democrats would like him to do and make more sweeping statements about the president's conduct in office. >> something like 15 days shy of his 75th birthday, he told us all in public, he did not want to do this. he did not want to speak again on this matter. but that was not to be. and he has two rounds today. >> yeah. i can't imagine robert mueller as someone who is proven wrong very often. you but what he said in that nine-minute press conference, i know you've reair ed it on your program and i've reaired on mine. that his report is the document. but that turns out not to be the case. >> if there is a criticism of the report, we'll get ready to go to chairman nadler here, it was how dense the copy was, 448 pages. how it was written for perhaps the attention span of another era in this country. >> yeah. and, listen, i think the other

criticism came from the sitting attorney general. it came from deep inside his inner circle which was on the question of obstruction of justice, robert mueller didn't render a clear decision. that what he said, what he said in that press conference and what i imagine democrats and republicans may drill down on today is that he decided that he couldn't say crimes weren't committed. but neither did he recommend prosecution of this president. >> here's the man of the hour. the focal point of much of the last two years. robert mueller will make his way to his seat before the committee. he'll be briefly surrounded by still photographers. maybe we can open the mics in the hearing room, listen to some of that before they are shooed away. and we'll be under way.

>> so far, we don't have audio from the hearing room. this is a necessary evil of the business. even if you're a taciturn life long public official. >> that's the picture that will be on the cover of every news cover in america tomorrow. >> that's right. >> idiot -- >> i think the chairman has just summed up the protester we just had who had a grievance about paul manafort. >> i think this is robert mueller's 89th appearance. >> 89th appearance before congress. >> before congress.

the opposite of his first rodeo, he's certainly hoping it is his last. >> the judiciary committee will come to order. without objection, the chair is authorized to declare recesses anytime. we welcome everyone to today's hearing in oversight the report in the investigation of the russian enter sbeerinterference6 election. i will open with a brief opening statement. director mueller thank you for being here. i want to say a few words about being here today, responsibility, integrity and accountability. your career, for example is a model of responsibility. you are a decorated marine officer. you were awarded a purple heart and a bronze star for valor in vietnam. you served in senior roles in the department of justice and in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, you served as director of the

fbi. two years ago, you returned to public service to lead the investigation into russia interference in the 2016 elections. you conducted that investigation with remarkable integrity. for 22 months, you never commented in public about your work. even when you were subjected to repeated and grossly unfair personal attacks. instead, your indictments spoke for you and in astonishing detail. over the course of your investigation, you obtained criminal indictments against 37 people and entities. you secured the conviction of president trump's campaign chairman. his deputy campaign manager, his national security adviser and his personal lawyer, among others. in the paul manafort case alone, you recovered as much as $42 million, so that the cost of your investigation to the taxpayers approaches zero. and in your report, you offer

the country accountability as well. in volume one, you find that the russian government attacked our 2016 elections, quote in a sweeping and systematic fashion. and that the attacks were designed to benefit the trump campaign. volume two walks us through den separate incidents of possible obstruction of justice where in your words president trump attempted to exert undue influence over your investigation. the president's behavior included, and i quote from your report, quote, public attacks on the investigation, nonpublic efforts to control it. and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate. closed quote. among the most shocking of these incidents, president trump ordered his white house counsel to have you fired. and then to lie and deny that it had happened. you ordered his former campaign manager to convince the recused

attorney general to step in and limit your work. and he attempted to prevent witnesses from cooperating with your investigation. although department policy barred you from indicting the president for misconduct, you made clear that he is not exonerated. any other person who acted in this way would have been charged with crimes. and in this nation, not even the president is above the law. which brings me to this committee's work. responsibility, integrity and accountability. these are the marks by which we who serve on this committee will be measured as well. director mueller, we have a responsibility to address the evidence that you have uncovered. you recognized as much when you said, quote, the constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse the sitting president of wrongdoing, closed quote. that process begins with the work of his committee.

we will follow your example, director mueller. we will act with integrity. we will follow the facts where they lead. we will consider all appropriate remedies. we will make our recommendation to the house when our work concludes. we will do this work, because there must be accountability to the conduct described in your report, especially as it relates to the president. thank you, again, director mueller, we look forward to your testimony. it is now my pleasure to recognize the ranking member of the judiciary committee, the gentleman from georgia mr. collins for his opening statement. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, mr. mueller, for being here. for two years, leading up to the release of the mueller report and in the three months since, americans were first told what to expect and then what to believe. collusion we were told was in plain sight, even if the special counsel's team doesn't find it. when mr. mueller produced his report and attorney general bill

barr provided it to every american, we learned of interfering in our elections. but learned of malice to depths of our america. we're here to hearing about mr. mueller's work. and we will do that after it marks an end to mr. mueller's involvement in an investigation that closed in april. the burden of proof or accusations that remain unproven is extremely high especially in special counsel's thoroughness. we are told this investigation began into an inquiry as to whether russia meddled in our 2016 election. mr. mueller, you concluded they did. russia's accessed democratic servers and disseminated sensitive information by revealing protected information. the investigation also reviewed whether donald trump the president sought russian assistance as a candidate to win the presidency. mr. mueller concluded he did not his family and advisers did not. in fact, the report shows no one in the president's campaign

colluded or conspire with the russians. the president watched the public narrative surrounding this investigation, to assume his guilt while he knew the extent of his innocence. volume two, of mr. mueller's report details the president's reaction to frustrating investigation where his innocence was established early on. the president's attitude toward the investigation was understandably negative yet the president did not use his authority to close the investigation. he asked his lawyer mr. mueller had conflicts and disqualified mr. mueller from the job, but he did not shut down the investigation. the president knew he was innocent. those are the facts of the mueller report. russia meddled in the 2016 election. the president did not conspire with the russians. and nothing we hear today will change those facts but one element of this story remains, the beginnings of the fbi investigation into the president. i look forward to mr. mueller's testimony about what he found during his review of the origins of the investigation. in addition, the inspector general continues to review how

bases gossip can be used to investigate the fbi against private citizens and eventually a president. those results will be released and we need to ensure that intelligence and law enforcement powers are never again used in turn on a private citizen or a political candidate as a result of political leanings of a handful of fbi agents. the origins and conclusion of the mueller investigation is the same thing what it means to be american. every american has a voice. every american enjoys the presumption of innocence in guarantee of due process. if we carried nothing -- anything away today it must be that we increase our business against foreign election interference while we assure our government officials don't weaponize their power against the constitution rights guaranteed to every u.s. citizen. finally, we must agree that the opportunity caused here is too high. the months we've spent investigating from this failed to end the border crisis or failed to the growing job market. instead, we have gotten stuck

and it's paralyzed this committee and this house. as a side note, every week i leave my family and kids, the most important things to me to come to this place because i believe this place is a place where we can actually do things and help people. 6 1/2 years ago, i came here to work in the house for the people of the ninth district in this country. we accomplished a lot in those first six years on a bipartisan basis with my friends on this dias with me today. however, because of the majority of the dislike of this president and the investigation has caused us to accomplish nothing except talk about the problems of our country while our border is on fire and in crisis and everything else is stopped. this hearing is long overdue. we've had truth for months. no american conspired to throw our election. what we need today is to let that truth bring us confidence. and i hope, mr. chairman, closure. with that, i yield back. >> thank you, mr. collins. i will now introduce today's witness. robert mueller served as

director of the fbi from 2001 to 2013. and most recently served as special counsel in the department of justice, overviewing the investigation into russian interference in the 2016 special election. he received his b.a. from princeton university, an m.a. from new york university in my district and his j.d. from the university of virginia. mr. mueller is accompanied by counsel aaron zebley who served as deputy special counsel on the investigation. we welcome our distinguished witness. and we thank you for participating in today's hearing. now, if you would please rise, i will begin by swearing you in. raise your right hand, please. do you yeah, affirm under penalty of perjury, that the testimony you're about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge, information and belief, so help you god? let the record show the witness answered in the affirmative. thank you and please be seated. please note that your win

statement will be entered into the record in its entirety. accordingly, i ask that you summarize your testimony in five minutes. director mueller, you may begin. good morning, chairman nadler and ranking member collins and the members of the committee. as you know in may 2017, the acting attorney general asked me to serve as special counsel. i undertook that role because i believed it was of paramount interest to the nation to determine whether a foreign adversary had interviewed in the presidential election. as the acting attorney general said at the time, the appointment was necessary in order for the american people to have full confidence in the outcome. my staff and i carried out this assignment with that critical objective in mind. to work quietly, thoroughly and

with integrity, so that the public would have full confidence in the outcome. the order appointed me as special counsel directed our office to investigate russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. this included investigating any links or coordination between the russian government and individuals associated with the trump campaign. it all included investigating efforts to interfere with or obstruct our investigation. throughout the investigation, i continually stressed two things to the team that we had assembled. first, we needed to do our work as thoroughly as possible and as expeditiously as possible. it was in the public interest for our investigation to be complete, and not to last a day longer than was necessary. second, the investigation needed to be conducted fairly and with

absolute integrity. our team would not leak or take other actions that could compromise the integrity of our work. all decisions were made based on the facts and the law. during the conversation of our investigation, we charged more than 30 defendants with committing federal crimes including 12 officers ever the russian military. seven defendants have been convicted or pled guilty. certain of the charges we brought remain pending today. and for those matters i stress that the indictments contain allegations and every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. in addition to the criminal charges we brought, as required by justice department regulations, we submitted a confidential report to the attorney general at the conclusion of our investigation. the report set forth the results

of our work and the reasons for our charging and declination decisions. as you know, i made a few limited remarks about our report when we closed the special counsel's office in may of this year. there are certain points of their emphasis. first, our investigation found that the russian government interfered in our election in sweeping and systematic fashion. second, the investigation did not establish that members of the trump campaign conspired with the russian government in its election interference activities. we did not address collusion which is not a legal term, rather, we focused on whether the evidence was sufficient to charge any member on the campaign taking part in a criminal conspiracy.

and it was not. third, our investigation of efforts to obstruct the investigation and lie to investigators was of critical importance. obstruction of justice strikes at the core of the government's effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable. finally as described in volume two of our report, we investigateded a series of actions by the president towards the investigation. based on justice department policy and principles of fairness, we decided we would not make a determination as to whether the president committed a crime. now, it was our decision then and it remains our decision today. let me say, a further word about my appearance today. it is unusual for a prosecutor to testify about a criminal investigation. and given my role as a prosecutor, there are reasons

why my testimony will necessarily be limited. first, public testimony could affect several ongoing matters. and some of these matters court rules or judicial orders limit the disclosure of information to protect -- to protect the fairness of the proceedings. and consistent with longstanding justice department policy, it would be inappropriate for me to comment in any way that could affect an ongoing matter. second, the justice department has asserted privileges concerning investigative information and decisions. ongoing matters within the justice department and deliberations within our office. these are justice department privileges that i will respect. the department has released a letter discussing the restrictions on my testimony. i therefore will not be able to

answer questions about certain areas that i know of public interest. for example, i am unable to address questions about the initial opening of the fbi's russia investigation, which occurred months before my appointment. or matters related to the so-called steele dossier. these matters are subject of ongoing review by the department. any questions on these topics should therefore be directed to the fbi or the justice department. as i explained when we closed the special counsel's office in may, our report contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made. we conducted an extensive investigation over two years. in writing the report, we scrutinized every word.

and did not intend to summarize or describe the results of our work in a different way in the course of my testimony today. as i said on may 29th, the report is my testimony. and i will stay within that text. that text. and as i stated in may, i will not comment on the actions of the attorney general or of congress. i was appointed as a prosecutor, and i intend to adhere to that rule and to the department standards that govern it. i'll be joined today by deputy special counsel aaron zebley. mr. zebley has extensive experience as a federal prosecutor and at the fbi where he served as my chief of staff. mr. zebley was responsible for the day-to-day oversight of the investigations conducted by our office. i also want to, again, say thank you to the attorneys, the fbi agents, the analysts, the professional staff who helped us

conduct this investigation in a fair and independent manner. these individuals who spent nearly two years working on this matter were of the highest integrity. let me say one more thing. over the course of my career, i have seen a number of challenges to our democracy. the russian government's effort to interfere in our election is among the most serious. as i said on may 29th, this deserves the attention of every american. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. we will now proceed under the five-minute rule with questions. i will begin by recognizing myself for five minutes. director mueller, the president has repeatedly claimed that your report found there was no obstruction and that it completely and totally

exonerated him. but that is not what your report said, is it? >> correct, that is not what the report said. >> reading from page 2 of volume 2 of your report that's on the screen, you wrote, quote, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment, close quote. now, does that say there was no obstruction? >> no. >> in fact, you were actually unable to conclude the president did not commit obstruction of justice, is that correct? >> well, at the outset, we determined that when it came to the president's culpability, we needed to go forward only after taking into account the olc

opinion that indicated a sitting president cannot be indicted. >> so the report did not conclude that he did not commit obstruction of justice? is that correct? >> that is correct. >> and what about total exoneration? did you actually totally exonerate the president? >> no. >> now, in fact, your report expressly states that it does not exonerate the president. >> it does. >> your investigation actually found, quote, multiple acts by the president that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the russian interference and obstruction investigations, is that correct? >> correct. now, director mueller, can you explain in plain terms what that finding means so the american people can understand it? >> well, the finding indicates that the president was not -- that the president was not

exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed. >> in fact, you were talking about incidents, quote, in which the president sought to use his official power outside of usual channels, unquote, to exert undue influence over your investigations, is that right? >> that's correct. >> now, am i correct, then, on page 7 of volume 2 of your report, you wrote, quote, the president became aware that his own conduct was being investigated in an obstruction of justice inquiry. at that point, the president engaged in a second phase of conduct involving public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation, close quote. so president trump's efforts to exert undue influence over your investigation intensified after the president became aware that he personally was being investigated? >> i stick with the language that you have in front of you,

which comes from page 7, volume 2. >> now, is it correct that if you concluded that the president committed the crime of obstruction, you could not publicly state that in your report or here today? >> can you repeat the question, sir? >> is it correct that if you had concluded that the president committed the crime of obstruction, you couldn't publicly state that in your report or here today? >> i would say you -- the statement would be that you would not indict, and you would not indict because under the olc opinion, a sitting president cannot be indicted. it would be unconstitutional. >> so you could not state that because of the olc opinion if that had been your conclusion? >> the olc opinion with some guide, yes. >> under the department of justice policy, the president could be prosecuted for obstruction of justice crimes after he leaves office, correct? >> true. >> thank you. did any senior white house

official refuse a request to be interviewed by you and your team? >> i don't believe so. let me take that back. i would have to look at it, but i'm not certain that was the case. >> did the president refuse the request to be interviewed by you and your team? >> yes. >> is it true that you tried for more than a year to secure an interview with the president? >> yes. >> is it true that you and your team advised the president's lawyer that, quote, an interview with the president is vital to our investigation, close quote? >> yes. >> and is it true that you also, quote, stated that it is in the interest of the presidency and the public for an interview to take place, close quote? >> yes. >> but the president still refused to sit for an interview by you or your team? >> true. true. >> and did you also ask him to provide written answers to questions on the ten possible episodes of obstruction of justice crimes involving him? >> yes. >> did he provide any answers to a single question about whether

he engaged in obstruction of justice crimes? >> i would have to check on that. i'm not certain. >> mr. mueller, we are grateful you're here to express your investigation and findings. reviewing your work, i think anyone else who described what is in your report would have been criminally prosecuted. your report is vital to this committee and the american people because no one is above the law. i now recognize the gentleman from georgia, mr. collins. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and we're moving on. i reiterate the five-minute rule. there will be a question in a moment but i want to lay a foundation. i'll talk slowly. i'm said that i talk fast. i will talk slowly. >> thank you, sir. >> in your press conference you testified that any testimony from your office would not go beyond your report. we chose these words carefully, the work speaks for itself. i will not provide anything beyond that. do you stand by that statement?

>> yes. >> since may 19, have you done any additional interviews or obtained any additional information as your role of special counsel? >> since when? >> since the closing of your report. >> no. >> you can claim you are no longer special counsel, correct? >> i am no longer special counsel. >> at any time during your investigation, was your investigation curtailed or stopped or hindered? >> no. >> were you or your team questioned before your hearing today? >> no. >> you sa >> 40 fbi agents, 19 lawyers, analysts and accountants. are those numbers accurate? >> generally, yes. >> is it also true you issued 205 subpoenas, more than 1,000

search warrants, and 50 pin registers. >> that went a little fast for me. >> in your report -- i'll make this very simple. you did a lot of work, correct? >> yes. >> a lot of subpoenas. >> a lot of subpoenas. >> we'll walk through this really slow if we need to. >> a lot of search warrants. >> so you were very thorough. >> what? >> you were very thorough? you listed this out in your report, correct? >> yes. >> thank you. is it true the evidence gathered during your investigation -- given the questions you've just answered, is it true the evidence gathered during your investigation did not establish that the president was involved in the underlying crime related to russian election interference as stated in volume 1, page 7? >> we found insufficient evidence of the president's culpability. >> so that would be a yes? >> pardon? >> that would be a yes? >> yes. >> thank you. isn't it true that the evidence did not establish that the president or those close to him

were involved in the charge of russian computer hacking or measured conspiracies or that the president had any unlawful relationships with any russian official? volume 2, page 6, correct? >> i'll leave the answer to the report. >> so a yes. is it true that your investigation did not establish that the president was also involved in russian interference? >> yes. >> a term of art in federal criminal law, conspiracy is in the colloquial context, are collusion and conspiracy essentially synonymous terms? >> you're going to have to repeat that for me. >> collusion is not a specific offense or a term of art in the federal criminal law. conspiracy is in the colloquial context -- public contents,

collusion and conspiracy are essentially synonymous terms, correct? >> no. >> if no, on page 180 of volume 1 of your report, you wrote, as defined in legal dictionaries, collusion is largely synonymous with conspiracy as that crime is set forth in a general confederacy conspiracy. you said in your may 19 press conference and here today, you choose your words carefully. are you testifying something different today than what your report states? >> what i am asking is if you can give me the citation, i can look at the citation and evaluate whether it is. >> let me clarify. you stated that you would stay within the report. i just stated your report back to you. and you said that collusion and conspiracy were not synonymous terms. that answer was no. in page 80 of volume 1 of your report, it says, as defined in legal dictionaries, collusion is largely synonymous with conspiracy as that crime is set forth in general conspiracy statute 1873 usa 71.

you said you chose your words carefully. are you contradicting your report right now? >> not when i read it. >> so you change your answer to yes, then? >> no. if you look at that language -- >> i'm reading your report, sir. it's a yes or no answer. >> page 180? >> page 180, volume 1. this is from your report. >> correct. and i leave it with the report. >> so the report says yes, they are synonymous. finally, out of your own report, we can put to bed the collusion and conspiracy. one last question as we're going through. did you ever look into other countries investigated in the russian interference into our election? were other countries investigated or found knowledge that they had interference in our election? >> i'm not able to discuss other matters. >> i yield back. >> the gentleman yields back. the gentlelady from california. >> director mueller, as you heard from the chairman, we're mostly going to talk about obstruction of justice today,

but the investigation of russia's attack that started your investigation is why evidence of possible obstruction is serious. to what extent did the russian government interfere in the 2016 presidential election? >> could you repeat that, ma'am? >> to what extent did the russian government interfere in the 2016 presidential election? >> well, particularly when it came to computer crimes and the like, the government was implicated. >> so you wrote in volume 1 that the russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in a sweeping and systematic fashion. you also described in your report that the then-trump campaign chairman paul manafort shared with a russian operative, kolimnek, the campaign strategy for winning democratic votes in midwestern states an internal polling data of the campaign. is that correct? >> correct. >> they also discuss the status

of the trump campaign and manafort's strategy for winning democratic votes in midwestern states. months before that meeting, manafort had caused internal data to be shared with kilimnik, and that meeting continued after that, is that correct? >> correct. >> and there was a briefing, and that briefing included internal polling data. it also included the battleground states as manafort described as michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania, and minnesota, is that correct? >> correct. >> we don't have the redacted version. this may be another reason why we should get that for volume 1. based on your investigation, how

could the russian government have used this campaign polling data to further its sweeping and systematic interference in the 2016 presidential election? >> that's out of our path. >> fair enough. did your investigation find that the russian government perceived it would benefit from one of the candidates winning? >> yes. >> and which candidate would that be? >> well, it would be trimp -- trump. the president. >> correct. now, the trump campaign wasn't exactly reluctant to take russian help. you wrote, it expected it would benefit electorally through information stolen from russian efforts, is that correct? >> that's correct. >> what was the investigation's determination regarding the frequency with which the trump campaign made contact with the russian government? >> i would have to refer you to

the report on that. >> well, we went through and we counted 126 contacts between russians or their agents and trump campaign officials or their associates. would that sound about right? >> i can't say. i understand the statistic and i believe -- i understand the statistic. >> well, mr. mueller, i appreciate your being here and your report. from your testimony and the report, i think the american people have learned several things. first, the russians wanted trump to win. second, the russians went on a sweeping cyber influence campaign. the russians hacked the dnc, and they got the democratic game plan for the election. the russian campaign chairman met with russian agents and repeatedly gave them internal

data, polling and messaging in the battleground states. so while the russians were buying ads and creating propaganda to influence the outcome of the election, they were armed with inside information that they had stolen through hacking from the dnc and that they had been given by the trump campaign chairman, mr. manafort. my colleagues will probe the efforts undertaken to keep this information from becoming public, but i think it's important for the american people to understand the gravity of the underlying problem that your report uncovered. and with that, mr. chairman, i would yield back. >> the gentlelady yields back. the gentleman from texas. >> good morning, director. if you would let me correctly summarize your opening statement this morning, you said on volume 1 on conspiracy, you did not

establish that the russians interacted with the government, and then in volume 2, for whatever reason, the special counsel did not make a determination on whether the president conducted obstruction, is that fair? >> yes. >> because the special counsel did not make a decision, the report on the bottom of page 2, volume 2 reads as follows. the evidence we have obtained about the president's actions and intent produces difficult issues that prevents us from exclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. reportedly, while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him. i read that correctly? >> yes. >> now, your report, and today you said that at all times the special counsel team operated under, was guided by and followed justice department policies and principles. so which doj policy or principle sets forth the legal standard that an investigated person is

not exonerated if their innocence from criminal conduct is not conclusively determined? >> can you repeat the last part of that question? >> yeah. which doj policy or principle sets forth a legal standard that an investigated person is not exonerated if their innocence from criminal conduct is not conclusively determined? where does that language come from, director? where is the doj policy that says that? let me make it easier -- is there -- >> go ahead. >> can you give me an example other than donald trump where the justice department determined that an investigated person was not exonerated because their innocence was not conclusively determined? >> i cannot, but this is a unique situation. >> time is short, i've got five minutes. you can't find it and i'll tell you why. it doesn't exist. the special counsel's job, nowhere does it say you were to conclusively determine donald trump's innocence or that the special counsel report should determine whether or not to

exonerate him. it's not in any of the documents, it's not in your appointment order, it's not in the special counsel regulations, it's not in the olc opinions, it's not in the justice manual and it's not in the criminal federal prosecution. those words are nowhere because it was not the special counsel's job to exclusively determine donald trump's innocence or to exonerate him because the bedrock principle of our justice system is a presumption of innocence. it exists for everyone. everyone is entitled to it, including sitting presidents. and because there is a presumption of innocence, prosecutors never, ever need to conclusively determine it. now, director, the special counsel applied this inverted burden of proof that i can't find and you said doesn't exist anywhere in the department policies, and you used it to write a report. and the very first line of your report, the very first line of your report says -- as you read this morning, it authorize the

special counsel to provide the attorney general with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declaration decisions reached by the special counsel. that's the very first word of your report, right? >> that's correct. >> here's the problem, director. the special counsel didn't do that. on volume 1, you did. on volume 2, with respect to potential obstruction of justice, the special counsel made neither a prosecution decision or a declaration decision. you told us this morning and in your report that you made no determination, so respectively, you didn't follow the directions. it clearly says write a confidential report about decisions reached. nowhere in here does it say write a report about decisions that weren't reached. you wrote 180 pages. 180 pages about decisions that weren't reached, about potential crimes that weren't charged or

decided, and respectfully by doing that, you managed to violate every principle and the most sacred of traditions about prosecutors not offering extra prosecutorial analysis about potential crimes that aren't charged. so americans need to know this as they listen to the democrats and socialists on the other side of the aisle as they do dramatic readings from this report, that volume 2 of this report was not authorized under the law to be written. it was written to a legal standard that does not exist at the justice department. and it was written in violation of every doj principle about extra prosecutorial commentary. i agree with the chairman this morning when he said donald trump is not above the law. he's not. but he damn sure shouldn't be below the law, which is where volume 2 of this report puts him. [ inaudible ] >> thank you, mr. chairman. director mueller, good morning. your exchange with the

gentlelady of california demonstrates what is at stake. the trump campaign chair paul manafort was passing sensitive voter information and polling data to a russian operative. there were so many other ways that russia subverted our democracy. together with the evidence in volume 1, i cannot think of a more serious need to investigate. so now i'm going to ask you some questions about obstruction of justice as it relates to volume 2. on page 12 of volume 2, you state, we determined that there were sufficient factual and legal basis to further investigate potential obstruction of justice issues involving the president. is that correct? >> and do you have the citations, ma'am? >> page 12, volume 2. >> and which portion of that page? >> that is, we determined that there was a sufficient factual and legal basis to further investigate potential obstruction of justice issues

involving the president, is that correct? >> yes. >> your report also describes at least ten separate instances of possible obstruction of justice that were investigated by you and your team, is that correct? >> yes. >> in fact, the table of contents serves as a very good guide of some of the acts of that obstruction of justice that you investigated, and i put it up on the screen. on page 157 of volume 2, you describe those acts, and they range from the president's effort to curtail the special counsel's investigation, the president's further efforts to have the attorney general take over the investigation, the president orders don mcgahn to deny that the president tried to fire the special counsel and many others, is that correct? >> yes. >> i direct you now to what you wrote, director mueller. the president's pattern of conduct as a whole sheds light on the nature of the president's acts and the inferences that can be drawn about his intent.

does that mean you have to investigate all of his conduct to ascertain true motive? >> no. >> and when you talk about the president's pattern of conduct that include the ten possible acts of obstruction that you investigated, is that correct? when you talk about the president's pattern of conduct, that would include the ten possible acts of obstruction that you investigated, correct? >> i direct you to the report for how that is characterized. >> thank you. let me go to the screen again. for each of those ten potential instances of obstruction of justice, you analyze three elements of the crime of obstruction of justice. an obstructive act, and an official proceeding, and criminal intent, is that correct? >> yes. >> actions by the president to end a criminal investigation into his own conduct to protect against personal embarrassment or legal liability would constitute a core example of

corruptly motivated conduct, is that correct? >> yes. >> to the screen again. even with the evidence you did find, is it true, as you note on page 76 of volume 2, that the evidence does indicate that a thorough fbi investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the president personally that the president could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to legal, personal and political concerns? >> i rely on the language of the report. >> is that relevant to potential obstruction of justice? is that relevant to potential obstruction of justice? >> yes. >> you further elaborate on page 167, obstruction of justice can be used to protect investigations where liability falls into a gray area or to avoid personal embarrassment, is that correct? >> on the screen? >> is that correct on the

screen? >> can you repeat the question and now that i have the language on the screen? >> is it correct as you further elaborate, obstruction of justice can be motivated by a desire to protect non-criminal personal interests, to protect against investigations where underlying criminal liability falls into a gray area, or to avoid, is that true? >> yes. >> can you read the last question? >> i want to make sure you got it accurate. >> the last question was the language on the screen asking if that's correct. >> yes. >> okay. does a conviction of obstruction of justice result potentially in a lot of years of time in jail? >> yes. well, again, can you repeat the question just to make sure i have it accurate? >> does obstruction of justice warrant a lot of time in jail if you are convicted?

