Robert Mueller Needs to Testify in Front of the American People. Period.
I have been curious for a long time about this Robert Mueller fella. He seems like a formidable guy-war hero, G-man, Washington power player. Honest people that I know to be honest say he's honest. People I know whose integrity is unimpeachable volunteer with no prompting that Mueller's integrity is pure granite.
I think he circumscribed his own investigation unnecessarily, but I also think the report he produced is pretty damning nonetheless. All of that being said, he has what I believe to be a profound obligation to the American people as a fellow citizen to bring himself forward under oath and explain in his own words and in his own voice what he found out about the president* and his people in the two years he spent investigating them. Which makes this whole thing more than passing strange. From NBC News:
Mueller has told House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler that he would prefer to make a public opening statement, but leave his testimony behind closed doors, Nadler said on "The Rachel Maddow Show" Thursday night...He envisions himself correctly as a man of great rectitude and apolitical and he doesn't want to participate in anything that he might regard as a political spectacle."
This dog declines to hunt. In handing over to the Congress the responsibility for acting-or not acting-on the thick trail of bread-crumbs he left for them to follow in his report, Mueller threw the whole matter into our superheated political context. It's a little late to decide that you're worried about a political spectacle-unless, of course, you've been asleep for the last 50 years. America produces spectacles-political spectacles, sports spectacles, The GRAMMYs. It's one of the few things that we do well.
Sometimes. I think Mueller's going to testify, publicly, under some set conditions and that his request for a closed hearing was merely his opening bid in his negotiations with Nadler and the committee. He owes the country a debt now. That may not be fair given his lifetime of public service, in uniform and out, but that's just the way it is now. Nothing is as it was.
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