Robert Mueller confirmed former White House counsel Don McGahn was pressured to lie by the White House about whether he was ever asked by Donald Trump to fire the former special counsel while testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
"The president told the White House staff secretary, Rob Porter, to try to pressure [Don] McGahn to make a false denial. Is that correct?" Democrat Karen Bass asked Mr Mueller.
"That’s correct,” he replied.
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Rep Schiff is a very eloquent writer and a great legal mind. Here are his opening comments to Mueller.
Mueller testimony: Read the prepared opening statement from House Intelligence Chairman Adam B. Schiff
July 24, 2019
9:59 AM
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, delivered the following statement at the Robert S. Mueller III hearing on Wednesday:
At the outset and on behalf of my colleagues, I want to thank you, Special Counsel Mueller, for a lifetime of service to the country.
Your report, for those who have taken the time to study it, is methodical and it is devastating, for it tells the story of a foreign adversary’s sweeping and systematic intervention in a close U.S. presidential election.
That should be enough to deserve the attention of every American, as you well point out. But your report tells another story as well. For the story of the 2016 presidential election is also a story about disloyalty to country, about greed, and about lies.
Your investigation determined that the Trump campaign – including Trump himself – knew that a foreign power was intervening in our election and welcomed it, built Russian meddling into their strategy, and used it.
Disloyalty to country. Those are strong words, but how else are we to describe a presidential campaign which did not inform the authorities of a foreign offer of dirt on their opponent, which did not publicly shun it, or turn it away, but which instead invited it, encouraged it, and made full use of it?
That disloyalty may not have been criminal. Constrained by uncooperative witnesses, the destruction of documents and the use of encrypted communications, your team was not able to establish each of the elements of the crime of conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt, so not a provable crime, in any event. But, I think, maybe, something worse. A crime is the violation of a law written by Congress. But disloyalty to country violates the very obligation of citizenship, our devotion to a core principle on which our nation was founded, that we, the people, not some foreign power that wishes us ill, we decide, who shall govern, us.
This also a story about money, about greed and corruption, about the leadership of a campaign willing to compromise the nation’s interest not only to win, but to make money at the same time.
About a campaign chairman indebted to pro-Russian interests who tried to use his position to clear his debts and make millions. About a national security advisor using his position to make money from still other foreign interests. And about a candidate trying to make more money than all of them, through a real estate project that to him, was worth a fortune, hundreds of millions of dollars, and the realization of a lifelong ambition – a Trump Tower in the heart of Moscow. A candidate who, in fact, viewed his whole campaign as the greatest infomercial in history.
Donald Trump and his senior staff were not alone in their desire to use the election to make money. For Russia, too, there was a powerful financial motive. Putin wanted relief from U.S. economic sanctions imposed in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and over human rights violations. The secret Trump Tower meeting between the Russians and senior campaign officials was about sanctions. The secret conversations between Flynn and the Russian ambassador were about sanctions. Trump and his team wanted more money for themselves, and the Russians wanted more money for themselves, and for their oligarchs.
But the story doesn’t end here either. For your report also tells a story about lies. Lots of lies.
Lies about a gleaming tower in Moscow and lies about talks with the Kremlin. Lies about the firing of FBI Director James Comey, and lies about efforts to fire you, Mr. Mueller, and lies to cover it up. Lies about secret negotiations with the Russians over sanctions and lies about Wikileaks. Lies about polling data and lies about hush money payments. Lies about meetings in the Seychelles to set up secret back channels, and lies about a secret meeting in New York Trump Tower. Lies to the FBI, lies to your staff, and lies to our Committee.
And lies to obstruct an investigation into the most serious attack on our democracy by a foreign power in our history.
That is where your report ends, Mr. Mueller, with a scheme to cover up, obstruct and deceive every bit as systematic and pervasive as the Russian disinformation campaign itself, but far more pernicious since this rot came from within.
Even now, after 448 pages in two volumes, the deception continues. The President and his acolytes say your report found no collusion, though your report explicitly declined to address that question, since collusion can involve both criminal and non-criminal conduct.
Your report laid out multiple offers of Russian help to the Trump campaign, the campaign’s acceptance of that help, and overt acts in furtherance of Russian help. To most Americans, that is the very definition of collusion, whether it is a crime or not.
They say your report found no evidence of obstruction, though you outline numerous actions by the President intended to obstruct the investigation.
They say the President has been fully exonerated, though you specifically declare you could not exonerate him.
In fact, they say your whole investigation was nothing more than a witch hunt, that the Russians didn’t interfere in our election, that it’s all a terrible hoax. The real crime, they say, is not that the Russians intervened to help Donald Trump, but that the FBI had the temerity to investigate it when they did.