>> yes. >> the time of the gentlelady has expired. the jgentleman from wisconsin. >> let me read the reasons you were appointed. at the end of the investigation, he or she shall provide a report describing the decisions reached by the special counsel. is that correct? >> yes. >> now, when a regulation uses the word "shall provide," does it mean that the individual is, in fact, obligated to provide what's being demanded by the regulation or statute, meaning you don't have any wiggle room, right? >> i'd have to look more closely at the statute. >> i just read it to you. okay. now, volume 2, page 1, your report boldly states, we determine not to make a traditional prosecutorial

judgment, is that correct? >> i tried to find that citation, congressman. >> director, could you speak more directly into the microphone, please? >> yes. mr. chairman -- i'm sorry. >> it's volume 2, page 1. it said, we determined not to make a decision of prosecutorial judgment. that's right at the beginning. >> yes. >> now, since you decided, under the olc opinion, that you couldn't prosecute a sitting president, meaning president trump, why did we have all of this investigation of president trump that the other side is talking about when you knew that you weren't going to prosecute him? >> well, you don't know where the investigation is going to lie, and the olc opinion itself says that you can continue the investigation even though you are not going to indict the president. >> okay.

well, if you're not going to indict the president, then you just continue fishing. and that's my observation. my time is limited. sure, you can indict other people but you can't indict the sitting president. right? >> that's true. >> okay. now, there are 182 pages in raw evidentiary material, including references by the fbi of individuals who have never been cross-examined and which did not comply with the special counsel's governing regulation to explain the prosecution or declamation of decisions reached. correct? >> where are you reading from that? >> i'm reading from my question. >> then could you repeat it? >> okay. if you have 182 pages of raw evidentiary material with hundreds of references to 302s

who were never cross-examined and which didn't comply with the government regulation to explain the prosecution or declamation decisions reached. >> this is one of those areas which i decline to discuss and would direct you to the report itself for -- >> i looked at 182 pages of it. let me switch gears. mr. shabot and i were on this committee during the clinton impeachment. while i recognize that the independent counsel statute under which kenneth starr operated is different from the special counsel statute, he on a number of occasions in his report stated that president clinton's actions may have risen to impeachable conduct, recognizing that it is up to the house of representatives to determine what conduct is impeachable. you never used the term "raising

to impeachable conduct" for any of the ten instances that the gentlewoman from texas did. is it true that there is nothing in volume 2 of the report that says that the president may have engaged in impeachable conduct? >> we have studiously kept in the center of our investigation our mandate, and our mandate does not go to other ways of addressing conduct, our mandate goes to developing the report and turning the report in to the attorney general. >> with all due respect, it seems to me that there are a couple of statements that you made, you know, that said this is not for me to decide and the implication is it isn't for this committee to decide. now, you didn't use the words

"impeachable conduct slike star did, there is no words of impeachable conduct, and i go to what is said that even the president is presumed innocence until proven guilty. >> i would like to restate thwh mr. nadler said about your career. it's a model of rectitude and i thank you. based on your appointment, how did the president react to your being special counsel? >> i refer you to my report. >> there is a part that reads, when sessions and the president knew that a special counsel has been appointed, the president slumped back in his chair and said, oh, my god. this is terrible.

this is the end of my presidency. i'm f-ed. did sessions tell you about that little talk? >> please speak into the microphone. >> my apologies. i don't know the person who originally copied that quote. >> well, sessions apparently said it and one of his aides had it in his notes, too, that i think you had, but that's become record. he probably wasn't pleased with the special counsel and particularly you because of your outstanding reputation. >> correct. >> prior to your appointment, the attorney general recused himself from the special counsel because of his role in the 2016 campaign, isn't that correct? >> correct. >> recusal means the attorney general cannot be involved in the investigation, is that correct? >> that's the effect of recusal, yes. >> so instead another trump appointee, as you know mr. sessions was, mr. rosenstein became in charge of it, is that correct? >> yes. >> wasn't attorney general sessions following the rules and professional advice of the

department of justice ethics fwho folks when he recused himself from the investigation? >> yes. >> yet the president repeatedly expressed his disclosure to follow those ethics rules to recuse himself from the oversight of the investigation, is that correct? >> that's accurate based on what is written in the report. >> and the president's reaction to the recusal as noted in the report, mr. bannon recalled that the president was mad, as mad as bannon had ever seen him, and he screamed at mcgahn about how weak sessions was. do you recall that in the report? >> in the report, yes. >> despite knowing that mr. sessions was not supposed to be involved in the investigation, the president still tried to get mr. sessions to unrecuse himself while you were appointed special counsel, is that correct? >> yes. >> in fact, the investigation found that sometime after your appointment, the president, quote, called sessions at his home and asked him if he would

unrecuse himself, true? >> true. >> that isn't the first time the president asked sessions to unrecuse himself, is it? >> i know of at least one more. >> sessions recalled that the president pulled him aside to speak alone and suggested that he should do this unrecusal act, correct? >> correct. >> and then when michael flynn, a few days after flynn entered a guilty plea for lying to federal agents and indicated his intent to cooperate with that investigation, trump asked to speak to sessions alone again in the oval office and again asked sessions to unrecuse himself. true? >> i refer you to the report for that. >> page 109, volume 2. thank you, sir. do you know of any point when the president personally expressed anger or frustrations at sessions? >> i'd have to pass on that. >> do you recall -- and i think it's at page 78 of volume 2, the president told sessions you were supposed to protect me. you were supposed to protect me, or words to that effect? >> correct.

>> and is the attorney general supposed to be the attorney general of the united states of america or the concigliary for the president? >> united states of america. >> thank you, sir. in fact, you wrote in your report that the president repeatedly sought to sessions to unrecuse himself so the investigation could be sought in a way to restrict its scope. >> i rely on the report. >> how did sessions restrict the report of your investigation? >> i'm not going to speculate. quite obviously, if he took over as attorney general, he would have greater latitude in his actions that would enable him to do things that otherwise he could not. >> on page 113, you said the attorney general played a protective role a& could shield

the president from the investigation. i want to thank you, sir. youfr findings are so important because in america nobody is above the law. i yield back the balance of my time. >> the gentleman from ohio. >> direct for mueller, my democratic colleagues were very disappointed in your report. they were expecting you to say something along the lines of, here's why president trump deserves to be impeached, much as ken starr did relative to president clinton back about 20 years ago. well, you didn't. so their strategy had to change. now they allege that there is plenty of evidence in your report to impeach the president, but the american people just didn't read it. and this hearing today is their last best hope to build up some sort of ground swell across america to impeach president

trump. that's what this really is about today. now a few questions. on page 103 of volume 2 of your report, when discussing the june 2016 trump tower meeting, you reference, quote, the firm that produced steel reporting, unquote. the name of that firm was fusion gps, is that correct? >> and you're on page 103? >> 103, that's correct, volume 2. when you talk about the firm that produced the steel reporting, the name of the firm that produced that was fusion gps, is that correct? >> i'm not familiar with that. can you -- >> it's not a trick question. it was fusion gps. now, fusion gps produced the opposition research document widely known as the steele dossier, and the owner of fusion gps was someone by the name of

glen swenson. do you know him? >> this is outside my purview. >> glen swenson was never mentioned in the 448-page mueller report, was he? >> as i say, it's outside my purview and it's being handled in the department by others. >> he was not. 448 pages, the owner of fusion gps that did the steele dossier that started all this, he's not mentioned in there. let me move on. at the same time fusion gps was working to collect opposition research on donald trump from foreign sources on behalf of the clinton campaign and the democratic national committee, it also was representing a russian-based company, pretezon, which had been sanctioned by the u.s. government. are you aware of that? >> that's outside my purview. >> thank you. one of the key players -- i'll go to something different. one of the key players in the june 2016 trump tower meeting

was natalia yzinetska who you described in your report. she had been working with none other than glen swenson and fusion gps since early 2014. are you aware of that? >> outside my purview. >> thank you. but you didn't mention that or her connections to glen swenson at fusion gps in your report at all. let me move on. now, nbc news has reported the following. quote, russian lawyer natalia viznetska said she received incriminating information at trump tower of tax information of democrats from glen swenson, the fusion gps owner. you didn't include that in your

report. >> that was being handled by others in the department of justice. >> thank you. your report spends 14 pages discussing the june 9, 2016 trump tower meeting. it would be fair to say, would it not, that you spent significant resources investigating that meeting. >> i refer you to the report. >> okay. and president trump wasn't at the meeting. >> no. he was not. >> thank you. now, in stark contrast of the actions of the trump campaign, we know that the clinton campaign did pay fusion gps to gather dirt on the trump campaign from persons associated with foreign governments. but your report doesn't mention a thing about fusion gps in it, and you didn't investigate fusion gps's connections to russia. so let me just ask you this. can you see that from neglecting to mention glen simpson and fusion gps's involvement with the clinton campaign to focusing

on a brief meeting at the trump tower that produced nothing to ignoring the clinton campaign's own ties to fusion gps why some view your report as a pretty one-sided attack on the president? >> i tell you, this is still outside my purview. >> i would just note finally that i guess this is by chance, by coincidence, that the things left out of the report tended to be favorable to the president. my time is expired. >> thank you. mr. mueller, i'd like to get us back on track here. your investigation found that president trump directed white house counsel don mcgahn to fire you, isn't that correct? >> true. >> and the president claimed that he wanted to fire you because you had supposed conflicts of interest, isn't that correct? >> true. >> now, you had no conflicts of interest that required your removal. isn't that a fact? >> that's correct. >> and, in fact, don mcgahn

advised the president that the asserted conflicts were, in his words, silly and not real conflicts. isn't that true? >> i refer to the report on that episode. >> well, page 85 of volume 2 speaks to that. and also, director mueller, doj ethics officials confirmed that you had no conflicts that would prevent you from serving as special counsel, isn't that correct? >> that's correct. >> but despite don mcgahn and the department of justice guidance, around may 23rd, 2017, the president, quote, prodded mcgahn to complain to deputy attorney general rosenstein about these supposed conflicts of interest, correct? >> correct. >> and mcgahn declined to call rosenstein, or rosenstein, i'm sorry, telling the president that it would look like still trying to meddle in the

investigation and knocking out mueller would be another fact used to claim obstruction of justice. isn't that correct? >> generally so, yes. >> in other words, director mueller, the white house counsel told the president that if he tried to remove you that that could be another basis to allege that the president was obstructing justice, correct? >> that is generally correct, yes. >> now, i'd like to review what happened after the president was warned about obstructing justice. on tuesday -- >> i'm sorry, congressman. do you have a citation? >> yes. volume 2, page 81 and 82. >> thank you. >> i'd like to review what happened after the president was warned about obstructing justice. it's true that on tuesday, june 13th, 2017, the president dictated a press statement stating he had, quote, no

intention of firing you, correct? >> correct. >> but the following day, june 14th, the media reported for the first time that you were investigating the president for obstruction of justice, correct? >> correct. >> and then after learning for the first time that he was under investigation, the very next day the president, quote, issued a series of tweets acknowledging the existence of the obstruction investigation and criticizing it. isn't that correct? >> generally so. >> and then on saturday, june 17th, two days later, the president called don mcgahn at home from camp david on a saturday to talk about you. isn't that correct? >> correct. >> what was the significant -- what was significant about that first weekend phone call that don mcgahn took from president trump? >> i'm going to ask you to rely

on what we wrote about those incidents. >> you wrote in your report at page 85, volume 2, that on saturday, june 27, 2017, don mcgahn called the president at home to have the special counsel removed. now, did the president call don mcgahn more than once that day? i think it was two calls. on page 85 of your report, you wrote, quote, on the first call, mcgahn recalled that the president said something like, quote, you got to do this, you got to call rudd, correct? >> correct. >> and your investigation found that don mcgahn was perturbed, to use your words, at the president's request to call rod rosenstein to fire him, is that correct? >> there was a continuous

colloquy, a continuous involvement of don mcgahn of him responding to the president's entreati entreaties. >> he did not want to put himself in the middle of that. he did not want to have a role in asking the attorney general to fire the special counsel, correct? >> i again refer you to the report and the way it is characterized in the report. >> thank you. at volume 2, page 85, it states that he didn't want to have a role in trying to fire the attorney general. so at this point, i will yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. mueller -- well, first let me ask unanimous consent, mr. chairman, to submit this arti e article, robert mueller unmasked, for the record. >> without objection. >> now, mr. mueller, who wrote

the nine-minute comments you read at your may 9 press conference? >> i'm not going to get into that. >> that's what i thought. you didn't write it. a 2013 puff piece in the washingtonian about comey said basically when comey called, you would drop everything you were doing, gave examples of you having dinner with your wife and daughter, comey calls, you drop everything and go. the article quoted comey saying if a train were coming down the track, and i quote, at least bob mueller will be standing on the tracks with me. you and james comey had been good friends or were good friends for many years, correct? >> we were business associates. we both started off in the justice department. >> you were good friends. you can work together and not be friends, but you and comey were friends. >> we were friends. >> that's my question. thank you for getting to the answer. now, before you were appointed as special counsel, had you talked to james comey in the preceding six months?

>> no. >> when you were appointed as special counsel, was president trump's firing of comey something you anticipated investigating, potentially obstruction of justice? >> i can't get into that. that's internal deliberations in the justice department. >> actually, it goes to your credibility, and maybe you've been away from the courtroom for a while, credibility is material and that goes for you, too. you're a witness for us. when you talked to president trump the day you were appointed as special counsel, you were talking to him about the fbi director position again, did he mention the firing of james comey -- >> not as a candidate. i was asking -- >> did he mention the firing of james comey in your discussion with him? >> i cannot remember. >> pardon? >> i cannot remember. i don't believe so, but i can't be specific. >> you don't remember. but if he did, you could have been a fact witness as to the

president's comments and state of mind on firing james comey. >> i suppose that's possible. >> so most prosecutors want to make sure there is no appearance of impropriety, but in your case you hired a bunch of people that did not like the president. let me ask you, when did you first learn of peter strzok's animus toward donald trump? >> in the summer of 2017. >> you didn't know before he was hired? >> i'm sorry? >> you didn't know before he was hired for your team? >> know what? >> peter strzok hated trump. >> okay. >> you didn't know that before he was made part of your team. is that what you're saying? >> i did not know that. and when i did find out, i acted swiftly to have him reassigned

somewhere else. >> there is question of how swift that was. when did you learn of the ongoing affair he was having with lisa page. >> about the same time i met strzok. >> did you ever order anybody to investigate the deletion of all of their texts off of their government phones? >> once we found that peter strzok was an author of -- may i finish? >> you're not answering my question. did you order an investigation in the deletion and reformatting of their government phones? >> norks there was an ig investigation ongoing. >> regarding collusion or conspiracy, you didn't find evidence of any agreement -- and i'm quoting you -- among the trump campaign officials of any russia linked individuals to interfere with the election, correct? >> correct. >> so you also note in the report that an element of any of those obstructions you

referenced requires a corrupt state of mind, correct? >> corrupt intent, correct. >> right. and if somebody knows they did not conspire with anybody from russia to affect the election and they see the big justice department with people that hate that person coming after them, and then a special counsel appointed who hires a dozen or more people that hate that person, and he knows he's innocent, he's not corruptly acting in order to see that justice is done. what he's doing is not obstructing justice, he is pursuing justice, and the fact you ran it up two years means that you perpetuated injustice. >> i take your question. >> the gentleman's time has expired. the man's answer to the

question. >> i take your question. >> the gentleman from florida. >> director mueller, i'd like to get back to your findings covering june of 2017. there was a bombshell article that reported that the president of the united states was personally under investigation for obstruction of justice. and you said in your report on page 90, volume 2, and i quote, news of the obstruction investigation prompted the president to call mcgahn and seek to have the special counsel removed, close quote. then in your report you wrote about multiple calls from the president to don mcgahn, and regarding the second call, you wrote, and i quote, mcgahn recalled that the president was more direct, saying something like, call rod. tell rod that mueller has conflicts and can't be the special counsel. mcgahn recalled the president telling him, mueller has to go. and, call me back when you do it. director mueller, did mcgahn

understand what the president was ordering him to do? >> i direct you to what we have written in the report in terms of characterizing his feelings. >> and in the report it says, quote, mcgahn understood the president to be saying that the special counsel had to be removed. you also said on page 86 that, quote, mcgahn considered the president's request to be a an inflection point and he wanted to hit the brakes and he felt trapped. mcgahn felt he had to resign. mcgahn took action to prepare to resign, is that correct? >> i direct you to the report. >> in fact, that very day he went to the white house. you said, quote, he then drove to the office to pack his belongings and submit his resignation letter, close quote. >> that is directly from the report. >> it is. and before he resigned, however, he called the president's chief of staff, reince priebus, and he

called the president's senior adviser, steve bannon. do you recall what mcgahn told them? >> whatever was said will appear in the report. >> it is. it is. and it says on page 87, quote, priebus recalled that mcgahn said that the president asked him to do crazy expletive. in other words, crazy stuff. the white house counsel thought that the president's request was completely out of bounds. he said the president asked him to do something crazy. it was wrong. and he was prepared to resign over it. now, these are extraordinarily troubling events, but you found white house counsel mcgahn to be a credible witness, isn't that correct? >> correct. >> director mueller, the most important question i have for you today is why? director mueller, why did the

president of the united states want you fired? >> i can't answer that question. >> well, on page 89 in your report, on volume 2, you said, and i quote, substantial evidence indicates that the president's attempts to remove the special counsel were linked to the special counsel's oversight of investigation that involved the president's conduct, and most immediately, to reports that the president was being investigated for potential obstruction of justice, close quote. director mueller, you found evidence, as you lay out in your report, that the president wanted to fire you because you were investigating him for obstruction of justice, isn't that correct? >> that's what it says in the report, yes. i stand by the report.

>> director mueller, that shouldn't happen in america. no president should be able to escape investigation by abusing his power. but that's what you testified to in your report. the president ordered you fired. the white house counsel knew it was wrong. the president knew it was wrong. in your report it says, there is also evidence the president knew he should not have made those calls to mcgahn but the president did it, anyway. he did it, anyway. anyone else who blatantly interfered with a criminal investigation like yours would be arrested and indicted on charges of obstruction of justice. director mueller, you determined that you were barred from indicting a sitting president. we've already talked about that today. that is exactly why this committee must hold the president accountable. i yield back.

>> the gentleman yields back. the gentlelady from alabama. >> director mueller, you just said in response to two different lines of questioning that you would refer, as it relates to this firing discussion, that i would refer you to the report the way it was characterized in the report. importantly, the president never said "fire mueller" or in the investigation, and one doesn't necessitate the other. mcgahn, in fact, did not resign. he stuck around for a year and a half. on march 24, attorney general barr confirmed he had gotten the report. when you delivered the report to the attorney general, did you submit a redacted version of the report so he would be able to release it to congress and the public without delay pursuant to his announcement of intending to

do so in his confirmation hearing? >> i'm not going to say what happened after the production of our report. >> had the attorney general asked you to provide a redacted version of the report? >> we worked a version where the grand jury material was separated? >> i can't get into details. >> is it your belief a redacted version of the report could be released to the congress or public? >> that's not within my purview. >> why did you not take a similar action so congress could view this material? >> we had a process that we were operating on with the attorney general's office. >> are you aware of any attorney general going to court to receive similar permission to unredact 6e material? >> i'm not aware of that being

done. >> the attorney general released special counsel's report with minimal redactions to the public. and even lesser redacted version to congress. did you write the report with the expectation that it would be released publicly? >> no, we did not have an expectation. we wrote the report understanding that it was demanded by statute and would go to the attorney general for further review. >> and pursuant to the special counsel regulations, who is the only party that must receive the charging decision resulting from the special counsel's investigation? >> with regard to the president or generally? >> no, generally. >> attorney general. >> at attorney general barr's confirmation hearing he made it clear you intended to release your report to the public. do you remember how much of your report had been written at that point? >> i do not. >> were there significant changes in tone or substance of the report made after the announcement that the report would be made available to

congress and the public? >> i can't get into that. >> during the senate testimony of attorney general william barr, senator kamala harris asked mr. barr if he had looked at all the underlying evidence that the special counsel's team had gathered. he stated he had not. so i'm going to ask you did you personally review all the underlying evidence gathered in your investigation? >> except that it came through the special counsel's office, yes. >> did any single member of your team review all the underlying evidence gathered during the course of your investigation? >> as has been recited here today, a stability amount of work was done, whether it be search warrants or -- >> my point is there was no one member of the team that looked at everything. >> that's what i'm trying to get at. >> it's fair to say in an investigation as comprehensive as yours, it's normal that different members of the team would have reviewed different sets of documents and few, if anyone, would have reviewed all the underlying. >> thank you, yes. >> how many of the approximately 500 interviews conducted by the

special conference did you attend personally? >> very few. >>. >> on march 27, 2019, you wrote a letter to the attorney general essentially complaining about the media coverage of your report. you wrote and i quote, the summary letter the department sent to congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of march 24 did not fully cap sure the context, nature and substance of this office work and conclusions. we communicated that concern to the department on the morning of march 25th. there's now public confusion about critical aspects of the result of our investigation. who wrote that march 27 letter? >> well, i -- i can't get into who wrote it. the internal deliberation. >> but you signed it? >> what i will say is the letter stands for itself. >> why did you write a formal letter since you already so-called the attorney general to express those concerns. >> i can't get into that internal deliberations. >> did you authorize the letters released to the media, or was it leaked? >> i have no knowledge on either. >> well, you went nearly two

years without a leak. why was this letter leaked? >> well, i can't get into it. >> was this letter written and leaked to change the narrative about the conclusions of your report, and was anything in attorney general barr's letter called -- >> time of the gentlelady has expired. >> can he answer the question, please? >> the question is? >> was anything in attorney general bar's letteren accurate? >> well, i am not going to get into that. >> time has expired. gentle lady from california. >> thank you, mr. chair. director mueller, as you know, we are focusing on five obstruction episodes today. i would like to ask you about the second of those five obstruction episodes. it is in the section of your report beginning on page 113 of volume 2, entitled "the president orders mcgahn to deny that the president tried to fire the special counsel."

on january 25th, 2018, the "new york times" reported that, quote "the president had ordered mcgahn to have the department of justice fire you. is that correct? >> correct. >> and that story related to the events you already testified about here today. the president's calls to mcgahn to have you removed, correct? >> correct. >> after the news broke, did the president go on tv and deny the story? >> do not know. >> in fact, the president said, "fake news, folks. fake news. a typical "new york times" fake story." correct? >> correct. >> but your investigation actually found substantial evidence that mcgahn was ordered by the president to fire you, correct? >> yes. >> did the president's personal lawyer do something the following day in response to that news report? >> i'd refer you to the coverage of this in the report. >> on page 114, "on january 26th, 2018, the president's

personal counsel called mcgahn's attorney and said that the president wanted mcgahn to put out a statement denying that he had been asked to fire the special counsel." did mcgahn do what the president asked? >> i refer you to the report. >> communicating through his personal attorney, mcgahn refused because he said, "that the "times" story was accurate in reporting that the president wanted the special counsel removed. isn't that right? >> i believe it is, but i refer you again to the report. >> okay. so mr. mcgahn, through his personal attorney, told the president that he was not going to lie. is that right? >> true. >> did the president drop the issue? >> i refer to the write-up of this in the report. >> next, the president told the white house staff secretary, rob porter, to try to pressure mcgahn to make a false denial. is that correct? >> that's correct. >> what did he actually direct

porter to do? >> and i will send you back to the report. >> okay. well, on page 113, it says, "the president then directed porter to tell mcgahn to create a record, to make it clear that the president never directed mcgahn to fire you." is that correct? >> that is as it is stated in the report. >> and you found, "the president said he wanted mcgahn to write a letter to the file for our records, correct? >> correct. >> and to be clear, the president is asking his white house counsel, don mcgahn, to create a record that mcgahn believed to be untrue while you were in the midst of investigating the president for obstruction of justice, correct? >> generally correct. >> and mr. mcgahn was an important witness in that investigation, wasn't he? >> i would have to say yes. >> did the president teleporter to threaten mcgahn if he didn't create the written denial?

>> i would refer you to the write-up in the report. >> in fact, didn't the president say, quote and this is on page 116, if he doesn't write a letter, then maybe i'll have to get reutd of him, correct? >> yes. >> did he report that report? >> i would refer you to page 115. >> but the president still didn't give up, did he? so the president told mcgahn directly to deny that the president told him to have you fired. can you tell me exactly what happened. >> i can't beyond what's in the report. >> well, on page 116 it says, the president met him in the oval office "the president began the oval office meeting by telling mcgahn that the "new york times" story didn't look good and mcgahn needed to correct it. is that correct? >> correct. as it is written in the report,

yes. >> the president asked mcgahn whether he would do a correction and mcgahn said no. correct? >> that's accurate. >> well, mr. mueller, thank you for your investigation uncovering this very disturbing evidence. my friend mr. richmond will have additional questions on the subject. however, it is clear to me, if anyone else had ordered a witness to create a false record and cover up acts that are subject of a law enforcement investigation, that person would be facing criminal charges. i yield back my time. >> the gentlelady yields back. the gentleman from ohio. >> on february 10th, 2017, the germ was interviewed. he lied. you point it out on 193. nip son denied. any son falsely stated. he omitted. three times he lied to the fbi, yet you didn't charge him with a crime.

>> excuse me? i'm sorry. did you say 193? >> volume 1, 193. he lied three times. you point it out in the report. why didn't you charge him with a crime? >> i can't get into internal deliberations with regard who would or would not be -- >> you charged other people for making false statements. let's remember this. let's remember this. in 2017, the fbi did something they probably haven't done before. they spied on two american citizens associated with the presidential campaign. george papadopoulos and carter page. they went with to the fisa court and used the famous dossier to spy on carter page for the better part of a year. with mr. papadopoulos, they didn't go to the court. they used human sources. all kinds of -- from about the moment pap diop loss joins the trump campaign, you have all of these people around the world starting to swirl around him. hal per, downer, any son, thompson, meeting in rome,

london, all kinds of places. the fbi even sent -- even sent a lady posing as somebody else. even dispatched her to london to spy on mr. papadopoulos. in one of these meetings, he is talking to a foreign diplomat. and he tells the diplomat, russians have dirt on clinton. that diplomat then contacts the fbi and the fbi opens an investigation based on that fact. you point this out on page 1 of the report. july 31st, 2016, opening the investigation. based on that piece of information. diplomat tells papadopoulos russians -- excuse me, he tells a diplomat the russians have dirt on clinton. the diplomat tells the fbi. what i'm wondering is who told papadopoulos? how did he find out. >> i can't get into -- >> yes you can. you told us who told him.

joseph mif is n. the mysterious professor who works in rome and london. this is the guy who told papadopoulos. he's the guy who starts it all. when the fbi interviews him, he lies three times. and yet you don't charge him with a crime. you charge rick gates for false statements. you charge paul manafort for false statements. you charge michael cohen with false statements. you charge michael flynn, three-star general with false statements. but the guy who puts this country through the whole saga, for three years we have lived this now. he lies and you guys don't charge him. and i'm curious as to why. >> well, i can't get into it. it's obviously i think that we can't get into charging decisions. >> when the fbi interviewed him in february, the fbi interviews him in feb. when the special counsel's office interviewed mif son did

he lie to you. >> i can't get into that. >> is he western intelligence or russian intelligence. i can't get into that. >> what's interesting you can charge 13 russians no one has ever heard, no one has ever seen, no one is ever going to hear of them, no one is ever going to see of them. you can charge them, you can charge all kinds of people around the president with false statements but the guy who launches -- the guy who puts this whole story in motion, you can't charge him. i think that's amazing. >> i'm not certain i agree with your characterizations. >> well, i'm reading from your report. mifso tpho told pop dan louse, he tense the did i want. and here we are three years later, july of 2019, the country has been put through this. and the central figure who launches it all, lies to it and you guys don't hunt him down and interview him again. and you don't charge him with a crime. here's the good news. here's the good news.

the president was falsely accused of conspiracy. the fbi does a 10-month investigation and james comey, when we deposed him a year ago, told us at that point they had nothing. you do a 22-month investigation. at the end of 22 months, you find no suspicious. what's the democrats want to do? they want to keep investigating. they want to keep going. maybe a better course of action, maybe a better course of action is to figure out how the false accusation started. maybe it's to go back and actually figure out why joseph mifson was lying to the fbi. here's the good news, here's the good news. that's exactly what bill barr is doing. and thank goodness for that. that's exactly what the attorney general and john derm are doing. >> time of the gentleman has expired. in a moment we will take a very brief five-minute break. first i ask everyone in the room to please remain seated and quiet while the witness exits the room. i also want to announce to those

in the audience that you may not be guaranteed your seat if you leave the hearing room at this time. >> so a five-minute break in the room. well take them at their word that it will indeed be five minutes. mr. mueller has been excused. the questioning will be suspended. brian williams here with nicolle walla wallace, chuck rosenberg, former u.s. attorney, former veteran fbi official is part of our coverage as well. >> there's emerging dos and don'ts here. chairman nadler had a very effective approach with special counsel mueller taking into what the president has said over and over and over again, that the

report exonerated him. the one-word response. on my show yesterday on this network. there have been low points as well. i think to expect questions that were prepared by the individual staffs of each individual member to be answered in rapid-fire succession by one man who oversaw an entire office and put together this report may have been unwise. . >> chuck rosenberg, there is a goff in word count and pacing between members of congress who feel acutely the five-minute clock ticking down and robert mueller. >> right. they have an incentive to ask as many questions as quickly as they can and to try to make news about themselves. i mean that in a bipartisan sense. mueller has a different tasks. it's a hard one's, to nicole's point, to explain thoughtfully and co gently and with the

restrictions he put on himself. 448-page report and a 22-month investigation. he is struggling with parts of it at times. it's hard to recall every line from every page from the report. but the members have prepared specific questions. and mueller is trying very hard to do two things. not go beyond the report and to answer truthfully. what you are seeing is a dignified and restrained performance by mueller but a hard one. it's a hard one. >> and if you think about his challenges, i mean, you sort of stand in his shoes for a moment. he's got the eyes of the world on him. so he can't get anything wrong. he has the eyes of the president on him. again, he can't get anything wrong. he has the doj letter that came out right before his testimony that said he can't say anything full stop. and he has 448-page volume, while i'm sure he is more familiar with it than anyone else on this planet, he just

answered under oath that he didn't sit through every interview. so he has a lot of forces bearing down on him. >> even the practice of members of either party saying to him, page 169, paragraph 2. >> right. >> he's always on the middle of looking for that citation. >> well, listen, i think it's a little bit akin to we have off-the-record conversations. then you're on the air and trying to remember what part was on the record and off the record. for robert mueller, he has a report. he has grand jury information in there. he has things that are part of ongoing investigations. remember bill barr's color-coded system. >> yeah. >> and this is on twitter, and i'm sure you'll hear this other places. there's some performance questions. i mean, there is a quickness that is familiar to people that watched him. i'm sure claire notices this in years as fbi director, he hasn't been fbi director now for nearly a decade.

