porch, rang the doorbell and ran.”

Mueller pushed back, but again stopped short of addressing the substance of McClintock’s accusations.

“I don’t think you reviewed a report that is as thorough, as fair, as consistent as the report that we have in front of us,” he said.

When it was her chance to question Mueller, Rep. Jackie Speier, a San Mateo Democrat, said she wanted to give the special counsel a chance to “tell the American people what you would like them to glean from this report.”

“We spent substantial time assuring the integrity of the report, understanding it would be a message to those who come after us,” Mueller said. “But it is also a signal, a flag to those of us that have some responsibility in this area to exercise those responsibilities swiftly and don’t let this problem linger as it has over so many years.”