But worst of all, worse than all the lies and the greed, is the disloyalty to country, for that too, continues. When asked, if the Russians intervene again, will you take their help, Mr. President? Why not, was the essence of his answer. Everyone does it.
No, Mr. President, they don’t. Not in the America envisioned by Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton. Not for those who believe in the idea that Lincoln labored until his dying day to preserve, the idea animating our great national experiment, so unique then, so precious still — that our government is chosen by our people, through our franchise, and not by some hostile foreign power.
This is what is at stake. Our next election, and the one after that, for generations to come. Our democracy.
This is why your work matters, Mr. Mueller. This is why our investigation matters. To bring these dangers to light.
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Some live comments from NYT’s live analysis… Mueller needs to clarify what he had told Rep Ted Lieu in House Judiciary Committee in previous session. See below
Nicholas Fandos
Congressional Correspondent
1:13 PM ET
Mueller is now clarifying his exchange this morning with Representative Ted Lieu. This is important.
Maggie Haberman
White House Correspondent
1:14 PM ET
He’s clarifying his own answer.
Charlie Savage
Washington Correspondent
1:14 PM ET
Called it.
Nicholas Fandos
Congressional Correspondent
1:14 PM ET
Democrats had seized on that exchange, in which Mueller agreed that a Justice Department legal opinion had prevented him from charging President Trump for obstruction.
Katie Benner
Department of Justice Reporter
1:14 PM ET
He corrects the record on the Justice Department opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted: He says that he does not agree with Lieu’s assertion that Mueller didn’t prosecute Trump because of that opinion.
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This exchange relates to Rep Ratcliffe’s q’s to Mueller about what kind of effect the Steele Dossier had on the Russian investigation. Mueller will not answer and says it is a DOJ issue. He’s already gone over this in his opening statement.
Commentary below gives more details on what the FBI has done with the Steele Dossier.
### Charlie Savage
#### Washington Correspondent
1:33 PM ET
Ratcliffe asks a great question, given that a lot of what was in the Steele dossier didn’t turn out to be confirmed by the evidence Mueller gathered: “A stated purpose of your appointment as special counsel was to ensure a full and thorough investigation of the Russian government efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. As part of that full and thorough investigation, what determination did the special counsel office make about whether the Steele dossier was part of the Russian government efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election?”
*** ### Charlie Savage**
#### Washington Correspondent
1:33 PM ET
To which Mueller demurs.
### Nicholas Fandos
#### Congressional Correspondent
1:34 PM ET
Mueller is able to do so in this case, again, because the Justice Department inspector general is examining this issue. His report is expected in the coming weeks.
### Adam Goldman
#### Washington Correspondent
1:35 PM ET
The F.B.I. had a team of analysts and agents vetting every line of the dossier. The F.B.I. even interviewed one of Steele’s main sources, who contributed a significant amount of information to the dossier.
Nunes is a Trumper and a conspiracist…stirring up the pot. See remarks from NYT’s live analyses who try to determine what he is saying.
Nicholas Fandos
Congressional Correspondent
1:19 PM ET
Now it is Nunes’ turn to ask questions.
Adam, can you help us with what Nunes is talking about here?
Adam Goldman
Washington Correspondent
1:21 PM ET
Nick, Nunes tried to assert that the F.B.I. opened its Russia investigation prior to the end of July 2016. There is no information to support that version of events.
Michael S. Schmidt
Washington Correspondent
1:21 PM ET
Nunes is questioning the origination of the Flynn investigation. Important fact: Nunes has a longstanding close friendship with Flynn.
Nicholas Fandos
Congressional Correspondent
1:21 PM ET
Nunes has just put up a poster behind him of what appears to be Boris Johnson, the new British prime minister, and Joseph Mifsud.
Nunes: “What we are trying to figure out here, Mr. Mueller, is if our NATO allies or Boris Johnson had been compromised.”
Katie Benner
Department of Justice Reporter
1:23 PM ET
Unsure what Nunes is talking about anymore!
Sharon LaFraniere
Washington Investigative Reporter
1:23 PM ET
I have studied this for a long time but I can’t make heads or tails of Nunes’ line of questioning.
Katie Benner
Department of Justice Reporter
1:24 PM ET
But it almost doesn’t matter what the lawmakers say. Mueller tells Nunes, as he’s told everyone, that he stands by what is in the report, and not necessarily by what is not in the report.
Adam Goldman
Washington Correspondent
1:25 PM ET
Sharon and Katie, to understand Nunes’ line of thinking, you need to be deeply familiar with right-wing theories that the F.B.I. cooked up this investigation and Mifsud was working for the West. There is no evidence any of this is true.