>> claire mchaskell is part of our coverage as well. senator, your assessment fuss far? >> what you are seeing is ream old-fashioned. someone being cautious and careful. that has gone out the window in the chaotic and in competent administration in the white house right now. chaos and, you know, playing games with the truth, that's the norm. and everybody is an enemy. that's not who this man is. mifssse he is cautious and careful. and so much reference for the rule of law. him being careful looks like, in some instances, looks like he doesn't know the answers. one thing democrats are doing that is helpful, they are putting so much of the report up for him to look at that they are had he referring to.

and i think that is very helpful for people trying to follow the follow the points they are trying to make as it relates to obstruction of justice. >> to that point, i think what you should look for in mueller's testimony going forward is what we have seen. that underscores the fact that he is not trying to get anybody. >> he is not trying to get anybody. >> it would be easy to say the president lied, the president obstructed justice. i made a referral to this committee. you ought to impeach him. he doesn't do any of that. what he says are, when asked about a passage in his report, yes, i wrote that. that's correct. for instance, in the nadler testimony, i think it was quite good. he answers honestly nadler's questions about findings in the report. but he's not trying to get anyone. that's my point, brian. good prosecutors and good agents don't set out to get people. they set out to get facts. they set out to get the truth. and that's what you are hearing

from bob mueller. >> frankford was intelligence chief at the fbi, worked with and knows robert mueller well. frank, your assessment? >> yeah. i think it's important to put this in context of why we're here today, why this hearing even needed to happen. for those who say this is a second bite at the apple and democrats are trying to re-do this, let's get it right. this is not a re-do of the record. it is an attempt to set the record straight because of the disinformation campaign that republicans, the president, and the attorney general have engaged in to shape the public's perception of mueller's findings. so today we are attempting to set the record straight. my observation is that disinformation campaign is still going on during this hearing. it's very effective. it's strong. i think jordan, as much as he twists the facts, was very effective. you can be strong and wrong.

and they have been wrong today almost in every republican statement or question. the question is when people go home tonight and turn on their source of news and see those clips they choos to watch or the network chooses to broadcast, is it going to change hearts and minds? so far i think not. >> frank figluzzi, thank you. ari melber is with us. let's go back to congressman radcliff. legal eagles like yourself are disassembling something he said. >> reporter: yeah. i'll give you two big takeaways here. first on what bob mueller just testified. if you take it altogether, the first half of this obstruction hearing, we heard from bob mueller. basically the president is a liar. but he may not be a crook. and the president interfered, but he won't say whether that's impeachable or not. that was a tension we saw in a

lot of the questions. we are seeing a careful bob mueller. as you mentioned, brian, one of the most interesting came from congressman radcliff who bore down on something that both trump's critics were frustrated about the mueller report but also republicans have said. which is after all the talk about obstruction where is the there there if we're not going to get a clear statement in writing today on whether the president qualified for prosecution or not? mueller's answer is, as viewers know, rules prevent him from stating that. what he is getting at, what was the analysis in the obstruction section? was it basically saying no there there. declination. was it something else? was it road map to impeachment that only congress can decide? one way to think about it, as i toss back to you, think about the way don mcgahn was basically asked to commit a crime by the president. but he didn't commit it. he did the right thing. he phoned it in to his lawyer. thus, he wasn't charged. that's what they call

declination. what radcliff gets it and what will continue to hang over the rest of this hearing is on obstructi obstruction, was it clearly giving congress a reason to impeach or was it something less? if it was something less, then what was really important for the country to know? because the reasons if it was less than criminal conduct, why throw the book at donald trump in this report? that is something that hangs over remaining questions. . >> jeremy bash is with us as well, former chief counsel, house intel, the second of today's committees. jeremy, your assessment thus far? >> yeah. i don't think the democrats have effectively brought to life the report. i think bob mueller's report are slow, they're careful. they are restrained. but important respects, brian, i think what they need to do is let him talk a little bit more. let him explain exactly why he thought it was important to lay out all of the president's

obstructive conduct. we know that the reason that bob mueller didn't indict a president is because he is not allowed to. why does volume 2 exist? what is the purpose of a lengthy, multihundred pay exposition of all the ways the president abused his office, asked people to lie and covered up the fact that the russians helped him in the campaign? i think some basic why questions would go a lot further in asking him to react to a certain page or paragraph citation. >> there are minor things that have not helped the democrats as well. the congresswoman called him mcgahn and mccann sometimes in the space of one sentence. here is the chairman again.

>> i want to say something else about chairman nadler and what he did for this committee. i think there's been a lot of scrutiny of chairman nadler. scrutiny, the dynamic between him and speaker pelosi. and i think he -- in terms of what he is responsible for, he set the right tone. in terms of what he elicited from robert mueller, he elicited the most. in terms of showcasing the most devastating facts for donald trump, nadler did that. so in a lot of ways the

highwatermark was the beginning of this hearing. >> robert mueller back in the room, about to be seated again. he will remain sworn in. the gentleman from louisiana. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. mueller, congressman addressed trump's address to mcgahn to fire you. representative bass talked about the president's request of mcgahn to deny the fact that the president made that request. i want to pick up where they left off, and it to pick up with the president's personal lawyer. in fact, there was evidence that the president's personal lawyer was alarmed at the prospect of the president meeting with mr.

mcgahn to discuss mr. mcgahn's refusal to deny the "new york times" report about the president trying to fire you, correct. >> correct. >> in fact, the president's counsel was so alarmed by the prospect of the president's meeting with mcgahn that he called mr. mcgahn's counsel and said that mcgahn could not resign no matter what happened in the oval office that day, correct? >> correct. >> so it's accurate to say that the president knew that he was asking mcgahn to deny facts that mcgahn, "had repeatedly said were accurate," isn't that right. >> correct. >> your investigation also found, "by the time of the oval office meeting with the president, the president was aware, one, that mcgahn did not think the story was false, two, did not want to issue a statement or create a written

record denying facts that mcgahn believed to be true. the president nevertheless persisted and asked mcgahn to repudiate facts that mcgahn had repeatedly said was accurate. ; isn't that correct. >> generally true. >> i believe that's on page 119. thank you. in other words, the president was trying to force mcgahn to say something that mcgahn did not believe to be true. >> that's accurate. >> i want to reference you to a slide, and it's on page 120. and it says, substantial evidence indicates that in repeatedly urging mcgahn to dispute that he was ordered to have the special counsel terminated, the president acted for the purpose of influencing mcgahn's account in order to deflect or prevent further scrutiny of the president's conduct towards the investigation. >> that's accurate.

>> can you explain what you meant there? >> i just am going to leave it as it appears in the report. >> is so it's fair to say the president tried to protect himself by asking staff to falsify records relevant to an ongoing investigation. >> i would say that's generally the summary. >> would you say that that action, the president tried to hamper the investigation by asking staff to falsify records relevant to your investigation. >> i'm going to just refer you to the report if i could for review of that episode. >> thank you. also, the president's attempt to get mcgahn to create a false written record were related to mr. trump's concerns about your obstruction of justice inquiry, correct? >> i believe that to be true. >> in fact, at that same oval office meeting, did the president also ask mcgahn why he had told, quote why he had told special counsel's office investigators that the president

told him to have you removed"? . >> and what was the question, sir, if i might? >> let me go to the next one. the president "criticized mcgahn for telling your office about the june 17th, 2017 events when he told mcgahn to have you removed, correct? >> correct. >> in other words, the president was criticizing his white house counsel for telling law enforcement officials what he believed to be the truth. >> i, again, go back to the text of the report. >> well, let me go a little bit further. would it have been a crime if mr. mcgahn had lied to you about the president ordering him to fire you? >> i don't want to speculate. >> okay. is it true that you charged multiple people associated with the president for lying to you during your investigation? >> that is accurate. >> the president also complained that his staff were taking notes

during the meeting about firing mcgahn; is that correct? >> that's what the report says. yeah, the report. >> but, in fact, it is completely appropriate for the president's staff, especially his counsel's, to take notes during a meeting, correct? >> i rely on the wording of the report. >> well, thank you, director mueller, for your investigation into whether the president attempted to obstruct justice by ordering his white house counsel don mcgahn to lie to protect the president and then to create a false record about it. it is clear that any other person who engaged in such conduct would be charged with a crime. we will continue our investigation and we will hold the president accountable because no one is above the law. >> the gentleman from florida. >> director mueller, can you state with confidence that the steele dossier was not part of russia's disinformation campaign. >> no. as i said in my opening statement, that part of the

building of the case predated me by at least 10 months. >> paul manafort's crimes predated you. you had no problem charging them. sphafbg as a matter of fact, this predated the attorney general and he didn't have any problem answering the question when senator cornyn asked the attorney general the exact same question i asked you, director, and i'm quoting, no, i can't state that with confidence. and that's one of the areas i'm reviewing. i'm concerned about it and i don't think it's entirely speculative. now, if something is not entirely speculative, then it must have some factual basis. but you identify no factual basis regarding the dossier or the possibility that it was part of the russia disinformation campaign. now, christopher steele's report is referenced in your report. steele reported to the fbi that senior russian foreign ministry figures, along with other russians, told him that there

was -- and i'm quoting from the steele dossier, extensive evidence of conspiracy between the trump campaign team and the kremlin. here's my question. did russians really tell that to christopher steele,or did he make it all up and he was lying to the fbi? >> let me back up a second and say if i could, as i said earlier, with regard to the steele, that's beyond my purview. >> no. it is exactly your purview, director mueller. and here's why. only one of two things is possible. either steele made the whole thing up and there were never russianings telling him of this vast majority of russians or russians were lying to steele. that would seem to be precisely your purview because you stated in your opening that the organizing principle was to fully and thoroughly investigate russia's interference. but you weren't interested in whether or not russians were interfering through christopher steele and if steele was lying you charged him with lying but

you say nothing about this in your report. >> well, sir. >> you are quite loquacious on other topics. you write 3500 words about the june 9 meeting between the trump campaign and russian lawyer vitt sky ya. the legal team suggested, and i'm quoting from your report, that the meeting might have been a setup. by individuals working with the firm that produced the steele reporting. so i'm going to ask you a very easy question, director mueller. on the week of june 9, who did russian lawyer vitt sky ya meet with the trump campaign or glenn simpson acting as an operative for the democratic national committee >> well, what i think is missing here is this is under investigation elsewhere. >> i get that. >> and if i can finish sir, and if i could finish sir, and consequently it's not within my purview. the department of justice and fbi should be responsive to questions on this particular issue. >> it is absurd to suggest that

a operative for the democrats was meeting with this russian lawyer the day before and the day after the trump tower meeting and yet that's not something you referenced. glenn simpson testified under oath he had dinner the day before and the day after with the trump team. do you have any basis as you sit here today to believe that steele was lying? >> as i said before and i will say again, it's not my purview. others are investigating what you address. >> it's not your approximate purview whether steele is lying, or whether anti trump russians are lying to steele or whether or not glenn simpson was meeting the day before and the day after the trump tower meeting. i look at the inspector general's report citing from page 404. it said trump is not ever going to be president, right. right. strzok replied no, he's not. will stop it. also in the general's report,

attorney number 2. this is page 419. replied hell no. and then added, viva la resistance. attorney 2 and strzok both worked on your team, didn't they? >> pardon me? >> they both worked on your team, didn't they? >> i heard strobg. who else were you talking about. >> attorney number 2 identified in the inspector general's report. >> okay. and the question was? >> did he work for you. the guy who said viva -- >> peter strzok worked for me for a period of time. >> and so did the guy who said viva la resistance. when people associated with trump lied, you throw the book at them. when chris officer steele lied, nothing. it seems to be when glenn simpson met with russians, nothing. when the trump campaign met with russians 3500 words. and maybe the reason why there are these discrepancies and which you focused on -- >> time of the gentleman has expired. mr. jeffries of new york is recognized. >> mr. mueller, obstruction of justice is a serious crime that strikes at the core of an

investigator's effort to find the truth, correct. >> correct. >> the crime of obstruction of justice has three elements, true. >> true. >> the first is an obstructive act, correct. construct. >> it could include taking an action to delay or interfere with an ongoing investigation asset forth in volume 2, page 87 and 88 of your report. true? >> i'm sorry. could you, again, repeat the question. >> an obstructive act could include taking an action that could khrfr with an ongoing investigation. >> that's true. >> our investigation found evidence that president trump took steps to terminate the special counsel, correct. >> correct. >> mr. mueller, does ordering the termination of the head of a criminal investigation constitute an obstructive act? >> that would be -- >> let me refer you --

>> i would refer you to the report. >> let me refer you to page 87 and 88. you attempt to remove the special counsel would obstruct in any grand jury proceedings that might flow from the inquiry. >> yes. . i have that now. thank you. >> thank you. the second element of obstruction of justice is the presence of an obstructive act in connection with an official proceeding. true. >> true. >> does the special counsel's criminal investigation into the potential wrongdoing of donald trump constituted an official proceeding? >> and that's an area which i cannot get into. >> okay. president trump tweeted on june 16th, 2017 "i am being investigated for firing the fbi director by the man who told me to fire the fbi director. witch-hunt. the june 16th tweet just read

was cited on page 89 in volume 2, constitutes public acknowledgment by president trump that he was under criminal investigation. correct? >> i think generally correct. >> one day later, on saturday, june 17th, president trump called white house counsel don mcgahn at home and directed him to fire the special counsel. true? >> i believe it to be true. i think we have -- i may have stated in response to questions some -- >> that's correct. president trump told don mcgahn," mueller has to go." correct? >> correct. >> your report found on page 89, volume 2, that substantial evidence indicates that by june 17th, the president knew his conduct was under investigation by a federal prosecutor who could present any evidence of federal crimes to a grand jury. true? >> true. >> the third element, second element having just been

satisfied, the third element of the crime of obstruction of justice is corrupt intent. true? >> true. >> corrupt intent exists if the president acted to obstruct an official proceeding for the improper purpose of protecting his own interests, correct. >> that's generally correct. >> thank you. >> the only thing i would say is we are going through the three elements of proof of the obstruction of justice charges. when the fact of the matter is, we got -- excuse me. just one second. >> thank you. mr. mueller, let me move on. in learning of the appointment of the special counsel, your investigation found donald trump stated to then attorney general, "oh, my god. this is terrible. this is end of my presidency. i'm f'd. is that correct. >> correct. >> is it fair to say donald trump viewed the special counsel's investigation into his conduct adverse.

>> i think generally that's true. >> translator: investigation found evidence "that the president knew that he should not have directed don mcgahn to fire special counsel, correct? >> and where do you have that quote? >> page 9 0, volume 2. there's evidence that the president knew he should not have made those calls to mcgahn". >> i see that. yes, that's accurate. >> the investigation found substantial evidence that he repeatedly urged mcgahn to dispute that he was to have the special counsel terminated, correct. >> correct. >> there the investigation found substantial evidence that when the president ordered don mcgahn to fire special counsel and then lie about it, donald trump, one, kpheubted an obstructive act. two, connected to an official proceeding. three, did so with corrupt intent. those are the elements of obstruction of justice. this is the united states of america. no one is above the law. no one. the president must be held

accountable one way or the other. >> let me just say if i might. i don't subscribe necessarily to your -- the way you analyze that. i'm not saying it's out of the ballpark, but i'm not supportive of that analytical charge. thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. mueller, over here. >> hi. >> hi. i want to start by thank you i think thanking you for your service. you led a rival platoon in vietnam, you earned a bronze star, purple heart. you led the homicide district here, northern district of california later, assistant attorney general for doj's criminal consider division, and the fbi director. so thank you. i appreciate that. having reviewed your biography, it puzzles me why you handled your duties in this case the way you did. the report contradicts what you taught young attorneys at the department of justice, to ensure

every defendant is treated fairly or as justice sutherland said the prosecutor is not the ordinary party of a controversy but sovereignty whose interest is not that it shall win a case but justice shall be done and the prosecutor may strike hard blows but not at liberty to address foul ones. about not reaching a conclusion about the merits of the case, you unfairly shifted the burden of proof to the president, forcing him to prove his innocence while denying him a legal forum to do so. and i've never heard of a pror declining a case and then holding a press conference to talk about the defendant. you noted eight times in your report that you had a legal duty under the regulations to either prosecute or decline charges despite this, you disregarded that tattoo. as a former prosecutor, i'm also troubled with your legal analysis. you discussed 10 separate factual patterns involving alleged obstruction and then you

failed to separately apply the elements of the applicable statutes. i looked at the 10 factual situations and i read the case law. and i have to tell you, just looking at the flynn matter, for example, the four statutes that you cited 1503, 1505, 1512 b 3 and c 2. when i look at those concerning the flynn matter, 1503, there wasn't a grand jury or trial attorney impanelled. director comey was not an officer of the court. section 1505, acts that would impede administrative proceedings. the department of justice criminal resource manual states that the investigation is not a pending proceeding. 1512 b 3 talks about intimidation threats of force to tamper with a witness. general flynn at the time was

not a witness. and certainly director comey was not a witness. and 1512 c 2 talks about tampering with the record as joe biden described the statue as being debated on the senate floor. he called this a statue criminalizing document shredding and there's nothing in the -- in your report that alleges that the president destroyed any evidence. so what i have to ask you, and what i think people are working around in this hearing is -- let melee a little foundation. the ethical rules require that a prosecutor have a reasonable probability of conviction to bring a charge. ; is that correct. >> sounds generally accurate. >> and the regulations concerning your job as special counsel state that your job is to provide the attorney general with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by your office. you recommended declining

prosecution of president trump and anyone associated with his campaign because of the russian interference in the 2016 election. is that fair? >> that's fair. >> was there sufficient evidence to convict president trump or anyone else with obstruction of justice? >> we did not make that calculation. >> how could you not -- >> the olc opinion, office of legal counsel indicates that we cannot indict a sitting president. so one of the tools that a prosecutor would use is not there. >> okay. but let me just stop. you made the decision on the russian interference. you couldn't have indicted the president on that, and you made the decision on that. but when it came to obstruction, you threw a bunch of stuff up against the wall to see what would stick. and that is -- >> i would not agree to that characterization at all. what we did is provide to the attorney general in the form of a confidential memorandum our understanding of the case.

those cases that were brought, those cases that were declined. and the -- that one case where the president cannot be charged with a crime. >> okay. but the -- could you charge the president with a crime after he left office? >> yes. >> you believe -- you could charge the president of the united states with obstruction of justice after he left office. >> yes. >> ethically? under the ethical standards. >> i'm not certain because i haven't looked at the ethical standards. olc opinion says that the prosecutor, while he cannot bring a charge against a sitting president, nonetheless, he can continue the investigation to see if there are any other persons who might be drawn into the conspiracy. >> time of the gentleman has expired. the gentleman from rhode island. >> director, as you know, we are specifically focusing on five separate issues here today. i would like to ask you about the third episode, the section spaoeultsed "the president's

efforts to curtail the special counsel investigation" beginning at page 90. by curtail, you mean limit, correct correct. >> my colleagues tried to have you fired through whout counsel. the president asked others to help limit your investigation. is that correct correct. >> was corey lewandowsky one such individual. >> can you we mind me. >> the former campaign manager, correct. >> correct. >> any official position in the trump administration? >> i don't believe so. >> your report describes an incident in the oval office involving mr. lewandowski june 19, 2017, volume 2, page 91. ; is that correct. >> i'm sorry. what's the citation, sir? >> page 91. >> of the second volume. >> yes. >> a meeting in the oval office between mr. lewandowski in the oval office. >> okay. >> that was two days after he was ordered to fire you,

correct. >> apparently so. >> after mr. somic began refused to follow the order to fire you, the president came up with a new plan and that was to go around all senior advisers and government aides to have a private citizen try to limit your investigation. what did the president tell mr. lewandowski to do? he dictated a message to mr. lewandowski to attorney general sessions and asked him to write it down, correct. >> true. >> did you and your team see this handwritten message? >> i'm not going to get into what we may or may not have included in our investigation. >> the message directed sessions to give -- and i'm quoting from your report, to give a sphreubg speech saying he planned to meet with the special prosecutor to explain this is very unfair and let the special prosecutor move forward with election meddling in future elections. >> yes. it is. >> in other words, mr. lewandowski, a private citizen, was instructed by the president of the united states to deliver a message from the president to

the attorney general that directed him to limit your investigation, correct. >> correct. >> and at this time mr. sessions was still recused from oversight of your investigation, correct. >> i'm sorry. >> he was recrewsed from oversight. >> yes. >> so he would have to violate his own department's rules to comply with the president's order. >> elwell, i'm not going to get into the details. i just refer you to page 91, 92. >> if the attorney general had followed through it would have effectively ended your investigation into the president and his campaign as you note on page 97, correct? >> could you -- >> page 97 you write "taken together, the president's directives indicate sessions was being obstructed to tell special counsel to end the existing investigation into the president and his campaign with the special counsel pwhaoeg permitted to move forward with investigating election meddling for future elections.

>> generally true. >> obstruction of justice is still a crime. that's correct. >> mr. lewandowski tried to meet with the attorney general; is that right. true. >> and he tried to meet with him in his office so he would be certain it wasn't a public log of the visit. according to what i gathered for the report. >> and the meeting never happened and the president raised the issue again with mr. lewandowski and this time he said if sessions does not meet with you, lewandowski should tell him he was fired. correct? >> correct. >> mr. lewandowski asked mr. dearborn to deliver the message, the former chief of staff to mr. sessions. and mr. dearborn refuses to deliver it pause he doesn't feel comfortable. ; isn't that correct. >> generally correct, yes. >> just so we're clear, mr. mueller, two days after the white house counsel don mcgahn refused to carry out the president's order to fire you, the president directed a private citizen to tell the attorney general of the united states who

was recused at the time to limit you to future education haves effectively ending your investigation into the 2016 trump campaign. ; is that correct. >> i'm not going to adopt your characterization. i will say the facts as laid out in the report are accurate. >> mr. mueller, in your report you in fact, write at page 99 -- 97," substantial evidence to have sessions limit the scope of special counsel's investigation into future elections interference was intended to prevent further investigative scrutiny of the president and his campaign conduct. ; is that correct generally. >> and so mr. mueller, you have seen a letter where a thousand former republican and democratic federal prosecutors have read your report and said, anyone but the president who committed those would be charged with obstruction of justice. do you agree with those 1,000 prosecutors came to that conclusion? >> those prosecuting -- >> thank you, mr. chairman.

over here. thanks. mr. mueller, you guys, your team wrote in the report, "this is the top of page 2, volume 1. also on page 173, by the way. you said you had come to the conclusion that, "the investigation did not establish that members of the trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the russian government in its election interference activities." that's accurate statement, right? >> that's accurate. >> and i'm curious, when did you personally come to that conclusion? >> can you remind me which paragraph you are referring to? >> top of page 2. >> page 2? >> volume 1. >> okay. and exactly which paragraph are you looking at? >> investigation did not establish -- >> of course. i see it. >> you see it? >> what was your question. >> my question is when did you permanently reach that conclusion? >> we were ongoing for two years. >> you were ongoing.

you wrote it at some point during that two-year period. at some point you had to come to the conclusion that i don't think there's -- there's not a conspiracy going on here. there was no conspiracy between this president and -- i'm not talking about the rest of the president's team. i'm talking about this president and the russians. >> as you understand, developing a criminal case, you get a piece of information, piece of information, witnesses and the like. and you make your case. >> right. >> and when you make a decision a particular case depends on a number of factors. >> right. i understand. >> though i cannot say specifically that we reached a decision on a particular defendant at a particular point in time. >> but it was sometime well before you wrote the report. you wrote the report dealing with a meyriad of issues. you reached the decision that, okay, with regard to the president himself, i don't find anything here. fair enough? >> well, i'm not certain i do agree with that. >> you waited until the last minute when you were writing the

report to say, well, okay -- >> no. but there are various aspects of the development -- >> sure. that's my point. there are various aspects that happen. but somewhere along the pike, you come to a conclusion there's no there there for this defendant. >> i can't speak -- >> you can't say when. fair enough. >> mr. speaker. >> no. i'm asking the sworn witness. mr. mueller, evidence suggests may 10th, 2017, approximately 7:45 a.m., six days before the dag appointed you attorney general counsel. not necessarily that you would be appointed but that you had a discussion of that. is that true? >> may 10th, 2017. >> i don't have any -- no. i don't have any knowledge of that occurring. >> you don't have any knowledge or you don't recall. >> i don't have any knowledge.

>> evidence -- >> given what i saw you do. are you questioning that? >> well, i just find it intri e intrigui intriguing. there is evidence to suggest that that took place and that's what was said. let's move to the next question. on may 12th, 2017, five days before the dag appointed you special counsel you met with mr. rosenstein in person. did you discuss the appointment of special counsel then? not necessarily you but that there would be a special counsel. >> i have gone into waters that don't allow me to give you an answer to that particular question that relates to the internal discussions we would have in terms of indicting an individual. >> it has nothing to do with indictment. it has to do with special counsel and whether you discussed that with mr. rosenstein. evidence also suggests four days before you were appointed special counsel, may 14th, you met with former attorney general sessions and rosenstein and you spoke about special counsel. do you remember that? >> not offhand, no. >> okay. and on may 16th, the day before you were appointed special

counsel, you met with the president and rod rosenstein. do you remember having that meeting? . >> yes. >> and discussion of the position of fbi director took place. do you remember that? >> yes. . >> and did you discuss at any time in that meeting mr. comey's termination? >> no. >> did you discuss at any time in that meeting the potential a appointment of special question, not just you but in general terms? >> i can't get into suggestionsts on that. >> how many times did you speak to mr. rosenstein before may 17th, the day you got appointed. how many times prior to that did you did you discuss it. >> i can't recall how many times. >> you do not recall or just -- >> i do not recall. >> thank you. how many times did you speak with mr. comey about any investigations pertaining prior to -- >> zero. >> zero? >> zero. >> okay. now my time has expired.

>> the time has expired. the gentleman from california. >> director mueller, going back to the president's obstruction villa corey lewandowsky, it was referenced that 1,000 former prosecutors who served under republican and democratic administrations with 12,000 years of federal service wrote a letter writing the president's conduct. >> i read about that, letter. >> some of the individuals who signed that letter, the statement of former prosecutors are people you worked with; is that right. >> quite probably, yes. >> people you respect. >> quite probably, yes. >> in that letter they said all of this conduct trying to control and impede the president by leveraging his authority over others is similar to conduct we have seen charged against other public officials and people in powerful positions. are they wrong? >> they have a different case. >> do you want to sign that letter, director mueller?

>> they have a different case. >> thank you for your service when you courageously served in vietnam. because of our limited time i will ask to enter limited time enter this letter into the record under unanimous consent. >> thank you, director mueller, for your long history of service to our country, including your service as a marine where you earned a bronze star. i'd like to turn to the elements obstruction of justice as applied to the president's attempts to curtail your investigation. the first element of obstruction of justice requires an obstructive ad act, correct? >> correct. >> i'd like to direct you to page 97 of volume two of your report. you wrote there on page 97, quote, sessions was being instructed to tell the special counsel to end the existing investigation into the president and his campaign, unquote.

that's in the report, correct? >> correct. >> okay. that would be evidence of an obstructive act because it would naturally obstruct the investigation, correct? >> correct. >> okay. let's turn now to the second element of the crime of obstruction of justice, which requires a nexus to an official proceeding. again, i'm going to direct you to page 97, you wrote, quote, by the time the president's initial one on one meeting with lewandowski, the existence of a grand jury investigation supervised by the special counsel was public knowledge. that's in the report, correct? >> correct. >> this would constitute evidence of a nexus to an official proceeding because a grand jury investigation is an official proceeding, correct? >> yes. >> okay. i'd like to now turn to the final element of the crime of obstruction of justice. on that same page, page 97, do you see where there's the intent section on that page? >> i do see that. >> would you be willing to read

the first sentence? >> and that was starting with -- >> substantial evidence. >> indicates that the president's -- >> if you could read that first sentence, could you do that? >> i'd happy to have you read it. >> i will read it then. you quote, quote, substantial evidence indicates that the president's effort to have sessions limit the scope of the special counsel's investigation to future election interference was intended to prevent further investigative scrutiny of the president and his campaign's conduct, unquote. that's in the report, correct? >> that is in the report and i he rely what's in the report to indicate what's happening in the paragraphs that we've been discussing. >> thank you. so to recap what we've heard, we have heard today that the president ordered former white house counsel don mcgahn to fire you. the president ordered don mcgahn to then cover that up and create a false paper trail. and now we've heard that the president ordered cory lewandowski to tell jeff

sessions to limit your investigation to sow thso that would stop investigating the president. i think a reasonable person looking at these facts could conclude that all three elements of the crime of obstruction of justice have been met. i'd like to ask you again the reason again you did not indict president trump is because of a longstanding tradition that you not indite a standing president, correct? >> that is correct. >> the fact that the orders by the president were not carried out, that's not a defense to obstruction of justice because the statute is quite drought. it says as long as you endeavor or attempt to obstruct justice, that would also constitute a crime? >> i'm not going to get into that at this juncture. >> okay. thank you. and based on the evidence that we have heard today, i believe a reasonable person could conclude that at least three crimes of obstruction of justice by the

president occurred. we're going to hear about two additional crimes, that would be witness tamp ergs of michael cohen and paul manafort. >> the only thing i want to add is that i'm going through the elements with you does not mean that i subscribe to the -- what you're trying to prove through those elements. >> the time of the gentleman has expired. the gentleman lady from arizona. i'm sorry, the gentleman from california. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. mueller over here. thanks for joining us today. you had three discussions with rod rosenstein about your appointment of special counsel may tenth, 12th, and 13th, correct? >> if you say so. i have no reason to dispute that. >> then you met with the president on the 16th with rod rosenstein present, and then on the 17th you wore formally appointed as special counsel. were you meeting with the president on the 16th with knowledge that you were under consideration for appointment of special counsel? >> i did not believe i was under

consideration for counsel. the -- i had served two terms as fbi director -- >> the answer suspect no? >> the answer's no. >> greg jarrett describes your office as the team of partisans and as additional information's coming to light there's a growing concern that political bias caused important facts to be omitted from your report in order to cast the president unfairly in a negative light. for example, john dowd, the president's lawyer leaves a message with michael flynn's lawyer on november 17th -- november, 2017. the edited version in your report makes it appear that he was improperly asking for confidential information. that's all we'd know from your report, except that had the judge in the flynn case ordered the entire transcript released in which dowd makes it crystal clear that's not what he was suggesting. so my question is why did you edit the transcript to hide the exculpatory part of the message? >> i'm not sure i would agree with your characterization as we

did anything to hide. >> well, you omitted it. you quoted the part where he says we need some kind of heads-up just for the sake of protecting all of our interests if we can, but you omitted the portion where he says without giving up any confidential information. >> well, i'm not going to go nurth ter further in terms of discussion -- >> you describe it as quote a russian ukrainian political consult apartment and long-time employ eve paul manafort assessed by the fbi to have ties to russian intelligence pat that's all we'd know from your report but we've since learned from news articles that climmic was a state department intelligence source yet nowhere in your report is he so identified. why was that fact -- >> i don't necessarily credit what you're saying occurred. >> were you away that kilimnik was a -- >> i'm not going to go into the ins and outs of what we had in the course of our investigation. >> did you interview konstantin california kilimnik?

>> pardon. >> do you interview konstantin kilimnik. >> i can't go into the discussion of our investigative moves. >> and yet that is the gabasis your report. the problem we're having, we have to rely on your report for an accurate reflctiection of th evidence and we're finding out that's not true. your report famously links russian troll forms with the government. and here in may 28th in the prosecution that you initiated, the judge excore rated you and mr. barr for producing no evidence to support this claim. why did you suggest russia was responsible for the troll farms when in court you've been unable to produce any evidence to support it? >> i'm not going to get into that any further than i already have. >> but you have left the clear impression throughout the country through your report that it was the russian government behind the troll farms and yet

when you're called upon to provide actual evidence in court, you fail do so. >> well, again, dispute your characterization of what occurred in that -- in that proceeding. >> in fact, the judge considering -- considered holding prosecutors in criminal contempt. she backed off only after your hastily called press conference the next day in which you retroactively made the distinction between the russian government and russian troll farms. did that have anything to do with the threat to hold your prosecutors in contempt the previous day for publicly misrepresenting the evidence? >> what was the question? >> the question is, did you may 29th press conference have anything to do with the fact that the previous day the judge threatened to hold your prosecutors in contempt for misrepresenting evidence? >> no. >> now, the -- the fundamental problem, as i said, we've got to take your word, you're 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. and it's starting to look like, you know, having desperately tried and fail to make a legal case against the president, you made a political case instead. you put it in a paper sack, lit it on fire, dropped it on our porch, rang the doorbell and rang. >> 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. >> then why is -- >> the time of the gentleman has expired. the gentleman from maryland is recognized. >> director mueller, let's go to a fourth episode of obstruction of justice. in the form of witness tampering, which is urging witnesses not to cooperate with law enforcement either by persuading them or intimidating them. witness tampering say felony punishable by 20 years in prison. you found evidence that the president engaged in efforts, and i quote, to encourage

witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation. is that right? >> that's correct. you have the citation? >> page seven on volume two. >> thank you. >> now, one of these witnesses was michael cohen, the president's personal lawyer who ultimately pled guilty to campaign violations based on secret hush money payments to women the president knew and also to lying congress -- lying to congress about the hope for $1 billion trump tower deal. after the fbi searched cohen's home, the president called him up personally, he said, to check in and told him to, quote, hang in there and stay strong. is that right? do you remember finding that? >> if it's in the report as stated, yes, it is right. >> yes. also in the report, actually, are a series of calls made by other friends of the president. one reached out to say he was with the boss in mar-a-lago and the president said he loves you. his name is redacted. another redacted friend called to say the boss loves you. and the third redacted friend called to say everyone knows the

boss has your back. do you remember finding that sequence of calls? >> generally, yes. >> when the news -- and, in fact, cohen said that following the receipt of these messages, i'm quoting here, page 147, volume two, he believed he had the support of the white house if he continued to tow the party line. and he determined to stay on message and be part of the team. that's page 147. do you remember he generally finding that? >> generally, yes. >> well, and robert costello, a lawyer close to the president's lael legal team emailed cohen to say, quote, you are loved, they in our corner, sleep well tonight and you have friends in high places. and that's up on the screen, page 147. you remember -- >> i see that. >> okay. now, when the news first broke that cohen arranged payoffs to stormy daniels, he stuck to this

party line. he said that publicly neither the trump organization nor the trump campaign was a party to the transaction and neither reimbursed him. trump's personal attorney at that point quickly texted cohen to say, quote, client says thank you for what you do. mr. mueller, who is the capital "c" client thanking cohen for what he does? >> can't speak to that. >> okay. the assumption, the context suggests very strongly it's president trump. >> i can't speak to that. >> okay. cohen later broke and pled guilty to campaign finance offenses and admitted fully they were made, quote, at the direction of candidate trump. do you remember that? >> yes. >> after cohen's guilty plea, the president suddenly changed his tune towards mr. cohen, didn't he? >> i would say i rely on what's in the report. >> well, he made the suggestion that cohen family members had committed crimes. he targeted, for example,

cohen's father-in-law and repeatedly suggested that he was guilty of committing crimes, right? >> i generally accurate. >> on page 154 you give a powerful summary of these changing dynamics and i'm happy to have you read it but i'm happy if not. >> i have it in front of me, thank you. >> would you like to read it. >> i would. >> can you read it outloud to everybody. >> i would be happy to have you treed. >> we'll read it at the same time. the evidence concerning this esee consequence of events could support an inference that the president used inducements in the form of positive messages in an effort to get cohen not to cooperate, and then turn to attacks and intimidation to deter the provision of information or to undermine cohen's credibility once cohen began cooperating. >> i believe that's accurate. >> and, in my view, in anyone else in america engaged in these actions they would have been charged with witness tampering. we must enforce the principle in congress that you emphasized so well in the very last sentence of your report, in america no

person is so high as to be above the law. i yield back, mr. chairman. >> gentleman yields back [ inaudible ]. >> thank you, mr. chairman. just recently, mr. mueller, you said mr. lue was asking you questions. and mr. lue he's question, quote, the reason you didn't indict the president is because of the olc opinion. you answered that is correct. but that is not what you said in the report and it's not what you told the attorney general barr. and, in fact, in a joint statement that you released with doj on may 29th after your press conference, your office issued a joint statement with the department of justice that said, the attorney general has previously stated that the special counsel repeatedly affirmed that he was not saying that but for the olc opinion he would have found the president obstructed justice. the special counsel's report in his statement today may clear

that the office concluded it would not reach a determination one way or the other whether the president committed a crime. there is no conflict between these statements. so, mr. miller, do you stand by your joint statement with doj that you issued on may 29th as you sit here today? >> i would have to look at it more closely before i said i agree with it. >> well, so, you know, my conclusion is what you told mr. lue really contradicts what you said in the report. and specifically what you said apparently repeatedly to attorney general barr that -- and then you issued a joint statement on may 29th saying that the attorney general has previously stated that the special counsel repeatedly affirm that he was not saying but for the olc report that we would have found the president obstructed justice. so i just say there's a conflict. i do have some more questions.

mr. mueller, there's been a lot of talk today about firing the special counsel and curtailing the investigation. were you ever fired, mr. mueller from the -- >> what? >> were you ever fired as special counselor roar mr special counsel, mr. -- >> no. >> were you allowed to complete your investigation unencumbered? >> yes. >> you resigned as special counsel when you closed up the office in late may, 2019, is that correct? >> correct. >> thank you. mr. mueller, on april 18th, the attorney general held a press conference in conjunction with the public release of your report. did attorney general barr say anything inaccurate either in his press conference or his march 24th letter to congress summarizing the principal conclusions of your report? >> well, what you are not mentioning is the letter we sent

on march 27th to mr. barr that raised some issues. and that letter speaks for itself. >> but then i don't see how you could -- could -- that could be since ag barr's letter detailed the principal conclusions of your report and you have said before that -- that there wasn't anything inaccurate. in fact, you had this joint statement. but let me -- let me go on to another question. mr. mueller, rather than purely relying on the evidence provided by witnesses and documents, i think you relied a lot on media. i'd like to know how many times you cited "the washington post" in your report. >> how many times i what? >> cited "the washington post" in your report. >> i don't -- i do not have knowledge of that figure. that's it, i don't have knowledge of that figure. >> i counted about 60 times.

how many times did you cite "the new york times"? i counted -- >> again, i have no idea. >> i counted about 75 times. how many times did you cite fox news? >> i -- as with the other two, i have no idea. >> about 25 times. i've got to say, it looks like volume two is mostly regurgitated press stories. honestly there's almost nothing in volume two that i couldn't already hear or know simply by having a $50 cable news subscription. however, your investigation coast the american taxpayers $25 million. mr. mueller, you cited media reports nearly 200 times in your report. then in a footnote, a small footnote, number 7, page 15 of volume two this section summarizes various news stories not for the truth of the information contained in the stories, but rather to place candidate trump's response to

those stories in context. since nobody but lawyers reads foot notes, are you concerned that the american public took the embedded news stories -- >> time of the gentleman lady's expired. the gentle lady from washington. >> can mr. mueller answer the question? >> no, no. we're running short on time. >> i said the gentle lady from washington. >> thank you. director mueller, let's turn to the fifth of the obstruction episodes in your report. that's the evidence of whether president trump engaged in witness tampering with trump campaign chairman paul manafort who's foreign ties were critical to your investigation and to russia's interference in our elections. and this is -- starts at volume two page 123. your office got indictments against manafort and trump deputy campaign manager rick gates in two different jurisdictions, correct? >> correct. >> and your office found that after a grand jury indicted them, manafort told gates not to

plead guilty to any charges because, quote, had he talked to the president -- president's personal counsel and they were going to take care of us. is that correct? >> that's accurate. >> and according to your report, one day after manafort's conviction on eight felony charges, quote, the president said that flipping was not fair and almost ought to be outlawed. is that correct? >> i'm aware of that. >> in this context, director mueller, what does it mean to flip? >> have somebody cooperate in a criminal investigation. >> and how essential is that cooperation to any efforts to combat crime? >> i'm not going to go beyond that, characterizing that effort. >> thank you. in your report you concluded that president trump and his personal counsel, rudy giuliani, quote, made repeated statements suggesting that a pardon was a possibility for manafort while also making it clear that the president did not want manafort to flip and cooperate with the government, end quote. is that correct? >> correct. >> and as you stated earlier, witness tampering can be shown where someone with an improper

motive encourages another person not to cooperate with law enforcement, ask that correct? >> correct. >> now, on page 123 of volume two, you also discuss the president's motive. you say that as court proceedings move forward against manafort, president trump, quote, discussed with aides whether and in what way manafort might be cooperating and whether manafort knew any information that would be harmful to the president, end quote. is that correct? >> that was a quote from? >> from page 123, volume two. >> i have it, thank you. yes. >> and when someone tries to stop another person from working with law enforcement and they do it because they're worried about what that person will say, it seems clear from what you wrote that this is a classic definition of witness tampering. now, mr. manafort did eventually decide to cooperate with your office and he entered into a plea agreement but this he broke that agreement. can you describe what he did that caused you to tell the court that the agreement was off? >> i'd refer you to the court

proceedings on that issue. >> so on page 127 of volume two you told the court that mr. manafort lied bay number of matters that were material to the investigation and you said that manafort's lawyers also, quote, regularly briefed the president's lawyers on topics discussed and the information that manafort had provided in interviews with the special counsel's office. does that sound right? >> and the source of that is? >> that's page 127, volume two. there's a direct quote. >> if it's from the report, yes, i'd support it. >> and two days after you told the court that man for the broke his plea agreement by lying repeatedly, did president trump tell the press that mr. manafort was, quote, very brave, because did he not flip? this is page 128 of volume two? >> if it's in the report i support it as it is set forth. >> thank you. director mueller, in your report you make a serious conclusion about the evidence involving the president's involvement with the manafort criminal proceedings. let me read to you from your report. evidence concerning the

president's conduct toward manafort indicates that the president intended to encourage manafort to not cooperate with the government. it is clear that the president both publicly and privately diskrathd mdi discouraged mr. manafort's cooperation while dabbing willing a pardon if he stayed loyal and did not share what he knew about the president. anyone else who did these things would be prosecuted for them. we must ensure that no one is above the law. and i thank you for being here, director mueller. >> thank you. >> yield back. >> gentleman from pennsylvania. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. mueller, i'm over here, i'm sorry. mr. mueller, are you familiar with the now expired independent counsel statute? it's a statute under which ken starr was appointed. >> that ken starr did what? i'm sorry. >> are you familiar with the independent counsel statute? >> are you talk about the one that be we're operating under now or previous? >> under which ken starr was appointed. >> i'm not that familiar with that but i'd be happy to take

your question. >> the clinton administration allowed the independent counsel statute to expire after keb starr's investigation. the final report requirement was a major reason why the statute was allowed to expire. each president clinton's ag, janet reno, expressed concerns about the final report requirement. and i'll quote ag reno. she says, on one hand the american people have an interest in knowing the outcome of an investigation of their highest officials. on the other hand, the report requirement cuts against many of the most basic traditions and practices of american law enforcement. under our system, we presume innocence and we value privacy. we believe that information obtained during a criminal investigation should, in most cases, be made public only if there is an indictment and prosecution, not any lengthy and detailed report filed after a decision has been made not to prosecute.

the final report provides a forum for unfairly airing a target's dirty laundry and it also creates yet another incentive for an independent counsel to overinvestigate in order to justify his or her tenure and to avoid criticism that the independent counsel may have left a stone unturned. again, mr. mueller, those are ag reno's words. didn't you do exactly what ag reno feared? didn't you publish a lengthy report unfairly airing the target's dirty laundry without recommending charges? >> i disagree with that. and let me finish. >> did any of your witnesses -- i can finish? >> have the chance to be cross-examined. >> i can finish? >> quickly. >> i operate under the current statute and not the original statute. i'm most familiar with the current statute. >> did any of the witnesses have a chance to be cross-examined? >> did any of the witnesses in our investigation? >> yes. >> i'm not going to answer that. >> did you allow the people mentioned in your report to

challenge how they were characterized? >> i'm not going to get into that. >> given that ag barr stated multiple times during i had confirmation hearing that he would make as much of your report public as possible, did you write your report knowing it would likely be shared with the public? >> no. >> did knowing the report could and likely would be made public, does did that alter the contents which you included? >> i can't speak to that. >> despite the expectations that your report would be released to the public, you left out significant exculpatory evidence. in other words, evidence favorable to the president, correct? >> well, i actually would disagree with you. i think we stroef to put into the report -- >> you said there was evidence you left out. >> well, you make a choice as to what goes into a -- >> isn't it -- >> an indictment. >> isn't it true that on page one of volume two you state when you're quoting the statute you

had an obligation to either prosecute or not pros kuss. ? >> well, generally that is the case, although most cases are not done in the context of the president. >> and in this case you made a decision not to prosecute, correct? >> we made a decision not to decide whether to prosecute or not. >> so essentially what your report did was everything that ag reno warned against? >> i can't agree with that characterization. >> well, what you did was you compiled a nearly 450 -- you compiled nearly 450 pages of the very worst information you gathered against the target of your investigation who happens to be the president of the united states, and you did this knowing that you were not going to recommend charges and then the report would be made public. >> not true. >> mr. -- mr. mueller, as a former officer in the united states jag core, i prosecuted nearly 100 terrorists in a baghdad courtroom. i prosecuted the butcher of fallujah in defense of our navy

seals. ways elected to magistrate judge in pennsylvania. i'm very well versed the american legal system. drafting a publication and some of the information in its report without an indictment, without prosecution, flies in the face of american justice and i find those facts and this entire process unamerican. i yield the remainder of my time to jim jordan. >> director mueller, the third fisa renewal happens a month after you're named special counsel. what role did your office play in the third fisa renewal? >> not going to talk to that. >> time of the gentleman has expired. the gentle lady from florida. >> director mule,eller a couple my colleagues wanted to talk about lies. according to your report, witnesses lied to your office and to congress. those lies materially impaired the investigation of russia interference according to your

report. other than the individuals who pled guilty to crimes based on their lying to you and your team, did other witnesses lie to you? >> i think there's probably a spectrum of witnesses in terms of those who are not telling the full truth and those who are outright liars. >> thank you very much. outright liars. it is fair to say, then, that there are limits on what evidence was available to your investigation of both russian election interference and obstruction of justice? >> that's true and is usually the case. >> and that lies by trump campaign officials and administration officials impeded your investigation? >> i would generally agree with that. >> thank you so much, director mueller. you will be hearing more from me in the next hearing so i yield the balance of my time to mr. korea. thank you. >> mr. mueller, first of all let me welcome you. thank you for your service to our country. you're a hero.

vietnam war vet, wounded war vet, we won't forget your service to our country. >> thank you, sir. >> if i may begin, because of time limits we have gone in-depth on only five possible episodes of obstruction. there's so much more. i want to focus on another section of obstruction which is the president's conduct concerning michael flynn, the president's national security adviser. in early 27, the white house counsel and the president were informed that mr. flynn had lied to government authorities about his communications with the russian ambassador during the trump campaign and transition. is this correct? >> correct. >> if a hostile nation knows that a u.s. official has lied publicly, that can be used to blackmail that government official, correct? >> i'm not going to speak to that. i don't disagree with it necessarily, but i'm not going to speak to anymore to that issue. >> thank you very much, sir. flynn resigned on february 13th,

2016. and the very next day when the president was having lunch with new jersey governor chris christie, did the president say, open quotes, now that we fired flynn, the russia thing is over, close the quote, is that correct? >> correct. >> and is it true that christi responded by saying, open quotes, no way. and this russia thing is far from over, closed quote? >> that's the way we have it in the report. >> thank you. and after president met with christi, later that same day the president arranged to meet with then fbi director james comey alone in the oval office, correct? >> correct. particularly at the -- you have the citation to the report -- >> page 3940, volume two. >> at the have you much. >> and according to comey, the president told him, i hope, open

quote, i hope you can see your way clear to letting this thing go, to letting flynn go. he's a good guy and i hope you can let it go. closed quote. page 40, volume two. >> accurate. >> what did comey understand the president to be asking? >> i'm not going to get into what was in the -- mr. comey's mind. >> comey understood this to be a direction because of the president's position and the circumstances of the one to one meeting? page 40, volume two? >> i understand it's in the report and i support it as being -- as being in the report. >> thank you, sir. even though the president publicly denied telling comey to drop the investigation, you found, open quote, substantial evidence corroborating comey's account over the president's. is this correct? >> that's correct. >> the president fired comey on may 9th, is that correct, sir? >> i believe that's the accurate date. >> that's page 77, volume two.

you found substantial evidence that the catalyst for the president's firing of comey was comey's open quote on willingness to publicly state that the president was not personally under investigation? >> i'm not going to delve more into the details of what happened. if it's in the report then i'm supportive because it's already been reviewed and appropriately appears in the report. >> and that's page 75, volume two. >> thank you. >> thank you. and in fact, the very next day the president told the russian foreign minister, open quote, i just fired the head of the fbi. he was crazy. a real nutjob. i face great pressure because of russia. that's taken off. i'm not under investigation, closed quote. is that correct? >> that's what was written in the -- written in the report. >> time of the gentleman has expired. >> yes. >> thank you, sir. >> gentleman from virginia. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. mueller, we've heard a lot

about what you're not going to talk about today so let's talk about something that you should be able to talk about, the law itself. the underlying obstruction statute and you're creative legal analysis of the statute in volume two. particularly your interpretation of 18 usc 1512-c, section 1512-c is an obstruction of justice statute created as part of auditing and financial regulations for public companies. as you write on page 164 of volume two, this provision was added as a floor amendment in the senate and explained as closing a certain loophole with respect to document shredding. and to read the statute, whoever corley all theers ore destroys or mutilates another object with tont impair the document's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding or on instructs any official proceeding or attempt to do so shall be finded or imprisoned for not more than 20 years or

both. your report gives this a much broader interpretation than commonly used the it is a freestanding all encompassing provision preventing any act influencing a proceeding if done with an improper motive. and second your analysis of the statute proposes to apply the sweeping prohibition to lawful acts taken by public officials exercising their discretionary powers if those acts influence a proceeding. mr. mueller, i'd ask you, in analyzing the obstruction, you state that you recognize that had the department of justice and the courts have not definitively resolved these issues, correct? >> correct. >> you would agree that not everyone in the justice department agreed with your legal theory of the obstruction of justice staets statutetutes,? >> i'm not going to be involved in a discussion on that at this juncture. >> the attorney general himself disagreed with your interpretation of the law, correct? >> i'll leave that to the

attorney general to identify. >> and you would agree that prosecutors sometimes incorrectly apply the law, correct? >> i would have to agree with that one. >> and members of your legal team in fact have had convictions overturned because they were based on an incorrect legal theory, correct? >> i i don't know to what you avert. we've all in time in the trenches trying of cases have not won every one of those cases. >> let me ask you about one in particular. an dry weissman obtained a conviction in arthur anderson lower court which was overturned in a unanimous supreme court decision that rejected the legal theory advanced my weissman, correct? >> i'm not going to delve into that. >> let me read from that -- >> may i just finish my answer? >> yes. >> to say that i'm not going to be getting involved in a discussion on that. i will refer you to that citation that you gave me at the outset for the lengthy discussion on just what you're talking about. and to the extent i have anything to say about it, it is what we've already put into the report on that issue. >> i am reading from your report when discussing this section. and i'll read from the decision

of the supreme court unanimously reversing mr. weiss whenman when he said it's striking how little culpability the instructions require. the jury was told that even a petitioner honestly and sin veerly fwlefd was lawful the jury could convict. they diluted the meaning so much it had -- >> let me just say -- >> let me move on. your report takes the broadest possible reading of this provision and applying it to the president's acts and i'm concerned about the implication of your theory by overreaching conduct for citizens alike. to emphasize how broad this is, i want to give you a few examples. into the investigation of the hillary clinton's use of the private email server president obama said i don't think it caused a national security problem. he later said i don't think this was a situation where america's security was endangered. couldn't president obama be charged under your interpretation with obstruction of justice? >> well, again, i'd refer you to

the report. but let me say with andrew weissman who is one of the more talented attorneys that we have on board -- >> i'll take that -- >> over a period of time he has run a number of units -- >> i have very limited time. in august 2015, a very senior doj official called fbi deputy director andrew mccabe saying that they were still investigating the clinton probe. they were vez pissed off. he questioned this official saying are you telling me i need to shut down a valid investigation to which they replied of course not. this seems to be a clear example of somebody within the executive branch attempting to influence an fbi investigation. under your theory, wouldn't that person be charged with obstruction as long as a prosecutor could come up with a potentially corrupt motive? >> i refer you to our lengthy dissertation that appears at the end of the report. >> mr. mueller, i'd argue it

says above the supreme court -- >> time of the gentleman has expired. not stretched -- >> our intent -- our intent was to conclude this hearing in three hours. given the break that would bring us to approximately 11:40. with director mueller's indulgence we'll be asking our remaining democratic members to voluntarily limit their time below the five minutes so that we can complete our work as close to that time frame as possible. and i recognize the gentle lady from pennsylvania. >> thank you. director mueller, i want to ask you some questions about the president's statements regarding advanced knowledge of the wikileaks dumps. so the president refused to sit down with your investigators for an in-person interview, correct? >> correct. >> so the only answers we have to questions from the president are contained in a i appendix c to your report? >> that's correct. >> so look at appendix c on page five, you ask the president over a dozen questions about whether he had knowledge that wikileaks possessed or might possess the emails that were stolen by the

russians -- >> i apologize. >> sure. >> can you start it again? >> okay. sure. >> thank you. >> so we're looking at appendix c. >> right. >> and appendix c, page five you ask the president about a dozen questions about whether he had knowledge that quickwikileaks possessed the emails that might be helpful to his campaign or harmful to the clinton campaign, is that correct, you asked those questions? >> yes. >> in february of this year, mr. trump's personal attorney, michael cohen, testified to congress to congress under theeth, quote, mr. trump knew from roger stone in advance about the wikileaks drop of emails, end quote. that's a matter of public record, isn't it? >> well, are you referring to the report or some other public record? >> this was testimony before congress by mr. cohen. do you know if he told you -- >> then i'm to the explicitly familiar with what he testified to before congress. >> okay. let's look in an event described on page 18 of volume two of your

report. now, according -- and we're going to put it up on the slide i think. according to deputy campaign manager rick gates, in the summer of 2016 he and candidate trump were on the way to an airport shortly after wikileaks released its first set of stolen emails. and gates told your investigators that candidate trump was on a phone call and when the call ended, trump told gates that more releases of damaging information would be coming, end quote. do you recall that from the report? >> if it's in the report, i support it. >> okay. that's on page 18 of volume two. now, on page 77 of volume two, your report also stated, quote, in addition, some witnesses said that trump privately sought information about future wikileaks releases, is that correct? >> correct. >> now, in appendix c where the president did answer some written questions, he said,

quote, i do not recall discussing wikileaks with him nor do i recall being aware of mr. stone having discussed wikileaks with individuals associated with my campaign, end quote. is that correct? >> if it's from the report it is correct. >> okay. so is it fair to say the president denied ever discussing wikileaks with mr. stone and denied being aware that anyone associated with his campaign discussed wikileaks with stone? >> i'm sorry, could you repeat that one? >> is it fair, then, that the president denied knowledge of himself or anyone else discussing wikileaks dumps with mr. stone? >> yes. yes. >> okay. and with that, i would yield back. >> thank you, ma'am. >> gentle lady yields back. gentleman from [ inaudible ]. >> thank you, mr. chair. mr. mueller, over here. mr. mule, he did you indeed interview for the fbi director job one day before you were pointed as special counsel? >> my understanding it was not applying for the job. i was asked to give my input on

what it would take to do the job, which triggered the interview you're talking about. >> so you don't recall on may 16th, 2016, that you interviewed with the president for the fbi director job? >> i interviewed about the president. it was about the job and not about me applying for the job. >> so your statement here today is that you didn't interview to apply for the fbi director job? >> that's correct. >> so did you tell the vice president that the fbi director position would be the one job that you would come back for? >> don't recall that one. >> you don't recall that? >> no. >> okay. given your 22 months of investigation, tens of millions of dollars spent and millions of documents reviewed, did you obtain any evidence at all that any american voter changed their vote as a result of russian's election interference? >> i can't speak to that. >> you can't speak to that after 22 months of investigation there's not any evidence in that document before us that any voter changed their vote because of their interference? and i'm asking you based on all the documents that you reviewed?

>> that was -- that was outside our purview. >> russian meddling was outside your purview? >> the impact of that meddling was undertaken by other agencies. >> okay. you stated in your opening statement that you would not get into the details of the steele dossier. however, multiple times in volume two on page 23, 27, and 28 you mentioned the unverified allegations. how long did it take you to reach the conclusion that it was unverified? >> i'm not going to speak to that. >> it's in -- it's actually in your report multiple times that it's unverified and you're telling me that you're not willing to tell us how you came to the conclusion that it was unverified? >> true. >> when did you become aware that the unverified steele dossier was included in the fisa application to spy on carter page? >> what was the question? >> when did you become aware that the unverified steele dossier was intended -- was included in the fisa application to spy on carter page? >> i'm not going to speak to that.

>> your team interviewed christopher steele, is is that correct? >> not going to get into that. as i said -- >> you can't tell this committee as to whether or not you interviewed christopher steele in a 20 two-month investigation with 18 lawyers? >> as i said at the outset, that is one of those -- one of the investigations that is -- is being handled by others in the department of justice. >> but you're here testifying about this investigation today and i am asking you directly, did any members of your team or did you interview christopher feel in the course of your investigation? >> i'm not going to answer that question. >> you had two years to investigate. not once did you consider it worthy to investigate how an unverified document that was paid for by a political opponent was used to obtain a warrant to spy on the opposition political campaign. did you do any investigation in that whatsoever? >> i do not accept your characterization of what occurred. >> what would be your characterization? >> i'm not going to speak anymore to it. >> so you can't speak anymore to it but you're not going to agree with my characterization? is that correct?

>> yes. >> the fisa application makes reference to source one who is christopher steele, the author of the steele dossier. the fisa application says nothing source's one's reason for candidate ones ties russia based on history with fbi whereby source one provided reliable information to the fbi. the fbi believed source one's report hearing herein to the credible. do you believe the fbi's representation that source 1's information was accurate? >> i'm not going to answer that. >> so you're not going to respond to any of the questions regarding christopher steele or your interviews with him? >> as i said at the outset this morning, that was one of the investigations that i could not speak to. >> well, i don't understand how if you interviewed an individual on the purview of this investigation that you're testifying to us today that you've closed that investigation, how that's not within your purview to tell us about that investigation and who you interviewed? >> i have nothing to add. >> being. well i can guarantee you that the american people want to know. and i'm very hopeful and glad that the ag barr's looking into

this and the inspector general's looking into this because you're unwilling to answer the questions of the american people as it relates to the very basis of this investigation into the president. and the very basis of this individual who you did interview, you're just refusing to answer those questions. can't the president fire the fbi director at any time without reason under article one of the constitution? >> yes. >> article two. >> yes. >> that's correct. can't he also fire you as special counsel at any time without any reason? >> i believe that to be the case. >> under article two. >> hold on just a second. you said without any reason. i know the special counsel can be fired, but i'm not certain it extends to for whatever reason is given. >> well, you've testified that you weren't fired, you were able to complete your investigation in full. is that correct? >> i'm not going to add to what i've stated before. >> my time's expired. >> gentleman's time has expired. the gentle lady from pennsylvania. >> texas. >> from texas.