Nicholas Fandos
Congressional Correspondent
1:25 PM ET
Nunes is questioning the loyalties of Mifsud, I believe, trying to suggest that he was not a Russian agent in fact an agent of a Western power trying to help concoct a case against the Trump campaign.
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It’s over. Comments? Reactions? What did you all think?
This was the moment that stuck with me,
“I hope this is not the new normal,” he told Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, after the congressman asked him whether future political campaigns could accept foreign interference, “but I fear it is.”
Quote from New York Times
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Yes, that had a chilling effect. No question that there is a backslide on how uncommitted we are to shoring up our elections (#SeeMcConnellOnElectionLaws)
There has been a chilling effect on a lot of areas - rule of law, assurances of how FBI/CIA/DNI are working in the best interest of our country (which I believe they are) in the face of dispersal of R’s countermands of Fake News, Hoax and in the larger sphere T’s allegiance to the autocrats - Putin, Kim Jong On and dismissal of NATO and our regular allies.
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My takeaway is that the Dems got across in the larger conversation that there were crimes committed by T, his campaign and his administration and straight up said there were actual crimes which could be impeached. I do think the afternoon was better, and Mueller had more energy and less vague behavior.
Mueller stated - “No witch hunt, no hoax” Good “Lies” “no full exoneration”
It is so difficult to ‘read’ how this whole presentation will be interpreted by both parties - since both stay entrenched. I am proud of the Dems with their thoroughness and thoughtful questions.
The doubts raised by Nunes, Collins and all the other R conspiracists were not effective (in my mind) but the Fox news watchers are stating that the Dem’s did not get their message across. (SeeChrisWallace) and they are depicted Mueller as 'dazed and confused."
and sorry…drudgereport (sickly picture of Mueller)
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PBS commentator’s thoughts
NBC’s researcher
And Ts’ thoughts
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I would like to note that Trump re-tweeted this statement from Chris Wallace at 9:11 am CST, 8:11 EST, before virtually anything had actually been been said. In other words, it’s an utterly disingenuous leap made way, way too early.
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I posted and deleted this because I thought it was fake, but after checking it’s real but not everybody has it yet.
Twitter has added new reporting features to report attempts to sway an election with false information.
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I enjoyed this interview with Politico’s Congressional team. I’m a big fan of Natasha Bertrand, I think she does really great work.
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Give it to me straight…this does.
For the past two and a half years of Donald Trump’s Presidency, I have consoled myself with the argument that, despite all the chaos and narcissism and racial incitement and norm-shattering, the American system of government is holding itself together. When Trump attempted to introduce a ban on Muslims entering the country and sought to add a citizenship question to the census, the courts restrained him. When he railed at NATO and loyal allies like Germany’s Angela Merkel, other members of his Administration issued quiet reassurances that it was just bluster. When the American people had the chance to issue a verdict on Trump’s first two years in office, they turned the House of Representatives over to the opposition party.
All of this was reassuring. But, while watching what happened on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, when Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, testified before two House committees, I struggled to contain a rising sense of dread about where the country is heading. With Republicans united behind the President, Democrats uncertain about how to proceed, and Mueller reluctant to the last to come straight out and say that the President committed impeachable offenses, it looks like Trump’s blitzkrieg tactics of demonizing anyone who challenges him, terrorizing potential dissidents on his own side, and relentlessly spouting propaganda over social media may have worked. If so, he will have recorded a historic victory over the bedrock American principles of congressional oversight and equality before the law.
The morning session was largely devoted to Volume 2 of Mueller’s report, in which he relates ten instances of Trump seeking to interfere with the Russia investigation. Sitting before them, the G.O.P. members of the House Judiciary Committee had a seventy-four-year-old registered Republican and decorated hero of the Vietnam War, who subsequently spent decades as a public prosecutor, was appointed to the position of F.B.I. director by George W. Bush, in 2001, and served twelve years in that post. Yet some of the Republican members of the Committee treated their distinguished witness with thinly disguised contempt.Louie Gohmert, of Texas, who has made a career of scaremongering, gay-bashing, and Islamophobia, began his questioning by entering into the congressional record a screed he authored titled “Robert Mueller: Unmasked.” Matt Gaetz, of Florida, sneered at the former special counsel as he sought, unsuccessfully, to get him to comment on the conspiracy theory that the allegations against Trump in Christopher Steele’s Russia dossier were part of a Russian government disinformation campaign. Ohio’s Jim Jordan threw his arms in the air and mocked Mueller for his refusal to answer questions about Joseph Mifsud, the mysterious Maltese professor who allegedly told George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign aide, that the Russians had damaging material on Hillary Clinton. John Ratcliffe, another Texan, asked why Mueller bothered to write his report at all, given the Justice Department guidelines that say a sitting President can’t be indicted on criminal charges. Wisconsin’s Jim Sensenbrenner went further, questioning whether Mueller should have even carried out the investigation, which he described as “fishing.”