>> thank you, mr. chairman and mr. mueller for being with us close to this afternoon now. director mueller, now i'd like to ask you about the president's answers relating to roger stone. roger stone was indicted for multiple federal crimes and the indictment alleges that mr. stone discussed future wikileaks email releases with the trump campaign. understanding there's a gag order on the stone case, i will keep my questions restricted to publicly available information. mr. stone's indictment -- >> let me just say at the outset, i don't mean it disrupt you, but i -- i'm not -- i would like some demarcation of that when is applicable to this, but also in such a way that it does not hinder the other prosecution that's taking place in d.c. >> i understand that i'm only going to be talking about the questions that you asked in write together president -- >> thank you, ma'am. >> that relate to mr. stone. mr. stone's indictment states,

among other things, the following, quote. stone was contacted by seen it yore trump officials to require about future releases of organization one. organization one being wikileaks. the indictment continues, quote, stone thereafter told the trump campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by wikileaks. so in short, the indictment alleges that stone was asked by the trump campaign to get information about more wikileaks releases and that stone, in fact, did tell the trump campaign about potential future releases, correct? >> yes, ma'am. but i see you're quoting from the indictment. and even though the indictment is a public document, i feel uncomfortable discussing anything having do with the stone prosecution. >> right. the indictment is of record and i pulled -- we pulled it off of the -- >> i understand that. >> we'll turn it back to the president's answers to your

questions then on this very subject. the president denied ever discussing future wikileaks releases with stone and denied anyone else on his campaign had those discussions with stone. if you had learned that other witnesses putting aside the president, if other witnesses had lied to your investigators in response to specific questions whether he -- whether in writing or in an interview, could they be charged with false statement crimes? >> well, i'm not going to speculate because i think you're asking for me to speculate given a set of circumstances. >> well, let's put it more specific. what if i had made a false statement to an investigator on your team, i could go to jail for up to five years? >> yes. >> yes. >> although there's -- it's congress, so. >> well, that's the point, though, isn't it? that no one is above the law. >> that's right. >> not you, not the congress, and certainly not the president. and i think it's just troubling to have to hear some of these

things. and that's why the american people deserve to learn the full facts of the misconduct described in your report for which any other person would have been charged with crimes. so thank you for being here and, again, the point has been underscored many times but i'll repeat it. no one is above the law. thank you. >> thank you, ma'am. >> the gentleman from north dakota is recognized. >> mr. mueller, how many people on your staff did you fire during the course of the investigation? >> how many people -- >> did you fire? >> i'm not -- not discuss that. >> you fired -- according to the inspector general's report, attorney number two was let go and we know peter strzok was let go, correct? >> yes. and there may have been other persons on other issues that have been either transferred or fired. >> peter strzok testified before this committee on july 12th, 2018, that he was fired because you were concerned about preserving the appearance of independence. do you agree with his testimony? >> say that again if you could.

>> he said he was fired at least partially because you were worried about concern about preserving the appearance of independence with the special counsel's investigation. do you agree with that statement? >> the statement was by whom? >> peter strzok at this hearing. >> and i am not familiar with that. >> did you fire him because you were worried about the appearance of independence of the investigation? >> no. he was transferred as a result of instances involving texts. >> do you agree that -- do you agree that your office did not only have an on zbation to operate with independence but to operate with the appearance of independence as well. >> absolutely we strove to do that over the two years. >> andrew weissman is one of your top attorneys. >> yes. >> did he have a role in collse other members of your team. >> some role but not a large role. >> he attend the the party, did you know that before he came on to the team? >> don't know when i found that

out. >> weissman wrote an email to deputy attorney yates stating i am so proud and in awe regarding her disobeying a direct order from the president. did weissman disclose that email to you before he joined the team? >> i'm not going to talk about that. >> is that not a conflict of interest? >> not going to talk about that. >> are you away that ms. jeanie represented hillary clinton in litigation regarding personal emails originating from clibt t clinton's time of secretary of state? >> yes. >> did you though that before me came on the team? >> no. >> aaron, the guy sitting next to you destroyed one of clinton's mobile devices. you must be aware by know that six of your lawyers donated $12,000 directly to hillary clinton. i'm not even talking about the 49,000 they donated to other democrats, just the donations to the opponent who was the target of your investigation. >> i can speak for a second to the hiring practices? >> sure. >> we strove to hire those individuals that could do the job. i have been in this business for

almost 25 years. and in those 25 years i have not had a occasion once to ask somebody about their political affiliation if the is not done. what i care about is the capability of the individual to do the job and do the job quickly and seriously and with integrity. >> but that's what i'm sailing, mr. mueller. this isn't just about you being able to up vouch for your team in the is about you knowing the day you accepted it role, half of the country was going to be skeptical of your team's findings. and that's why we have recusal laws that define bias and perceive bias for this very reason. 28 united states code specifically lists not just political conflict of interest, but the appearance of political conflict of interest. it's just simply not enough that you vouch for your team. the interest of -- demands that no perceived bias exists. i can't imagine a single prosecutor or judge that i have ever appeared in front of would be comfortable with these circumstances where over half of the pros coutural team had a

direct relationship to the opponent of the person being investigated. >> one other fact i put on the table, we hired 19 lawyers over the period of time. of those 19 lawyers, 14 of them were transferred from elsewhere in the department of justice. only five came from outside. >> and half of them had a direct relationship, political or personal, with the opponent of the person you were investigating '? and that's my point. i wonder if not a single word in this entire report was changed but rather the only difference was we switched hillary clinton and president trump. iffer. strzok had texted those terrible things about hillary clinton instead of president trump, if a team of lawyers worked for donated thousands of dollars to and he went to trump's parties instead of clinton's, i don't think we'd be here trying to prop up an obstruction allegation. my colleagues would have spent the last four months accusing your team of being bought and paid for by the trump campaign and we couldn't trust a single word of this report. they would still be accusing the president of conspiracy with russia and they would be accusing your team of aiding and

abet with that conspiracy. and with that i yield back. >> gentleman yields back. the gentleman from colorado. >> director mueller, thank you for your service to our country. i'd like to talk to you about one of the other incidents of obstruction, and that's the evidence in your report showing the president directing his son and his communications director to issue a false public statement in june of 2017 about a meeting between his campaign and russian individuals at trump tower in june of 2016. according to your report, mr. trump junior was the only trump associate who participated in that meeting and who declined to be voluntarily interviewed by your office. is that correct? >> yes. >> did mr. trump junior or his counsel ever communicate to your office any intent to invoke his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination? >> i'm not going to answer that. >> you did pose written questions to the president about his knowledge of the trump tower meeting. you included also asked him about whether or not he had directed a false press statement. the president did not answer at all that question, correct? >> i don't have it in front of

me. i take your word. >> i can represent to you that appendix c, specifically c-13 states as much. >> yes. >> according to page 100 of volume two of your report, your investigation found that hope hicks, president's communications director, in june of 2017 was shown emails that set up the trump tower meeting and she told your office that she was, quote, shocked by the emails because they looked, quote, really bad. true? >> do you have the citation? >> sure. it's page 100 of volume two. while you're flipping to that page, according to page 99 of volume two, those emails in question stated,a according to your report, that the crown prosecutor of russia had offered to provide the trump campaign with official documents and information that would incripple nate hillary and her dealings with russia as part of russia and its government's support for mr. trump. trump junior responded if it's what you say, i love it. and he, kushner, and manafort

met with the russian attorneys and several other russian individuals at trump tower on june 9th, 2016, end quote. correct? >> generally accurate. >> isn't it true that ms. hicks told your office that she went multiple times to the president to, quote, urge him that they should be fully transparent about the june 9th meeting, end quote, but the president each time said no, correct? >> accurate. >> and the reason was because of those emails which the president, quote, believed would not leak, correct? >> well, i'm not certain how it's characterized but generally correct. >> did the president direct ms. hicks to say, quote, only that trump junior took a brief meting and it was about russian adoption, end quote, because trump junior's statement to the "new york times," quote, said too much, according to page 102 of volume two? >> okay. >> correct? >> let me -- let me just check

one thing. yes. >> and according to ms. hicks, the president still directed her to say the meeting was only about russian adoption, correct? >> yes. >> despite knowing that to be untrue. thank you, director mueller i yield back the balance of my time. >> mr. mueller, you've been asked over here on the far right, sir. you've been asked a lot of questions here today. to be frank, you performed as most of us expected. you've stuck closely to your report and you have declined to answer many of our questions on both sides. as the closer for the republican side, i know you're glad to get to the close, i want to summarize the highlights of what we have heard and what we know. you spent two years and nearly 30 million taxpayer dollars in unlimited resources to prepare a nearly 450 page report which you describe today as very thorough. millions of americans today maintain genuine concerns about your work in large part because of the infamous and widely publicized bias of your investigating team members, which we now know included 14

democrats and zero republicans. campaign finance reports showed that team -- >> but i -- >> excuse me, it's my time. that team of investigate prosecutors that you hired donated to the hillary clinton campaign campaign and other democratic candidates. your team contained peter strzok. they vowed to take him out. mr. r you were asked can you give me an example of other than donald trump. you answered i cannot. the president believed you and your special counsel team had serious conflicts. this is stated in the report and acknowledged by everybody. yet, president trump cooperated fully with the investigation. he knew he had done nothing wrong and he encouraged all witnesses to cooperate with the investigation and produce more

than 1.4 million pages of information and allowed over 40 witness whose were affiliated with the white house or his campaign. your report acknowledges on page 6 61 volume 2 that the president said, quote, he was concerned about the impact of the russian investigation on his ability to govern and to address important foreign relations issues and even matters of national security. on page 174 volume ii your report acknowledges the supreme court has held, quote, the president's removal powers are at their zenith with respect to principle officers. that is, officers who must be appointed by the president who report to him directly. the president's exclusive and illimitable power of removable of those officers furtherers the president's ability to insure tinsure. nobody was fired by the president. nothing was curtailed and the

investigation continued unencumbered for 22 long months. as you finally cluoncluded the evidence did not establish that the president was involved in an underlying crime related to russian election interference, end quote. and the evidence, quote, did not establish that the president or those close to him were involved in any russian conspiracies or had an unlawful relationship with any russian official. the president became increasingly frustrated with its effects on our country and his ability to govern. he vented about this to his lawyer and even shared his frustrations as we all know on twitter. while the president's social media accounts my haay have influenced some of the media none of those audiences were targets or witnesses in your investigation. the president never affected anybody's testimony or demand you be terminated and he never mitt led congress, the doj or

the special counsel. there will be gratd frustration about the fact you wouldn't ander any questions about the origins of this charade which was the infamous steele dossier. we apparently will get no comment on that from you. mr. mueller, there's one primary reason why you were called here today, and by the democratic majority of our committee. our colleagues just want political cover. they desperately wanted you to tell them they should impeach the president. the one thing you've said is you agree with your report and all of its content, is that right? >> true. >> your report does not recommend impeachment, does it? >> i'm not going to talk about recommendations. >> it does not include that impeachment -- >> i'm not going to talk about

that issue. >> that's one of the many things you wouldn't talk about today, but i think we can draw our own conclusions. i thank you for your service to the country and i'm glad this charade will come to an end and we can get back to the important business of this committee. with that i yield back. >> the gentleman yields back. i want to announce our intent was to conclude this hearing at around 11:45. all the republican members have now asked their questions but we have a few remaining democratic members. they'll be limiting their questions so we expect to finish within 15 minutes. the gentle lady from georgia is recognized. >> thank you, director mueller. your investigations of the russian attack on our democracy and the obstruction of justice were extraordinarily productive. in under two years you charged at least 37 people or entities with crimes. you convicted seven individuals, five of whom were top trump campaign or white house aides. charges remain pending against more than two dozen russian persons or entities and against

others. now let me start with those five trump campaign administration aides that you convicted. would you agree with me that they are paul manafort, president trump's campaign manager. rick gates, president trump's deputy campaign manager, michael flynn, president trump's form were national security advisor, michael cohen, the president's personal attorney. george papadopoulos. correct? >> right. >> and the sixth trump associate will face trial later this year, correct? that person would be roger stone, correct? >> correct. >> thank you. >> i'm not certain what you said about stone, but he is in another court system as i indicated before. >> exactly. he's still under investigation. >> i don't want to discuss -- >> correct, thank you. there are many other charges as well, correct? >> correct. >> so, sir, i just want to thank you so much in my limited time today for your team, the work you did in your dedication. in less than two years your team was able to uncover an

incredible amount of information related to russia's attack on our elections and to obstruction of justice. and there are still more that we have to learn. despite facing unfair attacks by the president, and even here today your work has been substantive and fair. the work has laid the critical foundation for our investigation and for that i thank you. i thank you. with that, i yield back the balance of my time. >> the gentleman from arizona. >> thank you. director mueller, i'm disappointed that some have questioned your motives throughout this process. i want to take a moment to remind the american people of who you are and your exemplary service to our country. you are a marine. you served in vietnam and earned a bronze star and a purple heart, correct? >> correct. >> which president appointed you to become the united states attorney for massachusetts? >> which senator?

>> which president. >> which president. i think that was president bush. >> according to my notes, it was president ronald reagan had the honor to do so. >> my mistake. >> under whose administration did you serve as the assistant attorney general in charge of the doj's criminal division? >> which president? >> yeah. >> that would be george bush one. >> that's correct, president george h.w. bush. after that you took a job at a law firm and after a couple years you did something extraordinary. you left that lucrative position to reenter public service, prosecuting homicides here in washington, d.c., is that correct. >> correct. >> when you were named director of the fbi, which president appointedio you? >> bush. >> and you were sworn in as director just one week before

the september 11th attacks. >> true. >> you helped protect this nation against another attack. you did such an outstanding job that when your ten-year term expired the senate unanimously voted to extend your term for another two years, correct? >> true. >> when you were asked in to take the job as special counsel, the president had just fired fbi director james comey. the justice department and fbi were in turmoil. why did you accept? >> i'm not going to get into that. it's a little bit off track. it was a challenge. >> some people have attacked the political motivations of your team, even suggested your investigation was a witch hunt. when you considered people to join your team, did you ever even once ask about their political affiliation. >> never once. >> in your entire career as an law enforcement official, have you ever made a hiring decision based upon a person's political

affiliation. >> no. >> i'm not surprised -- >> if i might just interject. the capabilities we've shown in the report that's been discussed today was the result of a team of lawyers that were absolutely exemplary and were hired because of the value they could contribute to getting the job done. >> you're a patriot. clear to me in reading your report and listening to your testimony today you acted flair and with restraint. there were circumstances where you could have filed charges against other people but you declined. not every prosecutor does that. the attacks made against you and your team intensified because your report is damning. i believe you did uncover damage of high crimes and misdemeanor. let me also say something else you were right about. the only remedy for this situation is for congress to take action. i yield back. >> the gentleman yields back. the gentle lady from pennsylvania. >> good morning, director

mueller. >> got you, sorry. >> thank you. i wanted to ask you about public confusion connected with attorney general barr's release of your report. i will be quoting your march 27th letter. sir, in that letter -- and at several other times -- did you convey to the attorney general that the, quote, introductions and executive summaries of our two volume report accurately summarized this office's work and conclusions, end quote? >> i have to say that the letter itself speaks for itself. >> those were you words in that letter? continuing with your letter, you wrote to the attorney general that the summary letter the department sent to congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of march 24th did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of this office's work and conclusions, end quote, is that correct? >> again, i rely on the letter

itself for its terms. >> thank you. what was it about the report's context nature, substance that the attorney general's later did not capture? >> i think we captured that in the march 27th responsive letter. >> this is from the 27th letter. what were some of the specifics that you thought -- >> i direct you to the letter itself. >> okay. you finished that letter by saying there is now public confusion about critical aspects as a result of our investigation. could you tell us specifically some of the public confusion you identified? >> not generally. again, i go back to the letter. the letter speaks for itself. >> could attorney general barr have avoided confusion if he had released your summaries and executive introduction and summaries? >> i don't feel comfortable speculating on that. >> shifting to may 30th, the attorney general in an interview with cbs news said that you could have reached, quote, a decision as to whether it was

criminal activity, end quote on the part of the president. did the attorney general or his staff ever tell you that he thought you should make a decision on whether the president engaged in criminal activity? >> i'm not going to speak to what the attorney general was thinking or saying. >> if the attorney general had directed you or ordered you to make a decision on whether the president engaged in criminal activity, would you have so done? >> i can't answer that question in the vacuum. >> director mueller, again i thank you for being here. i agreed with your march 27th letter. there was public confusion and the president took full advantage of that confusion by falsely claiming your report found no obstruction. let us be clear, your report did not exonerate the president. instead, it provided substantial evidence of obstruction of justice, leaving congress to do its duty. we shall not shrink from that duty. i yield back. >> the gentle lady yields back.

>> mr. chairman i have a point of inquiry on your left. >> the gentleman will state his point of inquiry. >> was the point of the hearing to get mr. mueller to recommend impeachment? >> that's not a fair point of inquiry. the ge the -- >> mr. chairman -- >> the gentle laid ady is recognized. >> thank you for coming, you're a patriot. i want to refer you to volume ii, page 158. you wrote that, quote, the president's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or exceed to his requests, is that right? >> that's accurate and that is what we found. >> and you're referring to senior advisors who disobeyed the white house's orders, is that right? >> we have not specified the

persons mentioned. >> in page 158 don mcgahn, quote, did not tell the acting attorney general that the special counsel must be removed but was instead prepared to resign over the president's orders. you also explain that an attempt to obstruct justice does not have to succeed to be a crime, right? >> true. >> simply attempting to obstruct justice can be a crime, correct? >> yes. >> so even though the president's aides refuse to carry out his orders to interfere with your investigation, that is not a defense to obstruction of justice by this president, is it? >> i'm not going to speculate. >> to reiterate. simply trying to obstruct justice can be a crime, correct? >> yes. >> you say that the president's efforts to influence the investigation were, quote, mostly unsuccessful. and that's because not all of his efforts were unsuccessful, right?

>> you're reading into what i -- what we had written in the report. >> i was going to ask you if you could tell me which ones you had in mind as successful when you wrote that sentence. >> i'm going to pass on that. >> director mueller, today we've talked a lot about the separate acts by this president, but you also wrote in your report, that, quote, the overall pattern of the president's conduct towards the investigation can shed light on the nature of the president's acts and the inferences krb drawn about his intent. correct? >> accurate recitation from the report. >> right. and on page 158, again, i think it's important for everyone to note that the president's conduct had a significant change when he realized that it was -- the investigations were conducted to investigate his obstruction acts.

so in other words, when the american people are deciding whether the president committed obstruction of justice, they need to look at all of the president's conduct and overall pattern of behavior, is that correct? >> i don't disagree. >> thank you. director mueller, doctor also, i'll designate that too. i have certainly made up my mind about what we have reviewed today meets the elements of obstruction, including whether there was corrupt intent and what is clear is that anyone else, including some members of congress, would have been charged with crimes for these acts. we would not have allowed this behavior from any of the previous 44 presidents. we should not allow it now or for the future to protect our democracy. yes, we will continue to investigate because as you clearly state at the end of your report, no one is above the law. i yield back my time.

>> gentle lady yields back. the gentle lady from texas. >> director mueller, you wrote in your report that you, quote, determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, end quote. was that in part because of an opinion by the department of justice office of legal counsel that a sitting president can't be charged with a crime? >> yes. >> director mueller, at your may 29th, 2019, press conference, you explained that, quote, the opinion says that the constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally prosecute a sitting president, end quote. that process other than the the criminal justice system for accusing a president of wrongdoing, is that impeachment? >> i'm not going to comment on that. >> in your report, you also wrote that you did not want to, quote, potentially preempt constitutional processes for

addressing presidential misconduct. end quote. for the non-lawyers in the room, what did you mean by, quote, potentially preempt constitutional processes? >> i'm not gauoing to try to explain that. >> that actually is coming from page 1 of volume ii in the footnote is the reference to this. what are those constitutional processes? >> i think i heard you mention at least one. >> impeachment. correct? >> i'm not going to comment. >> okay. that's one of the constitutional processes listed in the report in the footnote in volume ii. your report documents the many ways the president sought to interfere with your investigation. and you state in your report on page 10, volume ii that interfering with a congressional inquiry or investigation with corrupt intent can also

constitute obstruction of justice. >> true. >> well, the president has told us that he intends to fight all the subpoenas. his continued efforts to interfere with investigations of his potential misconduct certainly reinforce the importance of the process the constitution requires to, quote, formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing, as you cited in the report. and this hearing has been very helpful to this committee as it exercises its constitutional duty to determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment against the president. i agree with you, director mueller, that we all have a vital role in holding this president accountable for his actions. more than that, i believe we in congress have a duty to demand accountability and safeguard one of our nation's highest principles that no one is above the law. from everything i have heard you say here today, it's clear that

anyone else would have been prosecuted based on the evidence available in your report. it now falls on us to hold president trump accountable. thank you for being here. chairman i yield back. >> mr. chairman -- >> gentle lady yields back. >> you and i agree, i want to thank the chairman we did get in our time. we did both get in our time. our side got our five minutes in. mr. mueller thank you for joinibeing here. >> director mueller we thank you for attending today's hearing. before we cluonclude i ask everyone to remain seated and quiet while the witness exits the room.

>> a faint smattering of applause for the former fbi director. marathon one is over. marathon two is in a bit as jerry nadler is announcing some committee business. first to nicole wallace, who watched every moment here with us. >> look, i think there were a couple of really important moments. not just for the democrats, but for the country. robert mueller confirmed here in a line of questioning that the president's conduct did meet the legal and technical definition of obstruction. if you're anyone other than donald trump, that means you're charged with the crime of obstructing justice. now he wouldn't play along when congressman swalwell tried to get him to say he would join

with prosecutors who said if he was anyone other than the president he would have been charged with a crime. he walked up to that line. i think there will be a couple of storylines that emerged. it's undeniable this performance from robert mueller had peak and valleys. he came back after that first break, we talked about it after that first hour of testimony. much fieistier. he had his best and most feisty exchange with republicans. it was an exchange with congressman buck he came the closest to saying if he were anyone else he would have been indicted. in the future, mueller actually did say in the future -- or after his term a president could be indicted. i think chuck and i have debate about whether he finds this president or a president. both would have serious impact though. there was reporting after the mueller report came out that some journalists that looked at the way the report was written,

concluded that mueller was preserving the fact pattern and the evidence for future prosecutions. famously nancy pelosi has said of one of her arguments against proceeding against impeachment is she'd like to see the president serve time for alleged criminal conduct. i think like everything, associated with this investigation, it can be parsed is sliced by each partisan side. >> chuck rosenburg, i know you have some -- you've written down some findings here, your observations from this morning thus far. >> i had to write them down because i'm not smart enough to remember them. there was a bunch of things that we read and knew that we have now seen and heard. and they're important and worth emphasizing. for instance, director mueller said that they very much wanted to sit down with the president, but the president refused to do so. taking that a step further, although they got written responses from the president on the russia interference portion of the investigation, the president again refused to

provide any written responses on the obstruction of justice portion. director mueller had said that that would have been vital to have. but they never got it. and to nicole's point, while it seemed to come out i think pretty clearly in this testimony today, that the elements of obstruction were met, that the president was not exonerated. we had read that but again we saw it and heard it. and that the president could be charged or a president could be charged upon leaving office. the other point i want to make, it's clear to me that director mueller wasn't trying to get anyone, right? he wouldn't throw anyone under the bus. he talked about what they found, he referred people to his report. he wasn't disparaging people. he was talking about facts found. and that's what a real public servant looks like. >> senator, your findings after watching along with us? >> he said at the beginning i'm a prosecutor. and i -- he defined his role at

the hearing as a prosecutor. well, today, he was a witness. and he frankly wasn't a really good witness. because he declined to answer by my account over 100 times. and so it allowed the republicans to -- once they realized that he was not going to rebut what they said, they got more and more outrageous with what they said about the origins of the investigation, about the makeup of his team. because they knew he was just going to take the punches. i think the democrats have to be disappointed that he didn't more vigorously defend his process and the team. he did at one point, the only point he got animated and gave a narrative answer was defending his team. and that you don't ask people, you hire as prosecutors. you don't ask them their politics. it would be a wildly inappropriate comment to make in the context of hiring law

enforcement. so i think that was probably very disappointing to the democrats. because i think they believed he would at least rare up and go, wait a minute, this was by the book. this is factual stuff. do with it what you may, but these are the facts. >> joyce vance has been watching as well. former u.s. attorney and one of our contributors. joyce, we want to get yon the record based on what you've witnessed. >> i agree with chuck's comments about mueller and the professionalism we saw from him today. he at one point made the comment that they had bent over backwards to put exculpatory facts into the report. what that means is they didn't just compile evidence that would have pointed towards the existence of crimes. they also were careful to include any facts that they had that would have tended to prove that the president didn't commit crimes. this was the sort of context i

think that we could read the report in and view this hearing. i was struck by what we didn't hear today. we didn't hear anyone quibbling with the facts that the mueller report sets forth on those ten possible instances of obstruction of justice. there was no insightful questioning that was an effort to say all of these facts that you have here, they're not enough to prove obstruction, are they? and that's, i think, in large part because the facts are sufficient to establish obstruction. >> joining our conversation now, democratic congressman eric swalwell of california. he questioned special counsel mueller this morning. he'll get to question him again this afternoon as a member of the intelligence committee. your take aways from the questioning this morning. what did robert mueller say that you really needed him to say? >> well, you saw a credible p d patriot lay out the work he'd done. we showed ten different instances of obstruction of

justice. this president has a shield that no one else in america has, which is he was prohibited from being charged because he's president. almost anyone else would have been charged. >> what did you feel like the best and most effective take away was for you? you and your colleagues have been making this case and trying to communicate to the american public how devastated the mueller report was for the months it's been out. i think it's been four months already. what did robert mueller say today to make that task easier for you? >> there are a couple times where as he was testifying, you know, you kind of step back a little bit and appreciate what it means. we're talking about the president tampering with witnesses, the president, you know, asking people to lie. the president trying to make an investigation go away. and as the special counsel is acknowledging, you're kind of like, wow, this is the president of the united states. as was just pointed out by joyce, it's not being disputed

by the other side. they're disputing the process, but no one is disputing the president went to great lengths to make this investigation go away. now this afternoon, you're going to hear what launched this investigation, which was his campaign drew itself very close to the russians. >> so what did you take away from this morning's session that you'll apply and share with your colleagues on the intelligence committee to get the most satisfying chunks of information from former special counsel mueller? >> well, seeing that he's going to stay within the four corners of the report, i thought the best exchanges were when my colleagues would ask him if the president did x, y or z and he said it's in the report and we were ready to read to him. you said in the report on volume i, page, such and such, acknowledges it. people were texting me that they thought that was helpful when he

spoke slowly and the questions were short and you allowed him to answer yes or no considering the confines he's put on him. >> he made clear in his testimony that but for that olc opinion this might have ended differently. thank you for spending time with us. come back at the end of the next session. >> thanks, nicole, i will. >> as we review just what it is we have witnessed this morning, there are several exchanges of note that we want to feature before we go to jeremy bash. there's this exchange with congressman liu and robert mueller. >> i believe a reasonable person looking at these facts could conclude that all three elements of the crime of obstruction of justice have been met. i'd like to ask you the reason you did not indict donald trump is because of the olc opinion stating you cannot indict a sitting president, correct? >> that is correct.

>> the fact that the orders by the president were not carried out, that's not a defense to obstruction of justice. because the statute itself is quite broad. it says as long as you endeavor or attempt to obstruct justice that would constitute a crime? >> i'm not getting into that at this juncture. >> okay, thank you. and based on the evidence that we have heard today, i believe reasonable person could conclude that at least three crimes of obstruction of justice by the president occurred, the witness tamperings of michael cohen and paul manafort -- >> the only thing i want to add is that i'm going through the elements with you. does not mean that i subscribe to the -- what you're trying to prove through those elements. >> importantly, jeremy bash is a former chief counsel at house intel, the second venue of today for robert mueller.

jeremy, what did you make of both that exchange and the tone and tenor of mueller's testimony? >> i think the sharpest point to come out of it was that exchange. the other instances in which bob mueller made clear that the president violated the law, but that he can't be charged because of department of justice policy. i have to say, brian, with all reference for bob mueller and his lifetime of career service -- i think the attacks on him were ridiculous and silly. i have to say that far from breathing life into the report, he kind of sucked the life out of the report. i thought he was boring, i thought in some cases he was sort of evasive. he didn't want to explain or expand on his rationale. he seemed lost at times. he was flipping through the report, trying to find passages. i thought it slowed things down. i thought it was a very

ineffective defense of his own work. i don't think by the way he had to go after anybody or seem partisan or seem like he was doing anything more than that a professional prosecutor would do which was clearly explain the evidence, explain the law and show some passion, show some sense that the president's conduct was concerning. that it violated some sense of what the constitution says a president should do. i fear that this hearing set back efforts to hold the president accountable for what the president did and also hold russia accountable for what they did. >> indeed. inco most of the criticism has been in my view, looking at it from the left side of the partisan ledger. "the washington post" right through, which was just published uses words like halting short and clipped.

this is delicate to say, but mueller whom i deeply respect has not publicly testified before congress in at least succyeasucix years and does not appear as sharp as he was then. the speed dating approach to questions is hard on mueller. a lot of democrats in particular used the d word and branded this a disaster early on. >> let me lay the blame at the feet of the staffers. if this -- unless this was the first time anyone sitting behind robert mueller has ever seen him like this, they shoulder all that blame right now. in between these two hearings i hope they're doing whatever they can do to sort of address weaknesses. those are ago to his performanc. having been a staffer, it's up to you to not let your principle do that. they were acutely aware of whatever his capabilities and deficiencies were. you worked for robert mueller.

he was the fbi director when i worked for george w. bush. to be honest this was not the robert mueller i knew. i haven't been a staffer for 22 months inside the special counsel's team. so if anyone on that team, if anyone of those people knew this was what would happen today, shame on them. >> frank, to the point nicole just made. one of the few flashes that we saw from robert mueller had to do when partisanship was raised. when the integrity of his hires was in question. we'll play that and talk with you right on the other side. >> are you aware that ms. jeanie ree represented hillary clinton? >> yes. >> did you know that before she came on the team? >> no. >> aaron zelby represented a clinton aide who destroyed one of clinton's devices.

you must be aware that six of your lawyers donated $12,000 directly to hillary clinton. i'm not talking about the $49,000 they donated to other democrats. just the donations to the opponent who is the target of your investigation. >> can i speak to the hiring process? >> yes. >> we strove to hire those individuals that could do the job. >> okay -- >> i have been in this business for almost 25 years. in those 25 years i have not had occasion to ask someone about their political affiliation. it's not done. what i care about the is the capability of the individuals to do the job and do the job quick l ly and with integrity. >> two things notable about the clip. he pushed back, number two, he pushed back. it was one of the few times through hours of testimony that he asserted himself. >> yeah, i think this was the greatest pushback we saw, the strongest reaction by far was to

kelly armstrong's questioning about integrity and selection of staff. and here's why that's important. bob mueller is not a made for tv guy. we live in a made for tv society. what we saw in that hearing room today what was i call a clash of character. we saw politicians and we saw career prosecutors. what americans need to be is make a choice at the end of the day. they need to decide whether they're going to continue to see everything through a political lens, you know, we make decisions now about what brand of sneakers to buy and what brand of coffee we drink and everything is seen through a political lens. but that's not how professional prosecutors work. and if you look at mueller's reaction, defending his selection of staff because why? in 25 years i have never even asked someone what their politics was about. americans need to make that choice. you going to go with the politicians in the room who is everything biassed or through a tainted lens or are you going to go through the lens of seeing

the facts and getting to the truth. that's the disparity i saw in that hearing room. >> by our account he deflected or refused to answer 123 times. just as someone watching this like all the rest of us, would you have taken a few more of those questions? >> i would have taken a different approach. i'm not bob mueller. i think he is wedded to the process, to the law, and to protocol and policy. listen, he would be damned -- he's going to be damned either way. he knew that going in this morning. you know, there will be those who say he didn't serve us well. he should have pushed back more, should have answered more questions and can doj be damned. and then there are others who would say if he had done that, if he had done that he'd be criticized as biassed and partisan and anti-trump. you cannot win. he took the high road, went straight down the middle and stuck to his guns.

>> i want to just add onto that. i mean, this came through in my interview yesterday with jim comey. the fbi at this moment, we cover the men, we cover the crisis, the hearings. the institution is in a vice. they are literally being squeezed by all of these dynamics. by people on both sides of cable news. by talk radio, by the politicians they have to investigate. donald trump is not the first high profile investigation, but it might be the first time that the subject or target of the investigation live tweeted a 22 month long special counsel probe. the idea that robert mueller had to do more because there was more scrutiny or more smears is unfair. but that is the dynamic in which he appeared today. so i think, you know -- and i'm sympathetic to jeremy's assessment. i revere his point of view. but to say bob mueller is boring is probably to bob mueller a

badge of honor. he wants to be boring. i don't think that's where the shortcoming is. the shortcoming is in appearing to not know basic fact patterns. he stumbled around some questions about don mcgahn in that first chunk. don mcgahn is cited more than any other witness in the obstruction probe. again, this is up to a staff, a staff person to prepare them for some of the most basic benchmarks of having testified successfully by mueller's standards. not by ours. not by fox news's. not by donald trump's. but i'm not sure that that team can go back to the offices after this morning's session and even feel they sort of nailed it to the boring mueller standard. and that's what gives me concern in this break between the two sessions. i would hope that the staff looks at the most successful moments, which came in that first exchange with nadler. where nadler got robert mueller on the record making clear that

this conduct was, in fact, obstruction -- >> methodically. >> just calmly. i think that expecting him to defend everybody every time they're attacked is unrealistic. it was almost like mueller said, wait a minute, it was an american president kind of moment. you want to attack the integrity of people doing the lord's work, keep your attacks on me. there is some room and it can be addressed between these two sessions to have him appear more in command of the material. >> let's call it the caffeine gap. ally -- it was such a word salad. they were so hypermindful of the passing of each one of their coveted seconds toward their coveted five minutes. >> both sides, the democrats, the democrats were considered this a fact finding mission. the republicans were all odd igdsi --

auditioning for the next show on fox news. you know, jim jordan, without his jacket. they're all playing to type. none of them appeared to be looking for facts that were going to be available. it's been in every news outlet, conservative and mainstream that robert mueller would not address the origins of the investigation. not because he was unwilling or unable. but because it's under investigation by three other investigators. republicans are by and large, if they're telling the truth or on fox news, they're excited and enthusiastic and trusting of those three other investigations. so their questions to mueller about the dossier, about other aspects of the intel were disingenuous and for show. >> our cameras are still up inside the hearing room. rather than move the entire traveling circus roadshow to another committee room, they're simply going to switch out

committees. and so the intel committee will come and occupy the chairs. in the navy it's referred to as hot racking when you get inside a bunk that someone just vacated. report mueller and members of the judiciary committee are out. you're going to start to see some familiar faces on the intelligence committee. kristen welker over at the white house has our first response from the white house to what we witnessed. >> reporter: brian, this is the response from the president's outside counsel. let me just read it to you. jay writes, this mornpunge testimony exposed the troubling defi deficiencies of the special counsel's investigation. the testimony revealed that this probe was conducted by a small group. they were unable to establish

sist conspiracy or collusion. the american people understand that this issue is over. they also understand that the case is closed. this is significant because it lays the groundwork, gives us a bit of a preview of what we might expect to hear from president trump. he's going to be departing just after 4:00 this afternoon for west virginia where he has a fundraiser and reporters are going to be out there asking him to respond to all of this. so that gives you a sense of what we might hear from president trump, although the language a bit more lawyerly than what we'll likely hear from the president himself. what have we heard? so far we know he's been watching, despite the fact he was going back and forth about whether or not he'd watch. he's clearly tuned in because he's quoting from fox news on his twitterfeed, including chris wallace saying disaster for the democrats and a disaster for the reputation of robert mueller.

now, some of the president's allies have been noting the performance by the former special counsel. so big question marks surrounding whether or not the president will make hay of that. one of his allies saying we have stronger arguments than that. >> kristen welker at the west wing portico. thank you very much. there aren't many to be candid, exchanges worthy of replaying and rehashing and taking apart. one of them is this one. ken buck, colorado republican, his exchange with robert mueller. >> was there sufficient evidence to convict president trump or anything else with obstruction of justice? >> we did not make that calculation. >> how could you not have made the calculation? >> because the olc opinion, office of legal counsel, indicates that we cannot indict a sitting president. one of the tools that prosecutor would use is not there. >> okay, but let me just stop.

you made the decision on the russian interference. you couldn't have indicted the president on that and you made the decision on that. but when it came to obstruction, you threw a bunch of stuff up against the wall to see what would stick. >> i wouldn't agree to that characterization at all. we provided to it attorney general in a form of a confidential memorandum our understanding of the case. those cases that were brought, those that were declined. that one case where the president cannot be charged with a crime. >> okay. but the -- could you charge the president with a crime after he left office? >> yes. >> all right. so we established a few points there. ari melber is standing by. i'm going to read this to you. on substance, democrats got what they wanted. mueller didn't charge president trump because of the olc guidance that he could be indicted after he leaves office

among other things. on optics this was a disaster. >> reporter: well, you see in the exchange you just played, brian, the republicans seizing on something that mueller's supporters and critics have talked about, which is why did this report, which was so methodical not ultimately give people a clear understanding of whether or not donald trump did commit a crime and should the congress do something about that. i was sitting in that hearing room. it was different than most hearings i've been to. bob mueller's testimony today was not assertive, let alone aggressive. bob mueller's grasp and presentation of the underlying facts, which he's cleared to discuss because they're in the report, was not very detailed. it didn't build in the way that some had hoped. democrats had said was part of the purpose of this hearing on a narrative that people could hear as mentioned on this broadcast, on television in living rooms across the country. and i think that raises the other question that nicole was alluding to earlier. who knew today would be like

this? we're done with the obstruction hearing. for the democrats that's where the potential crimes were. that's where the potential high crimes are. it's now ended. and it people around mueller or some of the democratic congressional staff had any inkling it was going to look like this, 100 evasion and non-answers, and a lot of sitting by while other people attack the investigation itself, then why was this the plan? what about seating bob mueller with other sworn in prosecutors that would lay the case in detail if he didn't want to. i think at the end of the day there was a lot of talk about today being the time people would see and hear and feel some of the stories which i would argue objectively are concerning or shocking in this report. i'm not sure that at the end of the day bob mueller was the one voicing that. some of the members in the committee did. but he really didn't. and so that leaves i think the country watching and saying we've been waiting for this, what was this that we just saw? if it was an interesting discussion, maybe that's a good thing. maybe these are complex issues.

ultimately, it didn't land where the democrats said they were hoping, at least for part one on obstruction. >> ari melber, thanks. >> i don't want to put you on the spot. what happened? >> there's a difference between exciting and important. there ever things th there are things that are important that are not particularly exciting. >> perfectly said. >> this was not exciting but it's no less important than what we already knew, right? we talked about folks preferring movies to books, occasionally the books are better than movies. in this case the book was much better than movie. and a number of people have said this so far. nothing of substance clanhanged. pleads don't forget that. >> it's so important -- i think it's shallow analysis i'm guilty of it to hone in on the performance aspects. but there were facts underscored

and things democrats were eager to underscore. robert mueller did talk about the all the lies. we talk about it all the time. why did so many people tell so many lies about the exact same thing? robert mueller did acknowledge today that the lies may have hindered his investigation. we haven't talked about the president's refusal to do an interview for a very long time. robert mueller spoke to that. he made clear he was -- his hands were tied by the olc opinion undermining the president's total exoneration message. he wasn't exonerated because he was never going to be charged with a crime to begin with. >> that's right. i think the points about the lack of cooperation from the president and others is crucial. let's not forget that. thank you for bringing that up. the other point i think i would make, nicole. there are questions bob mueller couldn't answer and he didn't. others might have taken a different approach and been more aggressive in their defense of the fbi and of the investigation

in the end, again, nothing changed. so, you know, this may sound weird. i wasn't rooting for one side or the other. i don't care if the democrats or republicans win. it's of no interest to me. what i was looking for and didn't quite get was a clear explanation of the stuff i had read. >> i think though that what people wanted was an explanation of why it was confusing. i think it remains confusing. so in terms of explaining why -- this is a criticism that comes from the right and the left, frankly. i heard this week from the justice department support. it hasn't been explained in their view. and i'm not sure that's not too much clearer. >> i think i can explain it. there's existing policy that says you can't charge a sitting president. mueller's thinking is that if you can't charge a sitting president, then you can't

recommend charging a sitting president. that's unfair. that sitting president can't defend himself. and so you can adduce the facts -- in fact, the special counsel regulations make it clear you can investigate a sitting president. you just can't charge and therefore you can't recommend it either. if you read volume ii -- here i'm talking about why we ought to read volume ii, you can see the fact pattern is extraordinary well-established. it didn't come across today. it will remain confusing. people in their bunkers will stay in their bunkers left or right. >> robert mueller's position is if he could have said if donald trump didn't commit crimes he would have. the opposite of that was he did commit crimes. was that made clear enough today? >> i don't think so. i understand that. i think you have articulated it precisely right, but no, that's not clear. because you're asking people to listen carefully and infer the

obverse. that's just not the way, you know, we work. >> claire mccaskill. a devil's advocate would argue the following on behalf of your beloved party. it's become about four freshmen members of the house of representatives. when the democrats aren't raising their hands to take away people's corporate healthcare, they are in the position of saying yeah, but read the -- this was supposed to be the movie that went along with the non-best selling book and they're not even left with that at the end of today. >> the biggest problem of today is how this was billed. what the democrats said about this hearing that they needed to bring the report to life. >> there you go. yeah. >> it didn't come to life. it is still slumberriing, it's a deep sleep. it's really a problem because the expectation was even on --

if he's refusing to go from outside the four corners, that he would rise up and explain the report within the four corners. and he didn't do that. he merely allowed them to read portions of it and then he would say yes, that's right. when ken buck was asking him, well, you said there wasn't enough evidence on the conspiracy. obviously you were willing to make that judgment, why weren't you willing to make that judgment on the obstruction of justice? what the report says, but what he refused to say today is because there was so much more evidence. because he committed crimfulinal -- >> here's the answers because he committed the crime of obstruction of justice over and over again. >> so much more evidence. direct, indirect, circumstantial. every variety of evidence is in voli volume ii of that report. mueller couldn't bring himself

to say it. that's the essence of the report. that's what democrats hoped would happen by them pointing out all the evidence he had in that volume ii. make no mistake here, the republicans did what they wanted to do. when you don't like the facts, go after the messenger. what they did was go after the smen messenger. they went after his integrity, the integrity of his team. hopefully this afternoon we'll be reminded it was an ambassador that went to the fbi and said russia is playing around in the elections. this started the investigation. >> we're joined by ted liu of california. congressman, a warning we're watching the next committee. we're waiting for the witness to come in. chairman schiff is seated. the press is milling about. we did highlight your interplay with mr. mueller. what is your closest to honest

assessment of hits and misses today? >> i thank you, brian. today's hearing established that donald trump committed multiple acts of obstruction of justice. we have a felon sitting in a white house. now what the american people and congress choose to do with those facts, we're going to see in the next few days, next few weeks. this hearing clearly established he committed acts of obstruction of justice. >> because we live in an age of raw politics and reduced attention spans in an age that favors things like twitter and television, it will come as no surprise to you that a whole lot of democrats were on social media during this just calling it an out and out disaster. a televised disaster. your opinion on that front? >> they are wrong. if people read the mueller report, today's hearing will not have been surprising. if they did not their minds

should have been blown. they would have seen director mueller saying yes to multiple acts of obstruction of justice. we know the hearing established that the president ordered don mcgann to fire special counsel mueller and to cover it up. he ordered cory lewandowski to limit the investigation. we went to great detail to show how that met all three elements of obstruction of justice. we have a felon in the white house and we're going to see what we can do about it. >> we focused on your questions and what you were able to elicit from special counsel mueller. in your opinion, what were the other highlights? what will you go home and talk about with family friends? what will you talk about back in your district? what do you think people should be talking about in the days to come? >> drekhe stated the first and second element was met and i simply read to him the report

which found substantial evidence of corrupt attempt. all three elements are met. after i did that i asked him but for the olc opinion you would have indicted donald trump and he said yes to that question. >> does that make him an unindicted -- not even coc coconspirator. >> you can't go through this hearing and not conclude the press conference committed multiple acts of obstruction of justice, which by the way aren't even misdemeanor. those are straight up felons and special counsel mueller said anyone who is convicted of obstruction of justice will go to jail for a long time. >> he could go to jail for a long time, why is impeachment so complicated? >> again, if you watch the hearing, the only conclusion is donald trump committed multiple acts of obstruction of justice. i've concluded impeachment inquiries should start.

what the american people do with those facts, we'll see in the next few day and week. >> i wonder if you think toda'sp hearing will cause a breakthrough on speaker pelosi's position. >> you'll have to ask speaker pelosi. we're going to file the mcga mcgahn -- we'll have additional hearings proceeding. >> i only laughed because she does indeed speak for herself and very effectively. it wasn't a chuckle at the seriousness of the allegations. >> congressman, as is the speaker of the house, it occurs to us. thank you for being with us. i don't think we can emphasize enough, especially given your history in government the point you made about the staff. i worry it's going to get lost as we go along this afternoon. i see no compelling reason why we're going to see an all new

witness at this afternoon's session. >> no, but, listen, as a staffer i've been on both sides of this. after i worked for sarah in the leopard list for not serving palin well enough. >> you don't like to brag. >> staff, there is a long history of staff being blamed with principle failures. i don't think mueller fail. i agreed with congressman liu. the public hears one thing and they hear he committed crimes that lay anybody else in the jail cell and he has three or four buddies sitting in jail with the situation. donald trump in jail is not some in comprehensible concept. he knows a lot of people in jail. there is more that mueller can do in service of the report she's proud he's

proud of and protective of. >> let's talk first of all we are watching a committee and you can see the still lens is up. it would tell us that mueller is close to the door way and there he is. you can hear talking points of the left on this network. you could really hear the a lot of the fox news primetime talking points being spoken by some of those members. i appears to us that mueller was hearing some of these arguments. >> look at it. god bless him. the members of congress and the republican party in fox news content is indiscernible at this point. capturing images that will live on the front newspapers for those of you who still gets one. on the web and on television today and tonight. this committee has been

investigating russian interferen interference. this will be different, congress schiff and hines. they are steep. they investigated and interviewed a lot of the same witnesses as mueller did. we'll get a brief opening statement from the chairman. congressman schiff of california. >> as soon as this is cleared out and we hear from the witness. >> we'll come to order. on behalf of my colleagues, i want to thank you special counsel mueller for a lifetime service of the country. you report for those taken the time to study it is methodical and devastating, telling a story

of a foreign adversary sweeping and systematic in a closed u.s. elections. that should be enough to deserve every attention of every american as you well point out. your report tells another story as well. the story of the 2016 election is also a story about disloyalty to country about greed and lies. your investigation determines that the trump campaign and donald trump himself knew that a foreign power was intervening in our election and welcomed it and meddling into their strategy and used it. this loyalty to country. those are strong words but how else are we to describe a presidential campaign which did not inform authorities of offering dirt on their opponent which did not shun it or turn it away but instead invited it and

encouraged it and made full use of it. that disloyalty may not have been criminal, constraint by uncooperative witnesses and destruction of documents used in encrypted communications. so not a provable crime in my event. but, i think maybe something worse, a crime is a violation of the law written by congress but this loyalty to country violates the very oath of citizenship, our devotion to a core principle to which our nation is found that we, the people and not some foreign power that wishes us ill, we decide who governs us. this is also a story about money. about greed and corruption and the leadership of a campaign willing to compromise the nation's interests not only to win but to make money at the

same time. about a campaign chairman indebted to prorussian interests who tried to use his position to clear his debts and make millions and make money from foreign interests and about a candidate trying to make money than all of them put together, through real estate project to him worth a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars and realization of lifelong ambition, a trump tower in the heart of moscow. a candidate who in fact viewed h is whole campaign as the greategrea greatest informecial in the country. >> there was a powerful motive. putin wanted relief from economic sanctions and ukraine and over human rights violations. the secret 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 there oligarchs. the story does not end here. your report tells a story about lies, a lot of lies. lies of a tower in moscow and talks about the kremlin and lies about fbi james comey and lies of firing you director mueller and lies about covering it up. lies about secret sanctions and wikileaks, lies about polling data and hush money payments and lies of meetings to set up secret back channels and lies of the secret meeting in new york trump tower. lies to the fbi, lies to your staff and lies to this

committee. lies to obstruct an investigation into the most serious attack on our democracy by a foreign power in our history. that's where your report ends director mueller. with the scheme to cover up obstruct and deceive every bit as systematic and persuasive as the information campaign itself. now the deception continues, the president and his accolades say your report found no collusions. your report laid out multiple russians help to the trump campaign and to most americans

that's the 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 exonerated though you specifically declared you could not exonerate him. in fact, they say your whole investigation was nothing more than a witch hunt that the russians did not interfere in the election and it is all a hoax. the real crime they say is not that the russians intervene to help donald trump but the fbi had to investigate it when they did. worse of all and worse than all the lies and the greed, is the disloyalty to country. for that to continue, when asked if the russians intervene again, will you take their help mr. president, why not?

why not was the essence of his answer. everyone does it. no, mr. president, they don't. the america envision by jefferson, madison and hamilton, not for those who believe in the idea that lincoln labored until his dying day to preserve. the idea of animating our great national experience to unique then and 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 you worth matters director mueller. this is why our investigation matters to bring these dangers

to light. ranking member nunes. >> thank you mr. chairman. >> welcome everyone to the last gast of the russians collusion theory. the media first began spreading this conspiracy theory if the spring of 2016 when fusion gps funded by the dnc and the hillary clinton campaign started developing steele dossier. trump and his associates were russian agents. fusion gps and other confeder e confederates spent to partisan reporters and top officials and numerous agencies including the fbi, the department of justice and the state department. among other things, the fbi used

dossier allegations to obtain a warrant to spy on the trump campaign. despite acknowledging dossier allegations as being salacious and unverified. former fbi james comey briefed those allegations to president obama and president-elect trump. those briefings conveniently leaked to the press and launching thousands of false press stories based on the word of a foreign ex-spy. one admitted that he was desperate that trump lose the election and fired as an fbi source for leaking to the press. after comey himself was fired by his own admission, he leaked derogatory information on president trump to the press for the specific purpose and successfully so of engineering the appointment of a special

counsel who sits here before us today. the fbi investigation was ma martyred by corruption and top doj, his own wife worked on fusion gps and antitrump and feds stealing information to the fbi and even after the fbi fired steele. another top fbi official constantly texted about how much they hated trump and wanted to stop him from being elected. the entire investigation was open-based not on five eyes intelligence but on a tip from a foreign politician about a conversation involving joseph ni

nipson. ignoring all these red flags as well as the transparent of absurdity and the claims they have making, democrats have argued three years that evidence of collusion his hidden just around the corner. >> they insist it is there. even if no one can find it. march 2017, democrats on this committee said they had more than circumstantial evidence of collusion but they could not reveal it yet. mr. mueller wouas soon appointe and they said he would find the collusion. then no collusion was find and democrats said we'll find it in the report. and no collusion, we were told attorney general barr was hiding it. it was clear that barr was nod hiding anything, we were told it would be reheard through mueller himself. now mr. mueller is here, they

claim the collusion had been in his report all along hidden in plain sight. there is collusion in plain sight. collusion between russia and the democratic party. the democrats colluded with russian sources to develop the seal dossier. fusion gps, glenn simpson, the democrats have admitted to interview and through their statements through reporters that today's hearing was not about getting information at all. they said they want to quote "bring the mueller report to life." and create a television moment through having mr. mueller reciting passages from his own report. this hearing is a political theater and a hail mary attempt to convince the american people that collusion is real and concealed in the report.

that's a strange argument to make about a report that's public. someone like the democrats preparing arguments accusing mr. barr of hiding the report and did not bother to update their claims once he published the entire thing. >> among congressional democrats, the russians investigation was never about finding the truth. it is a simple media operation by their own accounts, this operation continues in this room today. once again numerous issues in this committee needs to be addressed. it is time for the curtain to close on the russia hoax, the conspiracy theory is dead. at some point i would argument we'll have to get back to work. until then i yield back the balance of my time. >> to ensure fairness and make sure that our hearing is prompt,

i know we got a late start, director mueller, the hearing will be structured as follows. each member will be afforded five minutes to ask questions beginning with the chair and ranking member. i will recognize their after and alternating fashion in the majority and minority. after each member has asked his or her question, additional five minutes to ask question follow by the chair. ranking member and the chair will not be committed to delegate of our final round to questions of any other members. after six members of majority and six members of minority concluded their five minute rounds of questions. we'll take a five or ten minute break, i understand you requested before resuming the hearing with congressman swallow starting with his round of question questions. special counsel mueller is accompanied today by aaron

zebley. mr. mueller and mr. zebley resigned from the department of justice when the special counsel's office was closed. both are available to answer questions today. they'll be sworn inconsistent with the rules of house and the committee. mr. mueller mr. zebley appears today to keep in common practice -- regarding this open and closed investigative matter. as this hearing is under oath and before we begin your testimony, mr. mueller, would you rise and raise your right hand to be sworn? >> do you square or affirm the testimony you are about to give at this hearing is the whole

truth and nothing but the truth. >> yes. >> thank you. the record will reflect that the witness have been dually sworn. >> thank you mr. chair. i want to clarify that this is highly unusual for mr. zebley to be sworn in. we are here to ask director mueller questions. he's here as counsel. our side is not directing any questions to mr. zebley and we have concerns about his prior representation of the hillary clinton campaign aide. i want to voice that concern that we do have and we'll not be addressing any questions to mr. zebley today. >> the ranking member, i realized as probably mr. zebley that there is an angry man down the street that's not happy of you being here today. it is up to this committee and

not anyone else who'll be allowed to sworn in and the and you are welcome to testify. members direct their questions to who ever they choose. with that, robert mueller, you are recognized of any opening remarks you would like to make. >> good afternoon chairman schiff, member nunes and members of the committee. i testified this morning before the house judiciary committee. >> i ask the statements to be made into committee here. i understand this committee has a unique jurisdiction, understanding the counter intelligence implications of our investigations. >> so let me say a word about how we handle the potential i m impact of our investigation on counter intelligence matters. as we explained in our reports,

the special counsel regulations gave me the role of the united states attorney. as a result, we structured our investigation around evidence possibly used in prosecution of federal crimes. we did not reach what you would call counter intelligence conclusion. we did set up processes in the office to identify and pass counter intelligence information onto the fbi. members of our office periodically briefed the fbi of counter intelligence information. in addition there were agents and analysts from the fbi who were not on our team but whose job was to identify counter intelligence information in our files and to disseminate that information to the fbi. with these reasons, question about what the fbi had done with the counter intelligence information obtained from our investigation should be directed

to the fbi. i also want to reiterate a few points i made this morning. i am not making any judgments or offering opinions about the guilt or innocence in any pending case. it is unusual for a prosecutor to testify about a criminal investigation and given my role as a prosecutor, there are reasons why my testimony will necessarily be limited. first public testimony could affect several ongoing matters. system of these matters court rules or judicial orders limit to protect the fairness of the proceedings. it would be inappropriate for me to comment in any way that could affect an ongoing matter. second, the justice department has asserted privileges inserting investigative information and decisions ongoing matters within the

justice department and deliberations within our office. >> it is our justice department privileges that i will respect. the department released a letter discussing the restrictions on my testimony. i will not be able to answer questions of certain areas that i know or of public interest. i am unable to address questions about the opening of the fbi's russia investigation which occurred months before my appointment or matters related to the so-called steele dossier. these matters are ongoing review by the department. any questions on these topics should therefore be directed to the fbi or the justice department. third is i explain this morning, it is important for me to adhere to what we wrote in our report. the report contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made.

we stated the results with precisi precision. i do not intend to summarize or describe the results of our work in a different way in the course of our testimony today. as i stated in may, i will not comment on the actions of the attorney general or of congress. i was appointed as a prosecutor and i intend to adhere to that role and the department standards that governs. finally as i said this morning, over the course of my career, i seen a number of challenges to our democracy, the russian government interfered in our election is among the most serious. i am sure that the committee agrees. now before i go to questions, i want to add one correction to my testimony this morning. i want to go back to one thing that was said this morning but mr. liu, who said and i quote, you did not charge the president because of the olc opinion.

that's not the correct way to say it. as we say in the report and i said at the opening, we did not reach a determination as to whether the president committed a crime. with that, mr. chairman, i am ready to answer your questions. >> thank you director mueller. i recognize myself for five minutes. your report describes a sweeping and systematic effort by russia to influence our presidential election, is that correct? >> that's correct. >> during the course of this russian interference in the election, the russians made outreach to the trump campaign, did they not? >> yes, that occurred. >> it is also clear from your report that during that russian outreach to the trump campaign, no one associated with the trump campaign ever called the fbi to report it, am i right? >> i don't know that for sure. >> in fact the campaign welcomes the russian help, did they not?

>> i think we reported in our report indications that did occur. >> yes. >> the president's son says when he was approach dirt on hillary clinton that the campaign would love it? >> that was generally what was said. yes. >> the president called on the russians to hack hillary's e-mails? >> there was a statement by the president in that general lines. >> numerous times the president praised the releases of the russian hacked e-mails through wikileaks. >> that did occur. >> your report found that the trump campaign planned quote, a press strategy communications campaign and messaging based on that russian assistance. >> i am not familiar with that. >> comes from have volume 1, page 54. apart from the russians wanting to help trump wins, some individuals associated with the

trump campaign trying to make money during transition, is ta correct? >> paul manafort was trying to make money or forgiveness from a russian oligarch. >> flynn was trying to make money from turkey? >> true. >> donald trump was trying to make millions of is estate in moscow? >> you are talking about hotel and mouse coscow? >> yes. >> yes. >> a number of persons that we interviewed and our investigation turns out did lie. >> mike flynn lied? >> he was convicted of lying. yes. >> george papadopoulos was convicted of lying? >> true. >> manafort was convicted of lying? >> true. >> manafort encouraged others to lie? >> that's accurate. >> rick gates lied? >> that's accurate. >> michael cohen's the president lawyer was indicted for lying?

>> true. >> he lied to stay on message by the president? >> allegedly by him. >> when donald trump called your investigation a witch hunt, that's also false, is it not? >> i would like to think so. >> your investigation is not a witch hunt. >> it is not a witch hunt. >> when the president said the russian interference was a hoax, that was false, was it? >> true. >> when he said publicly it was false. >> he did say publicly it was false. yes. >> when he told it to putin that was false, too, was it? >> that i am not familiar with. >> when the president said he had no business dealings with russia, that was false, was it? >> i am not going to go into details of the report along those lines. >> when the president says he had no business dealings with russia, he was seeking to build a trump tower in moscow, was that not? >> i think there were some

questions when it was accomplished. >> you consider a billion dollars deal in moscow to be business buildings, would you mr. mueller? >> absolutely. >> the russians wanted to help trump win the election. >> that would be accurate. >> russia informed campaign officials of that? >> i am not certain to what conversations you are referring to? >> papadopoulos if they can help with the release of stolen e-mails. >> russia committed crimes in order to help donald trump? >> yes, when you are talking about computer crimes charged in our case, absolutely. >> the trump campaign officials built their messaging strategies around those documents? >> generally that's true. >> then they lied to cover it up. >> generally that's true. >> thank you, mr. nunes.