Yet none of these Republicans questioned any of the factual accounts of Trump’s behavior contained in Mueller’s report, which included attempting to fire Mueller, and, when that effort failed, trying to get the Attorney General to limit the special counsel’s remit. Rather than trying to refute Mueller’s findings, the Republicans sought to switch attention to the origins of the Russia investigation, which is, of course, precisely what Trump has been doing for the past two years.
The wanton disrespect that these elected Republicans showed Mueller was perhaps the most alarming testament yet to Trump’s total conquest of the Party. In today’s G.O.P., as in Stalin’s Russia, evidently, decades of loyal public service count for nothing when the leader and his henchmen decide someone represents a threat and the apparatchiks have been ordered to take that person down. All that matters is carrying out the order and staying in the leader’s good graces. That isn’t congressional oversight. It is scorched-earth politics of a kind that is entirely antithetical to the notion of checks and balances enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
It was left to the Democratic members of the committee to remind the millions watching about the Bronze Star that Mueller received for rescuing a wounded fellow-marine while under enemy fire, and the fact that the U.S. Senate confirmed him and reconfirmed him unanimously to the F.B.I. job. Mueller was too modest to mention any of this. Sadly, and for whatever reason, he also seemed reluctant to return the Republicans’ fire in like fashion. Particularly in the morning hearing, he appeared hesitant. Many times, he asked for a question to be repeated. About the only occasion in which he displayed some genuine passion was in defending his colleagues on the Russia investigation, whom the Republicans—again, taking their lead from Trump—were trying to portray as Democratic political operatives.
Sticking to his promise not to stray beyond the contents of his report, Mueller frustrated the Democrats’ hope that he would bring the lengthy document to life. In confirming the damning accounts of Trump’s actions, which Democrats read out, he answered, simply, “Yes,” “True,” or “That’s correct.” When Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, asked him to read out a section of the report, he declined.
Despite Mueller’s reticence, the Democrats succeeded in countering the White House’s messaging, and showed that the report provides ample legal justification for opening an impeachment inquiry. In his opening statement, Mueller undermined months of White House obfuscation, saying, “We did not address collusion, which is not a legal term.” And, during his initial exchange with Nadler, the former special counsel completed the demolition job by stating unequivocally that his report hadn’t exonerated Trump on the obstruction question.…
The tragedy is that this might not matter. Even as Mueller was still testifying, some media commentary was intimating that his appearance wouldn’t change anything. “Those who wanted to begin impeachment proceedings needed bombshells from the former special counsel,” Politico’s Playbook newsletter said. “Mueller gave them nothing besides affirmation about what was in his report, and a series of sidesteps when he did not want to answer questions.” Later in the afternoon, the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake wrote, “If Democrats hoped this would be a seminal moment, they will apparently leave sorely disappointed—in large part because their star witness was no star.”
It is now up to the House Democrats. Leaving a meeting of her caucus on Wednesday afternoon, Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters, “The American people now realize more fully the crimes that have been committed against our Constitution.” But, in a subsequent press conference, she indicated that a move toward impeachment wasn’t imminent. “We still have outstanding matters in the courts,” she said.
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You beat me to it, hah! 
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THANK YOU COLBERT!
Colbert began by calling out Wallace for describing Mueller’s performance a “disaster for the Democrats” during the very first break in his testimony.
President Donald Trump repeated Wallace’s assertion on Twitter: (no need to post)
“You said that at 10:07 this morning, an hour and a half into a six-hour series of hearings,” Colbert told Wallace. “So, is Fox News’ motto, ‘We report and decide before the thing’s over?’”
Wallace explained “there was a break in the hearing and we were asked for our reaction” and said Colbert actually echoed his point in his opening monologue. Colbert refuted the suggestion and said he didn’t understand how it was a “disaster.” “Yes, you do,” Wallace fired back.
“No, I promise you. I don’t,” Colbert responded. “It seemed like a well-organized and choreographed recitation of the moral, ethical and criminal failings of the president of the United States.”
…
Wallace later accused Colbert of representing the “anti-Trump tribe.”
“I’m in the ‘don’t lie to prosecutors’ tribe, that’s the tribe I’m in,” Colbert hit back. “I’m in the ‘do not welcome the help of a foreign country to win our election’ tribe. Those are my tribes. What tribe are you in?”
To which Wallace replied he was in “the journalist tribe.”
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Actually, Robert Mueller Was Awesome
History will show that he had one big goal, and nailed it.
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They have one of those is the morning too?! 
I opened this tonight because that’s way to early for many of us in different time zones. Happy Mueller’s Eve Y’all! 
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