>> thank you, welcome director. as a former fbi director, you agree that the fbi is the most capable law enforcement agency. >> yes. >> the fbi claims that the counter intelligence investigation of the trump campaign began on july 31 on 2016. in fact, it began before that. in june of 2016 before the investigation officially opened, trump campaign associates, stooer steven miller and page were invited at cambridge university in july. your office did not investigate he was responsible for inviting these trump associates to the

synpo synposyum. >> can you repete tat the quest? >> whether or not you interviewed steven shragy? >> those are areas i am going to stay away from. >> first trump's associate to be investigated in was mr. flynn. he had an affair from a cambridge russian spy. some of these allegations were made public in the 2017 article written by british intelligence christopher andrews. your report failed to reveal how or why, mi 6 spreads these allegations. y y >> i can't get into those matters which you referred ch. you had a team of 19 lawyers and

40 agents and unlimited budget, correct, mr. mueller? >> i would not say we budget. >> the investigation was not opened based on the official product on intelligence but based on a rumor conveyed by alexander downer. your report describes him as a representative of foreign government. he's a long time -- he proo previously arranged to $25 million to the clinton investigation. he heard a conversation between papadopoul papadopoulos. >> yet, your report does not refer to him as a russian agent.

>> extensive contacts with the russian government and the fbi. there is a recent photo of him standing next to boris johnson, the new prime minister of great britain. what we are trying to figure out here mr. mueller is our nato allies or boris johnson had been compromised. >> you do not. do you standby what's in the report? >> i standby that of which is in the report and not necessarily which is not in the report. i want to return to mr. downer, he denies papadopoulos mentioned anything mentioning in at the mails ornamentationed anythi--

to ask papadopoulos of clinton's e-mail for the rest of 2016. strangely papadopoulos, he blames him for hindering the fbi ability. the truth is it walts in and outside of the state. the u.s. media could find them. a russian agent at the epicenter of the proported collusion conspiracy. the fbi failed to question him for half a year after officially opening the investigation and then according to volume one, page 193 of your report. once he was questioned, he made false statements to the fbi. but, you decline to charge him.

you did not indict him? >> i am not going to speak to the serious of the happenings. >> you did not indict him? >> time of the gentleman has inspired. >> you did not indict him? >> no. >> director mueller, thank you for your lifetime of service and perseverance and patience today. >> dreirector, your report open with two statements of remarkable and clarify and power. the russian government interfered with the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion. the second statement remains controversial among members of this body, same page on your report. i quote "the russian government perceived it would benefit from a trump presidency and work to secure that outcome."

do i have that statement right? >> i believe so. >> this attack on our democracy involv involved two operations, the social media disinformation campaign, this is a targeted campaign and false false information on places like facebook and twitter. fake images reached the 126 people. >> i believe that's correct. >> who did the russians' social media campaign ultimately intends to favorites? >> donald trump. >> donald trump where there were instances where hillary clinton was assessed to the same behavior. >> second was a hack and dump to steal and released hundreds of thousands of e-mails of the democratic party. >> is that a fair summary? >> yes. that is. >> is the releases of the hacked

demail were time to max neuroscience the impact on the regulation? >> i will refer to the report on that question. >> to release the document design in time to interfere with the 2016 u.s. presidential election. >> mr. mueller, which candidate was russia's hacking and dumping operations design to benefit hillary clinton or donald trump? >> mr. trump. is it possible that the sweeping and systematic efforts by russia had an effect on the outcome of the election? >> those issues had been investigated by other entities. 126 million facebook impressions and fake rallies and attacks on hillary clinton held would you rule out that it may have some effect on the russians? >> i am not going to speculate.

>> could you repete that that question. >> your report describes a third avenue, the links and contacts between the trump campaign and individuals tied to the russian government? >> yes. >> let's bring up slide one about george papadopoulos and it reads, on may 6th, 2016, ten days after that meeting, papadopoulos suggested to a representative of a foreign government that the trump campaign received indications from the russian government that it could assist the campaign through the anonymous release of information that would be damaging to hillary clinton. >> director, that's exactly what happened two months later, is it not? >> i can't speak to any excerpt you have on the screen.

the second half just to refer to pa page 6, on july 2nd, thousands of these e-mails were stolen. that's on page six of the report. >> wikileaks posting of those e-mails. i can find it quickly. please continue. >> just to be clear. before the public or the fbi ever knew the russians preview for a trump campaign officials, george papadopoulos that they had stolen e-mails and they can release. >> is that correct? >> i am not going to speak to that. >> director, rinehart than report this content and the notion there was dirt that the campaign could use better than reporting it to the fbi which i think most of my constituents would consider to do. papadopoulos lied about his russian contact to you, is that

not correct? >> that's true. >> we have an election coming up in 2020. if a campaign receives an offer of dirt from a foreign individual, should that campaign report those contacts? >> it can't be. >> i will yield back the balance of my time. >> mr. mueller, did anyone ask you to exclude anything from your report that you felt should not have been in the report? i don't think so. >> it is not a small report. >> i want to ask you specifically, did anyone ask you to exclude anything in there? >> not that i can recall. >> i yield back my time. >> thank you. >> good afternoon director mueller. in your opening remarks this morning. you made it clear that you want

the special counsel report to speak for himself. >> you said at your press conference that was the office's final position and we'll not comment on any other conclusions or hypotheticals about the president. >> you spend the last few hours of your life from democrats trying to get into answering all kinds of hypothetical about the president, i expect it will continue the next few hours of your life. you stay pretty much true than what your intent or desire was. the special counsel's office is closed. >> what would be your authority or jurisdiction to add new conclusions to the special counsel's written report. >> i know or expect changes and conclusions that we concluded in our report. >> so to that point, you addr s addressed of one of the issues that i needed to which was from

your testimony as some construe it as a strain to the written report. you talk about the ex trang you had with congressman liu. >> i want to ask you about it. i recorded he asked you the reason why you did not indict donald trump because you can't indict a sitting president. >> to what you response is that's correct. >> you will agree with your written report. i want to be clear that it is not jour intesbur intent to cha report. >> as i started today, this afternoon, i added about either a quick note or end note. what i wanted to clarify that we did not nak any determinatidete.

>> thank you for clarifying the record. >> state your purpose to the special council. the interference of 2016 presidential election as part of the fuel and thorough investigation. >> the steele dossier was part of the russian efforts. >> when it comes to mr. steel, i defer to the department of justice. >> well, first of all, director, i agree with your determination that hurricane hush s-- that's why i know how sweeping those efforts were. i want to find out if russia interfere with our elections. they you determine did not exist. >> again, i am not going to

discuss the issue with mr. steel. >> i had for trail of the conspiracy. we return to two indictments and kmul crimes arena. gru and another act of measures in which we lay out excruciating details of what occurred. >> i agree with respect to that. why this is important is an bliks and three renewal application were submitted by the united states government. carter page and on all four occasions the united government submitted a style dossier. now the basic premise as you know thaus that there t was a w of the essential. well, i tham what i can tell

you. of what you are characterizing here now and it is being handled by the department of of justice. >> again, i pass on. special counsel did not charge carter page with anything, correct? the special counsel did not. >> my time is expired. i field back. >> director mueller, i would like to turn your attention to the june 9th, 2016, trump tower meeting. slide two is part of an e-mail change between don jr. and a publicist representing the son of a russian oligarhs. >> the e-mails from the public sis so donald trump jr. reads in part, and it is apart of russia

and its government support of mr. trump. in this e-mail, donald trump jr. is being told that the russian government wants to paz alon information this could hurt hillary clinton and help donald trump. >> trump junior is responsible for that e-mail is side three. >> it is what you said, i love it. >> then donald jr. invited seen yo campaign official. >> this e-mail -- >> is it against the law for a presidential campaign to accept anything of value from the foreign government?

>> the case are unique. >> well, you said on page 184, that the federal cam bain law broadly prohibits you it says clearly in the report itself. >> thank you. >> now let's turn to what actually happened at the meeting. when donald trump jr. and got to the june 9th, meeting, they realize that russian gel gas stations did not have the quote dirt on thirty. they got upset about that. >> generally yes. >> you way volume 1 page 118. trur p ju trump junior asked, what are we doing here? >> during the meeting don j.

te texted -- he wanted to help donald trump's campaign by giving him dirt on his opponents. they were kpis pointed because dir was not as dood as they have hearthed. >> did anyone to your knowledge in the trump campaign ever tells the fbi of this offer? >> definitely so. >> did donald trump jr. tell the fbi they receive an offer of help. >> that's about all i will say on this as expect of it. if they reported to the fbi or anyone, during the course of your campaign that you have uncovered. >> if it is not the responsib responsibility of the political campaign to inform the fbi that they received information from a

foreign gofrt. not only the campaign did not tell the fbi, they sought to hide the june 9th meeting for over a years, is that correct? >> on the again kar characterization, i would recover it. >> you said in volume two page five on several equations that the president directed aids not to publicly disclose the e-mail setting up on the you know 9th meeting. >> guciven this illegal succession, you did not charge any of the other officials with conspiracy. >> correct. >> when you are talking about other people.

>> mr. mueller, even if you did not chart them with conspiracy, don't you buy the american people would be concerned and don't you think reporting that is important. >> can't except that characterization. >> i think it seems like a betrayal of the american values to me, sir. >> someone if not being criminal or definitely undeath cal a and --and - and -- >> in the beginning of your opening statement, you submitted a confidential report to the attorney general. the report that you did is the

subject matter of this will hearing was to the attorney general. >> yes. >> you stated in the opening statement that you threw over board the word "conclusion." >> conclusion was not a legal term. >> it depends on how you want to use in the words. >> in general parliament people can think about it that way. >> accurately describe as conspiracy. >> it is not a legal term so you did not put it in your conclusion. >> that's right. >> mr. pmueller, i want to talk about the authorities. the general attorney has no abilities to give you power and authorities greater than the power of the attorney general, correct? >> that's correct. >> i want to focus on one word in your report, it is a second

to the last word in your report. it is exonerate. the report states accordingly while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it does not exonerate him. in the judiciary that exonerate was not a legal term. i want a question for you mr. mueller. >> does the attorney general have power or authorities to exonerate. >> i am putting up the united states the codes. and the constitution and the annotated cases. we went to your law schools. maybe your law school teaches differently and we got the trillion law textbook fr. is there a process or description? >> there is no certificate at the bottom of his death.

would you agree with me that the attorney general does not have the power to exonerate? >> i got to pass on that. >> why? >> because it boils on a legal discussion, i am not prepared to do a legal expression on that al are arena. >> there is no place attorney general has the power and he's not given that authority. >> the one thing that i guess is the attorney jay lenos that he can't exonerate either. that's the part that kind of phenomenon fuses me. >> you don't have the power to exonerate. i believe he knows he douse not have the power to con rate. this is the part that i don't understand. if your report is to the attorney general. if he does not have the power to and you don't have that power, you don't have tell him that you

are not exonerating the president. he knows it already. >> we included in the report for that reasons. >> he may not know it and he should do it. >> you believe that some where in the hallways of the department of justice, there is an office of exoneration. >> i believe he knows and i don't leave he put it in there for mr. barr. you are putting it in there of the washington post yesterday. the article says trump could not be exonerated of trying to obstruct the investigation itself. >> strum p could not be exonerated. >> this statement is direct so that no one could be exonerated. >> the rrter wrote this. mr. mueller, you can't b be -- this is the headlines on owl of the new challenge while you are testifying today.

>> mueller, trum p, accelerate with trump. you have the power to declare him. so the problem that i have here is that since there is no criminal justice what that is the power. the president's pardon, they don't declare exoneration. >> it is meaningless and it kors this investigation one word out of the entire portions of your report. it is a meaningless where it had no legal meaning and it had color for the entire -- >> your time is expired. >> mr. carson. thank you director mueller for your years of excerpt vis to se

country. >> i want to look at an individual who betrayed to our country and lied to the grand jury and tampered withens wines used his position with the trump campaign to make more money. your investigation found a number of troubling kaekt between the manafort during and after the campaign, is that right, sir? >> right? >> in addition to the june 9th meeting, manafort met with kilimnik who fbi assessed to have dies with intel agency. >> mr. ford smar td private trump campaign polling information with this man linked to russian intelligence, is that right, sir? >> that's correct. >> the information was shared with the russian oligarchs. is that right, sir? >> director mueller, mealing with him is not enough.

sharing internal polling information was not enough. >> mr. manafort went so far as to offer this. mr. fan fort also discuss in internal campaigns and strategies on four battle background states, michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania and dakota. did he not sir? >> that reflected on the report as items used previously. >> base on your dem kads decad experience. private political strategy relating to winning the votes of the american people and private information of american battleground states with a foreign adversary? >> repeat the question.

>> vyes, sir, sir. >> it is within the line of the report then i support it. beyond that, he's not part of which i support. >> i think it shows an infuriating lack of patriotism from the people seeking the highest office in the land. director mueller, manafort did not share this information in exchange for nothing. did he sir? >> it is clear that he hoped to be paid back money he was owed by russian or ukrainian oligarch. >> that's true. >> would you agree that the sharing of private campaign information in exchange for money represents a particular kind of corruption, one that presents a national security wish for our country, sir? >> i am not going to apply on

that. i don't have the expertise and the arena. >> would you agree that manafort's contact with cushions close to manafort and vladimir putin? >> i generally so, that would be the case. >> would you agree sir these pacts demonstrated a betrayal of the democratic value of our country? >> i can't agree with that. not that it is not true but i can't agree with it. >> i can tell you as my years of law enforcement and a member of congress, i know enough to say yes. trading political secrets for money with a foreign adversary can corrupt and it can lead you to blackmail and represents the trail a trails and values under our

democracy. i want to thank you joyour time for coming here today. >> thank you mr. chairman and mr. mueller for being here today. >> your investigation found no evidence of the members of trump campaign were involved in the threat or clinton campaign related e-mails? >> could you repeat the question? >> is it accurate to say your investigation found no evidence that members of the trump campaign involved in the theft or public in related e-mails. >> the investigation did not establish that members of the trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the russian government in its interference activities. therefore it would be an accurate based on this to describe that finding as open to

doubt. that finding be trump campaign was involved with publication of the bulletclinton campaign it, but that portion or that matter it does not fall within our jurisdiction or fall within our -- >> basically what your report says volume one page five, i just want to be clear, that open to doubt is how the committee democrats described this finding in their minority views in the 2018 report. and it kind of flies in the face of what you have in your report. so is it accurate also to say the investigation found no documentary evidence that george papadopoulous told anyone affiliated with the trump campaign about joseph mifsud's claims that the russians had dirt on candidate clinton? >> let me continue that over to

mr. zebley. >> i'd like to ask you. this is your report. >> can you repeat the question? >> is it accurate to say that the investigation found no documentary evidence that george papadopoulous told anyone affiliated with the trump campaign about yoe receive might have joseph mifsud's claim that the russians had dirt on candidate clinton? >> i believe from the report that it is accurate. >> in the report it says no documentary evidence that papadopoulous shared this information with the campaign. it is therefore inaccurate to conclude that by the time of the june 9, 2016 trump tower meeting, quote, the campaign was likely already on notice via george papadopoulous's contact with russian agents that russia in fact had damaging information on trump's opponent. would you say that that is inaccurate to say that it is likely already -- >> i direct you to the report. >> well, i appreciate that because the democrats jumped to

this incorrect collusion in their minority views again which contradicts what you have in your report. i'm concerned about a number of statements i'd like you to clarify because a number of democrats have made some statements that i have concerns with. and maybe you can clear them up. so a member of this committee said president trump was a russian agent after your report was publicly released. that statement is not supported by your report, correct? >> that is accurate. it is not supported. >> multiple democrat members have asserted that paul manafort met with julian assange in 2016 before wikileaks released dnc emails. implying manafort colluded with assange. because your report does not mention finding evidence that manafort met with assange, i would assume that means that you found no evidence of this meeting, is that assumption correct? >> i'm not sure i agree with that assumption. >> but you make no he thinks in of -- mention of it in your report. would you agree with that? >> yes, i would agree with that.

>> does your report contain any evidence that president trump was enrolled in the russian system of compramat as a member of of this committee once claimed? >> what i can speak to is evidence and information that we picked up as special counsel. and i think that that is accurate as far as it goes. >> thank you. appreciate that. so let's go for a second to scope. did you ask the department of justice to expand the scope of the special counsel's mandate related to august 2, 2017 or august 20th, 2017 scoping m memorand memoranda? >> well, there -- without looking at the memoranda, i could not answer that. >> did you ever make a request to expand your office's mandate at all? >> generally yes. >> and was that ever denied? >> i won't speak to that, it goes to enter al deliberations. >> i'm trying to understand

process. z. expanding the scope coming from the acting attorney general or does it come from you or can it come from either? >> i'm not goiing to discuss an other alternatives. the . >> thank you. >> mr. mueller, i think i can say without fear of contradiction that you're the greatest patriot in this room today. and i want to thank you for being here. you said in your report, and i'll quibble with your words, that the russian intervention was sweeping and systemic. i would quibble with that because i don't think that it was just an intervention, i think that it was an invasion. and i don't think that it was just sweeping and systemic, i think that it was sinister and scheming. having said that, one of my colleagues earlier here referred to this russian intervention as

a hoax. i'd like your comment on that. on page 26 of your report, you talk about the internet research agency and how tens of millions of u.s. persons became engaged with the posts that they made, that there were some 80,000 posts on facebook, that facebook itself admitted that 126 million people had probably seen the posts that were put up by the internet research agency, that they had 3800 twitter accounts and had designed more than 175,000 tweets that probably reached 1.4 million people. the internet research agency was spending about $1.25 million a month on all of this social media in the united states in what i would call an in-vision in our country. would you agree that it was not a hoax that the russians were

engaged in trying to impact our election? >> absolutely. it was not a hoax. the indictments we returned against the russians, two different ones, were substantial in their scope using that scope word again. and i think one of the -- we have underplayed to a certain extent that aspect of our investigation that has and would have long term damage to the united states that we need to move quickly to address. >> thank you for that. i'd like to drill down that a little bit more. the internet research agency actually started in 2014 by sending over staff as tourists i guess to start looking at where they wanted to engage. and there are many that suggest and i'm interested in your opinion as to whether or not russia is presently in the united states looking for ways

to impact the 2020 election. >> i can't speak to that. that would be in levels of classification. >> all right. let me ask you this. oftentimes we engage in these hearings, we forget the forest for the trees. you have a very large report here of over 400 pages. most americans have not read it. we have read it. actually the fbi director yesterday said he hadn't read it, which was a little discouraging. but on behalf of the american people, i want to give you a minute and 39 seconds to tell the american people what you would like them to glean from this report. >> well, we spent substantial time ensuring the integrity of the report understanding that it would be our living message to those who come after us. but it also is a signal, a flag, to those of us who have some

responsibility in this area to exercise those responses swiftly and don't let this problem continue to linger as it has over so many years. >> all right. you didn't take the whole amount of time, so i'll yield the rest of my time to the chairman. >> i thank the gentle woman for yielding. director mueller, i wanted to ask you about conspiracy. generally a conspiracy requires an offer of something illegal, the accept tants of that offer and overt act in furtherance of it, is that correct? >> correct. >> and don jr. was made aware that the russians were offering dirt on his opponent, correct? >> i don't know for sure, but one would assume. given the meeting. >> and when you say that you would love to get that help that would constitute acceptance of the offer? >> it is a wide open request. >> and it would certainly be

evidence of an accept assistants if you say when somebody offers you something illegal, and you say i love it, that is evidence of accept tants? >> i'd stay away from addressing one or two particular situations. >> this particular situation, and i'll have to continue in a bit -- you nownow i yield to mr stewart. >> it's been a long day. thank you for being here. i have a series of important questions for you, but before that, i want to take a moment to reemphasize something that mr. turner has said. i've heard many people state no person is above the law. and many times recently they add not everyone the president which i think is blazingly obvious to most of us -- >> i'm having a problem hearing you, sir. >> is this better? >> that is better. thank you. >> i want you to know i agree with the statement that no person is above the law. but there is another principal that we also have to defend and that is the presumption of innocence. and i'm sure that you agree with this principal though i think that the way that your office

phrased some parts of your report it does make me wonder i have to be honest with you. for going on three years, innocent people have been accused of very serious crimes including treason. accusation made even here today. they have had their lives disrupted and in some cases destroyed by false accusations for which there is absolutely no basis other than some people desperately wish that it was so. but your report is clear, no evidence of conspiracy, no evidence of coordination. and i believe that we owe to these people who have been falsely accused including the president and his family to make that very clear. mr. mueller, the credibility of your report is based on the integrity of how it is handled and something bothers me and other examples. i hold 25 examples of leaks that occurred from the special counsel's office dating back to the beginning of your work and

continuing up to just a few months ago. all of these, all of them have one thing in common. they were designed to weaken or to embarrass the president. every single one. never was it leaked that you'd found no evidence of collusion. never was it leaked that the steele dossier was a complete fantasy or funded by the clinton campaign. i could go on and on. are you aware of anyone from your team having given advanced knowledge of the raid on roger stone's home to any person or the press including cnn? >> i'm not going to talk about specifics. i will mention -- talk for a moment about persons who have become involved in an investigation. and the understanding that lengthy thorough investigation some persons will be under a cloud and that they should not the be under a cloud.

and one of the reasons for emphasizing as i have the speed 6 an election -- not an election. speed of an investigation is that so those persons who are disrupted as a result of -- >> i appreciate that, but i do have a series of questions. >> with the result of that investigation. >> and you're right, takes cloud and it is an unfair class for dozens of people. but are you aware of anyone foying informatifoye i providing the information on roger stone's home including cnn? >> i'm not going speak to that. >> mr. mueller, you sent a letter dated march 27 to attorney general barr in which you claimed that the attorney general's memo to congress did not fully capture the context 6 your report. you stated 2k5today that respon was not authorized. did you make any effort to determine who leak this had confidential letter? >> no, and i'm not certain -- this is march 27? >> yes, sir. >> i'm not certain when it was publicized. i do know that it was publicized. but i do not believe we would be responsible for the leaks. i do believe that we have done a

good job in assuring no leaks occur. >> we have 25 examples here of where you did not do a good job. not you, i'm not accusing you at all. but your office did not do a good job of protecting this information. one more example, do you know anyone who anonymously made claims to the press that attorney general barr's march 24th letter to congress had been misrented renrepresented or mid the basis of your report? >> what was the question? >> do you know who anonymously made claims to the press that attorney general barr's march 24th letter to congress had misrepresented the findings of your report? >> no. >> sir, given these examples as well as others, you must have realized the leaks were coming from someone associated with the special counsel's office. but i'd like to ask -- >> i do not believe that. >> well, sir, this was your work. you're the only one -- your office is the only one who had information regarding this, it had to come there -- from your

office. putting that aside, did you do anything about it? >> from the outset we have undertaken to make certain that we minimize the possibility of leaks and i think that we were successful over the two years that we were in operation. >> well, i wish you'd been more successful, sir. i think it was disruptive to the american people my time has expired. mr. quigley. >> thank you. director, thank you for being here. this too shall pass. earlier today and throughout the day, you have stated the policy that seated president cannot be indicted. correct? >> correct. >> and upon questioning this morning, you were asked could that -- could a president be indicted after their service. correct? >> yes. >> and your answer was that they could. >> they could. >> director, please speak into the microphone. >> i'm sorry. thank you. they could. >> so the follow upquestion,

what if a president serves beyond the statute of limitations? >> i don't know the answer to that one. >> would it not indicate that if the statute of limitations on federal crimes such as there are five years that president who serves a second term is therefore under the policy above the law? >> i'm not certain that i would agree with the conclusion. i'm not certain that i can see the possibility that you suggest. >> but the statute doesn't toll, is that correct? >> i don't know specifically. >> it clearly doesn't. as the american public is watching this and perhaps learning about many of these for the first time, we need on consider that and that the other alternatives are perhaps all that we have. but i reerkt your response. >> earlier someone mentioned a

question involving whether anyone in the trump political world publicized the emails. i want to refer to where trump jr. tweeted a link to the stolen podesta emails. you're familiar with that? >> i am. >> so that would at least be a republishing of this information, would it not? >> i'm not certain that i would agree with that. >> director pompeo assessed wikileaks as a hostile intelligence service. given your law enforcement experience and your knowledge of what wikileaks did here and what they do generally, would you assess that to be accurate or something similar? how would you assess what wikileaks does? >> absolutely. and they are currently under indictment.

julian assange. >> so you would agree with director pompeo that it is a hostage intelligence service? >> yes. >> if we could put up slide six. this is donald trump october 10, 2016. i love wikileaks. this wikileaks stuff is unbelievable. it tells you the inner heart. you got to read it, donald trump october 12, 2016, this wikileaks is like a treasure trove. donald trump, october 31, 2016, boy, i love reading those wikileaks. donald trump, november 4, 2016, will any of those quotes disturb you? >> i'm not certain that i would say-46. >> how do you react to it? >> well, problematic is an under statement in terms of giving

some hope or boost to what is illegal activity. >> and donald trump jr. had direct electronic communications with wikileaks. on october 3, 2016, wikileaks sent another direct message to trump jr. asking you guys to help disseminate a link alleging candidate clinton had advocated a kroen can to attack julian assange. trump jr. responded he had already done so. same question. this behavior at the very least disturbing? >> disturbing and also subject to investigation. >> could it be described as aid and comfort to a hostile intelligence? >> i wouldn't category rise it with any specificity.

>> i yield the balance to the chairman. >> not sure that i can make good use of 27 seconds, but director, i think that you made it clear that you think it unethical to put it pligit plightly politelyt a foreign service like wikileaks? >> certainly calls for investigation. >> thank you, director. we'll go now to mr. crawford. and then we'll take a five or ten minute break. >> thank you, mr. mueller, for being here. days after your appointment, peter strzok texted about the concern that there is no big "there" there. did strzok or anyone else who, worked on the fbi's investigation tell you that around ten months in to the investigation the fbi still had no case for collusion? >> who -- can you repeat that? can you move the micro phone a little closer? >> sure. there is a quote attributed to

peter strzok. he texted about his concern that there is, quote, no big "there" there in the trump campaign investigation. did he or anyone else who worked on the fbi's investigation tell you that around ten months into the investigation that the fbi still had no case for collusion? >> no. >> is the inspector general report correct that the text messages from pete are strustrz phones were are not retained after they left the special counsel's office? >> well, i -- i don't -- it depends on what you are talking about. the investigation in to those -- peter strzok went on for a period of time. and i'm not certain what it encompasses. it may well encompass what you are -- >> did you authorize the department to authorize your office to investigate the origin of the trump russia investigation? >> i'm not going to get in to that. it goes to internal

deliberations. >> so the circumstances surrounding the origin of the investigation have yet to be fully vetted then. i'm certainly glad that attorney general barr and u.s. attorney durham are looking into this matter. i'll yeed t yield the balance of my team to ranking member nunes. >> mr. mueller, i want to make sure you are aware of who fugs g fusion gps is. it is political operations firm working directly for the hillary clinton campaign and the democrat national committee. they produced the dossier, so they payed steele who then went out and got -- i know you don't want to answer any dossier questions. so i'm not going there. but your report mentions natalia veselitskaya 65 times. she meets in this infamous trump tower meeting. it is in your report.

many of the democrats have referred to it today. the meeting was shorter than 20 minutes, i believe, is that correct? >> i think -- what we have in our report reflects it was about that length. >> so do you know -- so fusion gps, the main actor at fusion gps, president or owner of the company, a guy named glenn simpson who is working for hillary clinton. glenn simpson, do you know how many times glenn simpson met with natalia veselitskaya? >> myself? no. >> would it surprise you that the clinton campaign dirty ops arm met with natalia veselitskaya more than times than the trump campaign did? >> this is an area i'm not going to get into as i indicated at the outset. >> did you ever interview glenn simpson? >> again, i'll pass on that.

>> according to -- i'll change topics here. according to notes from the state department official kathleen cavalack, christopher steele told her that former russian intelligence head and putin adviser were sources for the steele dossier. knowing that these are not getting in to whether these sources were real or not real, was there any concern that there could have been disinformation that was going from the kremlin into the clinton campaign and then being fed into the fbi? >> as i said before, this is an area that i cannot speak to. >> is that because it is not in the report or you're just -- or because of the ongoing investigation? >> because of other proceedings and the like. >> when andrew weissmann and

ahmed joined your team, were you aware that bruce ohr, department of justice top official, directly briefed the dossier allegations to them in the summer of 2016? >> again, i won't speak to that issue. >> before you arrested george papadopoulous in july of 2017, he was given $10,000 in cash in israel. do you know who gave him that cash? >> again, it is outside our ambit and questions such as that should go to the fbi or the department. >> but it involved your investigation. >> it involved persons involved in my investigation. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> we will stand in recess for five or ten minutes. please folks remain in your seats and allow the director and mr. zebley to exit the chamber. >> you heard the man. there will be a brief break here

allowing us to look back at what we just witnessed. i think that it is safe to say a rather decidedly different tone and tenor this afternoon, same room, different committee. different bearing certainly by the chairman. the takeaway, two of the quotes that i'm looking at that i wrote down, it is not a witch hunt, it was not a hoax. the democrats were able to establish those quotes fr from mueller. before we go to our panel of experts here, let's look at the answers that chairman schiff was able to get at the top of the hearing. >> when donald trump called your investigation a witch hunt, that was always false, was it not? >> i'd like to think so, yes. >> well, your investigation is not a witch hunt, is it? >> it is not a witch hunt. >> when the president said the

russian interference was a hoax, that was false, wasn't it? >> true. >> when he said it publicly it was false? >> he did say publicly that it was false, yes. >> and when he told to putin, that was false too, wasn't it? >> that i'm not familiar with. >> when the president said that he had no business dealings with russia, that was false, wasn't it? >> i'm not going to go into the details of the report. >> in fact he was seeking to build a trump tower in moscow, was he not? >> i think there is some question about when this was accomplished. >> you would consider a billion dollar deal to build a tower in moscow to be business dealing, woontsd you? >> absolutely. >> so here we are back again, we have new friends joining us. mimi, former u.s. attorney -- no, former assistant u.s.

attorney southern district of new york. and now with the pace university school of law. and neal katyal, former acting solicitor general for our government. and also claire mccaskill. and of course nicolle wallace, someone i won't say who called that the red bull version of robert mueller after the break. >> such a bad leaker. i had a theory that -- listen, this is the last thing i said before this started. this committee is so different. adam schiff has been investigating the russian attack since it happened. so adam schiff is steeped in the substance as robert mueller and this was much more a conversation between two professionals who share the same concerns about the gravity of the russian attack on the 2016 elections in this country. so this felt different because it was different. you also had in devin nunes, the other thing that we talked about, the things that are said

on fox news are indiscernible now from republican house members. that is not more accurate for any two sort of beings on both sides of that divide than devin nunes and sean hannity. >> the world nunes laid out with mueller looking up at him is contrary to the world mueller knows. >> because it is b.s. it is a make believe world. he was throwing out things that are unsubstantiated by any reporting anywhere. i think that what is really important and what viewers are really hungry for is where did the substance move. and i think where the substance changed, what is different now than it was when the hearing started a couple hours ago, we now have robert mueller in his own voice confirming some of the most alarming and grave pieces of volume one. that the russians wanted donald trump and trump's campaign knew. that 150 contacts between the trump campaign and russians are chronicled in here.

not as much of a sort of semantic game, not as much flipping to certain pages in that report and i thought it worked for thesome and for the house intel committee. >> and what did you make of this afternoon? >> i agree with nicolle. to the extent that i think that republicans were cheering and maybe the president himself after the first set of hearings in the morning, i think that they won't be now. i think that schiff was unbelievably effective in telling the story and really in simple ways. not 115 witnesses or this or that, but five things. number one, he said russia interfered in the election. number two, russia did to help trump. number three, trump campaign welcomed the help from russia. number four, the president's own son welcomed it, said he, quote, loved it. and number five, trump himself sought to make money from russia with the moscow tower. those five things are a devastating portrait of -- you wouldn't want a ceo of target or something to have that. but let alone the president of

the united states have these accusations. >> and the only problem is in the television age mueller didn't say it the way that neal just said it. and i know that we're keeping a count, 155 times so far robert mueller has declined to answer or deflected. and so professionals like you watch this with some frustration, i'm sure. >> yeah, i mean look, i don't fault robert mueller for being sort of nonpartisan be. that is not my criticism of him. that is actually -- that is him and that gives him credibility and integrity. >> someone should be. >> but what we're missing is the forcefulness. where is his -- he doesn't frankly have the command of -- doesn't seem to have the command of the facts that i thought that he would. that was supposed to be sort of the best -- one 69 best things about mueller. the reason i think schiff was so good is that he gave the summation and mueller kind of agreed with it. right? and whereas this morning you had

people trying to draw it out of mueller and he wasn't going to give it. schiff did it for him, and he agreed with it. i wish hearing had gone first. it would have made so much more sense of the story. here is what happened and here is why the obstruction matters. maybe they had a robe for doing this way. i can't imagine what it is. >> senator. >> well, i'm confused. they say that it was biased but then that the investigation cleared president trump. the same thing on foreign interference. they say on one hand that the russians were in fact behind the steele dossier to try to help hillary clinton. well, that is not what the report says. they were never trying to help hillary clinton. that is one thing that has come out very clearly. that mueller has not equivocated on at all. russians wanted trump. end of discussion. so all of this of object physic

indication, none of it makes sense. . >> and i think that you can answer this for you once part of the party formerly known as real republicans. i think what they are doing is pulling the thread through from trump itself. one doesn't have to add -- one plus one doesn't have to equal two anymore, it can equal minus seven. donald trump said to his supporters many months ago as though preparing the country for today don't believe your eyes. don't believe your ears. don't believe what you see or hear. keep your i 00 eyes right here me. >> and their case is so confusing it gives me a headache. a jury would throw up their hands and say i'm not sure what they are trying to prove here. >> so what do you do about this as a political matter? let's say you are speaker pelosi watching today. we have the house about to go on an extended summer recessi.

what gives? >> i think the one thing that they have to do, they really need to put on the after burners these lawsuits compelling testimony. these are contempts. they have to go through the court system. we have mcgahn, clearly mcgahn needs to testify. so they have to get going. and that is what they could do during the break. it would be very powerful to have the white house counsel in front of this committee right after labor day. and you know, typically it doesn't take that long, but the courts might -- and you should weigh in here. would the courts expedite a determination on contempt because of the subject matter at hand and who is involved. >> i think they would. but i think that the down side is that still will take some time even to go from the trial court to the circuit court and then to the supreme court of the united states. we're talking months. and of course there is another solution which is an impeachment proceeding because that would

pierce the privileges and get the show on the road. >> it would certainly make their case stronger. >> and the president's legal strategy of not giving them any documents, no subpoenas enfor d enforced, all of that together actually strengthens the hand for impeachment even if there are democrats who don't want to do it politically in order to get to the truth, they may need to do it. >> let me echo nicolle wallace and say on principal they should begin the impeachment inquiry. and pelosi could always say this will strengthen our league hand to get the information we need so america has all the facts. >> it is just an inquiry and this will bring don mcgahn front and center and he won't be able to hide behind it. >> frank, i want to play this exchange on the topic of very germane of wikileaks. >> this just came out. wikileaks. i love wikileaks.

donald trump, october 10th, 2016, this wikileaks stuff is unbelievable. it tells you the inner heart. you got to read it, donald trump. october 12th, 2016. this wikileaks is like a treasure trove. donald trump, october 31, 2016. boy, i love reading those wikileaks, november 4, 2016. would any of those quotes disturb you, mr. director? >> i'm not sure. i would say -- >> how do you react to it? >> well, it is probably -- problematic is an understatement in terms of what it displays in terms of giving some, i don't know, hope or some boost to what is and should be illegal activity. >> frank figliuzzi, your take. >> so look, let's cut to the chase here. what bob mueller was telling us was essentially this president

by aligning himself and encouraging the activity, the cringe conduct of wikileaks was giving them a boost, encouraging them to do what they needed to do. and make no mistake, we have a president that not only has aligned himself with putin and other adversaries, but has publicly aligned himself with wikileaks that we treat, the u.s. government treats, our government says is an adversarial service. they are the equivalent of a foreign intelligence service. and in this case they were joined at the hip with russia. they are a mercenary for hire. they will break in and steal and distribute whatever you need done if they feel like doing that. and would bob mueller may not b coming across as a strong opponent of anything right now, but he strongly said this president gave these bad gays a boost. >> so nicolle wallace, so frank's last point, bob mueller may not be coming across in a strong manner, how do you take

the sum total of today if you are the democrats, how do you make it into the movie they were dreaming it would be? >> listen, i come from campaigns where you hang a lantern around your problems and i think the problem becomes a strength. the fact that he doesn't sound aggressive means that he is not partisan, the fact that he is not polished means that he is trustwort trustworthy. the fact that he is not out to get everybody is the whole point. he wasn't. he was after the truth. so i think that he is to be believed, he is to be trusted, he is a reluctant witness. i think that he was a rewill you be tants be -- he was reluctant appointee of special counsel. but doesn't mean he didn't doin. no republican has questioned the facts or conclusions of his report. no republican pointed to a single line and said this isn't true. so republicans may not agree with how it was put together, but they have not disputed a single finding of the mueller report. >> just to repeat, some numbers

that are germane and important, swearing mueller in this afternoon was his 90th appearance before congress. he is 15 days into -- prior to turning 75 years old. >> mr. swalwell you are recognized. >>mueller, as a prosecutor you would agree that if a witness or suspect lies or obstructs or tampers with witnesses or destroys evidence during an investigation that generally that conduct can be used to show a consciousness of gilt guilt, would you agree? >> yes. >> let's go through the different people associated with the trump campaign and this investigation who lied to you and other investigators to cover up their disloyal and unpatriotic conduct.

if we could put exhibit 8 up. i'm showing you paul manafort, roger stone, rick gates, michael flynn, michael cohen and george papadopoulous. these six individuals have each been charged, convicted are lied to your office or other investigators is that right? >> although mr. stone is -- he is in a different case here in d.c. >> so national security adviser flynn lied about discussions with russian ambassador related to sanctions is that right? >> that's correct. >> michael flynn lied to this committee? >> yes. >> george papadopoulous lied to the fbi about his communications about russia's possession of dirt on hillary clinton? >> correct.

yes. >> the president's campaign chairman paul manafort lied about meetings that he had with someone with ties to russian intelligence. >> that is true. >> in your investigation -- and your investigation was hampered by trump campaign officials use of enkripgs communications is that right? >> we believe that to be the case. >> you also believe to be the case that your investigation was hampered by the deletion of electronic messages is that correct? >> it would be, yes, generally any case would be if those kinds of communications are used. >> for example you noted that deputy campaign manager rick gates who shared internal campaign polling data with a person with ties to russian intelligence at the direction of manafort, that mr. gates deleted those communications on a daily basis, is that right? >> i take it -- i don't know specifically, but if it is in the report, then i support it. >> it is volume one, page 136.

>> thank you. >> in addition to that, other information was inaccessible because it was proesktded by attorney/client privilege? >> that is true. >> so you do not know whether communications between donald trump and his personal attorneys jay sekulow, rudy giuliani and others discouraged witnesses from cooperating with the government? >> i'm not going to talk to that. >> that would also mean that you can't talk to whether or not pardons were dangled through the president's attorneys because the shield of attorney/client privilege some about. >> i'm not going to discuss that. >> did you want it interview donald trump jr.? >> i'm not going to discuss that. >> did you subpoena donald trump jr.? >> and i'm not going to discuss that. >> did you want to interview the president? >> yes. >> director mueller, on january 1, 2017, through march 2019,

donald trump met with vladimir putin in person six times, called him ten times and exchanged four letters with him. between that time heard, how many times did you meet with donald trump? >> i'm not going to get in to that. >> he did not meet with you in person, is that correct? >> he did not. >> as a result of lies, deletion of text messages, obstruction and witness tampering, is it fair to say that you were unable to fully assess the scope and scale of russia's interference in the 2016 election and trump's role in that interference? >> i'm not certain that i would adopt that characterization. in total. there may be pieces, but not in total. >> but you did state page ten that while this report embodies fact all and legal determinations, the office believes it to be accurate and complete to the greatest extent possible given these identified gaps the office cannot rule out

the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional light? >> that is correct. we don't know what we don't know. >> why is it so important that witnesses cooperate and tell the truth in an investigation like this? >> because the testimony of the witnesses goes to the heart of just about any criminal case you have. >> thank you. and mr. chairman, i yield back. thank you, corredirector muelle. >> as special counsel did you review documents related to the origin of the counterintelligence investigation? >> on occasion. >> was the steele dossier one of those that was reviewed? >> i can't discuss that case. >> i'm just asking a process request. have you read the dossier? >> i'm not going to respond. >> you were tasked as special counsel to investigate whether there were collusion between russia and the trump campaign associates to interfere with the 2016 election and the fbi we know has relevant documents and

information related to the opening of the cia investigation. were you and your team per minuted to access all of those documents? >> again, i can't get in to that investigative -- what we collected and what we were doing with investigative materials. >> was there any limitation in your access to documents related to the counterintelligence -- >> that is such a broad question, i have a real trouble answering it. >> did the special counsel's office undertake any efforts to investigate and verify or disprove allegations contained in the steele dossier? >> again i can't respond. >> the reason i'm asking for the american public that is watching, it is apparent that the steeles doi s ddossier form of the basis to justify the investigation into russian interference in the 2016 election as we know that it was

used to obtain a fisa warrant on carter page. this is why i'm asking these questions. did your office undertake any efforts to identify steele's sources or sub sources? >> again, the same answer. >> were these tasks referred to any other agencies? >> again i can't speak to it. >> did your office consider whether the russian government used steele's sources to provide steele with this information? >> again, i can't speak to that. >> i understand i'm asking these questions just for the record, so thanks for your patience. >> shifting gears here, did any member of the special counsel's office staff travel overseas as part of the investigation? >> yes, but i can't go further than that. >> i'm going to ask to which countries? >> i can't answer that. >> did they meet with foreign government officials? >> again, out of our -- out 6 our bailiwick. >> did they meet with foreign private citizens? >> again, same response.

that is territory that i can't go to. >> thank you for answering on the record. these are important questions for the american public. and we're hopeful that the ig is able to answer these questions. i will yield the balance of my time to the ranking member. >> thank you gentle lady for yielding. mr. mueller, i want to go back to -- we started off with joseph mifsud who is at the center of this investigation. he appears in your report a dozen times or more. he really is the epicenter. he is at the origin of this, he is the man who supposedly knows about clinton's emails. you've seen on the screen democrats have put up all the prosecutions that you made against trump campaign officials and others.

but i'm struggling to understand why you didn't indict joseph mifsud who seems to be the man in the middle of all of this. >> well, i think you understand that you cannot get into either classified or law enforcement information without a rationale for doing it. and i've said on -- that is with regard to mr. must have sood. >> were you aware of kathleen cavalick's involvement? >> i can't respond to that question. outside my injurijurisdiction. >> carter page fisa warrant was reupped three times. last time was under your watch.

so were you in the approval process of that last time that the carter page warrant was -- >> i can't speak specifically about that warrant. but if you ask was i in the am approval chain, the answer is no. >> that is helpful. thank you. >> mr. castro. >> thank you do your testimony and your service to our country. donald trump over the years has surrounded himself with very shady people. people that lied for him, people that covered up for him. i want to talk about one of those instances that is in your report. specifically let's turn to the trump tower moscow project which you described in your report as, quote, highly lucrative deal for the trump organization is that right? >> i would have to look at the quote from the report if you have it. >> sure.

it is volume two, page 135. it is described as highly lucrative. >> okay. i have it. >> your office prosecuted michael cohen and michael cohen was donald trump's lawyer for lying to this committee about several allegations of the pursuit of the trump tower moscow deal. >> that's right. >> according to your report, cohen lied to, quote, minimize links between the project and trump, unquote, and to, quote, stick to the party line, unquote, in order not to contradict trump's public message that no connection existed between trump and russia. is that right? >> that is -- yes. that's correct. >> now, when you are talking about the party line here, the party line in this case --

>> if i could interject. i should have said at the outset, it was in the report and consequently i do believe to be true. >> thank you. the part it i line in this case is that the deal ended in january 2016. in other words, they were saying that the deal ended in january 2016 before the republican primaries. but in truth the deal extended to june 2016 when donald trump was already the pre-susumptive republican nominee. >> that's correct. >> and cohen discussed the deal with trump only three times but in truth they discussed it multiple times, is that right? >> also true and the basis for -- part of the basis for the plea that he entered. for a lie to this entity. >> thank you. and thank you for prosecuting that. the party line was also that cohen and trump never discussed traveling to russia during the

campaign when in truth they did discuss it, is that wright? >> that is accurate. >> and the party line was that cohen never received response from the kremlin to his inquiries about the trump tower moscow deal. in fact cohen not only received a response from the kremlin to his email, but also had a lengthy conversation with a kremlin representative who had a detailed understanding of the project. is that right? >> if it is in the report, that is accurate recitation of that piece of the report. >> so you had the candidate trump at the time saying that he had no business dealings with russia. his lawyer who was lying about it, and then the kremlin who during that time was talking to president trump's lawyer about the deal. is that right? >> i can't adopt your characterization. >> not only was cohen lying on trump's behalf, but so was the kremlin. on august 30th, 2017, two days after cohen submitted his false statement to this committee,

claiming that he never received a response to his email to the kremlin, vladimir putin's press secretary told reporters that the kremlin left the email unanswered. that statement by putin's press secretary was false, wasn't it? >> i can't speak to that. >> although it was widely reported in the press. >> again, i can't speak to that particularly if it was dependent upon media sources. >> but it was consistent with the lie that cohen had made to the committee, is that right? >> aim ni'm not certain i could that far. >> so cohen, president trump and the kremlin were all telling the same lie. >> i defer to you on that. i can't get into the details. >> special counsel mueller, i want to ask you something that is very important to the nation. did your investigation evaluate whether president trump could be vulnerable to blackmail by the russians because the kremlin knew that trump and his

associates lied about connections to russia related to the trump tower deal? >> i can't speak to that. >> i yield back. >> mr. hurd. >> thank you. director mueller, you've been asked ma asked many times about collusion and impeachment and i don't think your answers will change. so i'm going to ask about a couple of press stories. because a lot of what the american people have received about this have been on press stories and some of that has been wrong and some of those press stories have been accurate. april 13, 2018, mcclaspky reported that there was a secret trip to prague during the presidential election. i think -- is that story true? >> i can't go into it.

>> so october 31, 2016, slate published a report suggesting that server at trump tower was secretly communicating with russia's alpha bank. and i quote, akin to what criminal syndicates do. do you know if that story is true? >> do not. do not know whether it is true. >> so did you not investigate these allegations which are suggestive of a potential trump/russia -- >> because i say it is not true doesn't mean that it was not investigat investigated. but i believe at this point it is not true. >> and as a former cia officer, i want to focus on something that i think both sides of the political aisle can agree on, and that is how do we prevent adversaries from doing this again. and after fbi director and then investigating what the russians have done in the 2016 election, you've seen tactics, techniques,

and results of russian intelligence operations. our committee made a recommendation that the fbi should improve its victim notification process when a person, entity or campaign has fallen victim to active measures of tact. would you agree with that? >> it sounds like a worth while endeavor. i will tell you know that the ability of our intelligence agencies to work together in this arena is perhaps more important than that. and adopting whatever -- i'm not that familiar with legislation, but whatever legislation will encourage us working together, by us i mean the fbi, cia, nsa and the rest. it should be pursued aggressively early. >> who do you think should be responsible within the federal government to counter disinformation? >> i'm no longer in the federal government, so --

>> but you've had a long career -- a storied career and i don't think there is anybody that better understands the threat that we are facing than you. did you have an opinion as a former fbi officer? >> as to -- >> as to who should be the coordinating point within the federal government. >> i don't want to wade in those waters. >> good copy. won't of the mo one of the most striking things in your report is that the internet agency were able to organize political rallies after the election. our committee issued a report saying that russian active measures are growing with frequency and intensity and including their expanded use of groups such as the i.r.a. and these groups pose a significant threat to the united states and our allies in upcoming elections.

would you agree? >> yes. in fact one of the other areas that we have to look at, many more are companies -- not companies -- countries are developing capabilities to replicate what the russians have done. >> you alluded to making sure that the elements of the federal government should be working together. do you have a suggestion on a strategy to do that to counter this disinformation? >> not overarching, no. >> is this -- in your investigation did you think this was a single attempt by the russians or did you find evidence to suggest that they will try to do it again? >> it wasn't a single attempt. they are doing it as we sit here and are expected to do it during the next campaign. >> director mueller, i appreciate your time indulging us here and i yield back to the

ranking member. i yield back to the chairman. >> mr. heck. >> director mueller, i'd like to go to the motives behind the trump campaign encouragement and acceptance of help during the election. obviously clear motivation was to help in what would turn out to be a very close election. but there was another key motivation and that was frankly the desire to make money. i always try to remember what my dad who never had the opportunity to go beyond the eighth grade taught me which is that i should never ever underestimate the capacity of some people to cut corners and even more in order to worship and chase the all might tmighty. and this does go to why the trump campaign was so intent on developing relationships with the kremlin. so let's revisit one financial scheme we discussed which is the trump tower in moscow. we indicated earlier that it was a lucrative deal.

trump in fact stood he and his company to earn many millions of dollars on that deal, did they not, sir? >> true. >> and cohen, mr. cohen, his attorney, testified before this committee that president trump believed the deal required cell in- kremlin approval. >> i'm not sure mr. trump himself or others associated with the enterprise and having the input from the russian government to go forward successfully. >> isn't it also true that donald trump viewed his presidential campaign as he told top campaign aides that the campaign was an infomercial for the trump organization and his properties? >> i'm not familiar with that. >> let's turn to trump campaign chair paul manafort. did in fact your investigation find any evidence that man fort

intended to use his position as trump's campaign chair for his own personal financial benefit? >> i will say there was some indication of that, but i won't go further. >> i think you will page 135 of volume i. during the transition, trump's son-in-law jared kushner met with sergei, the head of a russian-owned bank that is under u.s. sanctions. and according to the head of the bank, he met with kushner in his capacity as ceo of kushner companies to discuss business opportunities. is that correct, sir? >> i'm not certain about that. let me just put it that way. >> it was asserted thusly in your report volume i on pages 161 and 162. your report notes that at the time kushner companies were trying to renegotiate a billion

with a "b," a billion-dollar lease of their flag ship building at 666 5th avenue, correct? >> i'm not familiar with those financial arrangements. >> also on page 162 where kushner asserted it had dead -- coming due on the company. erik prince, a supporter close to trump, an administrative -- >> a supporter. >> yes. >> he met during the transition with keril dimitriov, which is the head of a russian sanctioned government investment arm which had close ties to vladimir putin, correct, sir? >> yes. >> your investigation determined that mr. prince had not known nor conducted business with demitriov before trump won the election, correct? >> well, i defer to the report on that. >> yet, it does, and yet prince

who had connections to top administration, trump administration officials met with demitriov during the transition period to discuss business opportunities among other things. but it wasn't just trump and his associates who were trying to make money off this deal, nor hide it, nor lie about it. russia was too. that was the whole point to gain relief from sanctions which would hugely benefit their incredibly wealthy oligarchs. for example, sanctions relief was discussed at that june 9th meeting in the trump tower. was it not, sir? >> yes. but it was not a main subject for discussion. >> trump administration national security adviser michael flynn also discussed sanctions in a secret conversation with the russian ambassador, did he not? >> correct. >> so to summarize donald trump, michael cohen, paul manafort, jared kushner, erik prince and

others in the trump orbit all tried to use their connections with the trump organization to profit from russia, which was only seeking relief from sanctions. is that true, sir? >> i'm not certain i can adopt -- >> i will and i'd further assert that was not only dangerous but it was nonamerican. greed corrupts and it is a terrible foundation for developing american foreign policy. >> mr. radcliff. director mueller, given your constraints on what you're able or allowed to answer with respect to counterintelligence matters or other matters that are currently open and under investigation, you're not going to be able to answer my remaining questions. so i thank you for your courtesies in the answers that you have given to my prior

questions, and i do thank you for your extraordinary career and record of service and yield the balance of my time to the ranking member. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. ratcliffe and mr. mueller. let me associate my words with mr. ratcliffe. and a few more questions i want to clean up a little bit about the erik prince seychelles meeting. he tefred before this committee that he was surveyed and the information from the surveillance was leaked to the press. did you investigate whether prince was surveilled and whether classified information on him was illegally leaked to the media? >> did you say did you or will you? >> well, i know you can't. >> so i can't discuss either way. >> back up in the ranks, but did you refer -- were you aware that prince has made these allegations that he was surveilled, he's concerned that

there were leaks about this surveillance. did you make any referrals about these -- >> i can't get into discussion on it. >> okay. also, general flynn, i know you came after the leak with the phone call with the russian ambassador, your time at fbi, it would be a major scandal, wouldn't it, for the leak of the national security adviser and anyone -- >> -- that hypothesis. if. >> did you report, name any people who were acting as u.s. government informants or sources without disclosing that fact? >> i can't answer that. >> on volume i, page 133 of your report, you state that constan teen kalemnik has ties to

russian intelligence. his name came up quite often today. the report omits to mention that kalemnik has long-term relationships with u.s. government officials including our own state department. >> i can't get into that. >> i know it's not in the report, but, you know, if kalimnik is being used in the report to say that he was possibly some type of russian agent, and i think it is important for this committee to know if kalimnik has ties to our own state department, when iappears that he does. >> again, it's the same territory that i'm loathed to get into. >> you were asked this earlier about trump attorney john dowd that pieces of his phone call were omitted from the report.

it was what mr. dowd calls exculpatory evidence. are you concerned about -- >> i'm not certain i would agree with that characterization. i think i said that before. >> yes. an american citizen from the republic of georgia who your report misidentifies as a russian claims that your report omitted parts of a text message he had with michael cohen about stopping the flow of compromising tapes of donald trump. in the omitted portions he says he did not know what the tapes actually showed. was that portion of the exchange left out of the report for a reason? >> no. well, we had an awful lot into the report, but we did not get every sings nor conversation and the like. so i am not familiar with that particular episode you're

talking about. >> thank you, mr. mueller. thank you, mr. chairman. >> mr. welch. >> director mueller, did you find there was no collusion between the trump campaign and russia? >> well, we don't use the word collusion. the word we usually use is -- not collusion, um, but one of the other terms that fills in when collusion is not used. in any event, we decided not to use the word collusion in as much as it has no relevance to the criminal law arrest yaen. >> the term is conspiracy that you prefer to use? >> spirks exactconspiracy is ri. you help me, i'll help you. and, in fact, you had to then

make a charging decision after your investigation where unless there was enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt you wouldn't make a charge, correct? >> generally that's the case. >> but making that decision does not mean your investigation failed to turn up evidence of conspiracy. >> absolutely correct. >> and, in fact, i'll go through some of the significant findings that your exhaustive investigation made. you found, as i understand it, that from may 2016 until the end of the campaign, campaign chairman mr. manafort gave private polling information to russian agents, correct? >> correct. -- >> can you speak into the microphone? >> yes, i will. >> thank you. and your investigation found that in june 2016, donald trump jr. made an arrangement to meet at trump tower along with jared kushner and others expecting to receive dirt on the hillary

clinton campaign, correct? >> correct. >> and you found in your investigation that on july 27th, candidate trump called on russia to hack hillary clinton's emails, something they did for the first time about five hours later. is that correct? >> that's correct. and on august 2nd, mr. manafort met with a person tied to russian intelligence, m mr. kalemnik and gave him internal campaign strategy, aware that russia was intending to do a misinformation social media campaign, correct? >> i'm not certain of the time there. >> but the fact of that meeting. >> the fact of the meeting and it took place is accurate. >> and your investigation as i understand it also found that in late summer of 2016, the trump campaign in fact devised its strategy and messaging around wikileaks releases of materials that were stolen from the

democratic national committee, correct? >> is that from the report? >> yes. it's according to mr. gaetz. >> yes. thank you. >> and you also talked earlier about the finding in your investigation that in september and october of 2016 donald trump jr. had email communications with wikileaks now indicted about releasing information damaging to the clinton campaign, correct? >> true. >> so, i understand you made a decision prosecutorial decision that this would not rise to proof beyond a reasonable doubt. but i ask if you share my concern. and my concern is have we established a new normal from this past campaign that is going to apply to future campaigns so that if any one of us running for the u.s. house, any candidate for the u.s. senate, any candidate for the presidency

of the united states, aware that if hostile foreign power is trying to influence an election has no duty to report that to the fbi or other authorities? >> well, i hope this is not the new normal, but i fear it is. >> and would in fact have the ability without fear of legal repercussion to meet with that foreign entity before the american election? is that an apprehension that you share with me? >> yes. >> and that there would be no repercussions whatsoever to russia if they did this again. and as you have stated earlier as we sit here, they are doing it now. is that correct? >> you're absolutely right. >> do you have any advice to this congress as together what we should do to protect our electoral system and accept responsibility on our part to report to you or your successor

when we're aware of hostile foreign engagement in our elections? >> i would say the basis -- the first line of defense really is on the ability of the various agencies who have some piece of this to not only share information but share expertise, share targets and use the full resources that we have to address this problem. >> thank you, director mueller. i yield back. >> mr. maloney. >> thanks. >> mr. muler, thank you. i know it's been a long day, and i want to make sure how much respect i have for your service and for your extraordinary career. and i want you to understand my questions in that context, sir. i'm going to be asking you about appendix c to your report and in particular the decision not to do a sworn interview with the

president. that's really the only subject i want to talk to you about, sir. why didn't you subpoena the president? >> at the outset after we took over and initiated the investigation. >> if i could ask you to speak into the microphone. >> of course. at the outset after we took over the investigation and prude it, quite obviously one of the things we anticipated wanting to accomplish it is having the interview of the president. we negotiated with him for a little over a year, and i think what you've averted to in the appendix lays out our expectations as a result of those negotiations. but finally we were almost towards the end of our investigation and we had little success in pushing to get the interview of the president who we decided that we did not want to exercise the subpoena powers because of the necessity of

expediting the end of the investigation. >> was that -- excuse me. >> i was going to say the expectation was if we did subpoena the president, he would fight the subpoena and we would be in the midst of the investigation for a substantial period of time. >> right. but as we sit here, you've never had an opportunity to ask the president in person questions under oath. and so obviously that must've been a difficult decision. and you're right, appendix c lays that out. and indeed i believe you described the in-person interview as vital. that's your word. and of course you made clear you had the authority and the legal justification to do it as you point out you waited a year, you put up with a lot of negotiations. you made numerous accommodations which you laid out so that he could prepare and not be surprised. i take it you were trying to be fair to the president. and by the way you were going to limit the questions when you got to written questions to russia only. in fact, you did go with written questions after about nine months, sir, right? and the president responded to

those and you have some hard language for what you thought of those responses. what did you think of the president's written responses, mr. mueller? >> it's certainly not as useful as the interview would be. >> in fact, you pointed out, and by my account, there were more than 30 times when the president said he didn't recall, he didn't remember, no independent recollection, no current recollection. and i take it by your answer that it wasn't as helpful. that's why you used words like inadequate, insufficient. >> that is a fair summary. and i presume that comes from the report. >> and yet, sir, and i ask this respectfully. by the way the president didn't ever claim the fifth amendment, did he? >> i am not going to talk to that. frjts what i can tell, sir, at one point it was vital and at another point it wasn't vital. my question to you is why did it stop being vital? and i can only think of one explanation. one is somebody told you, you

couldn't subpoena the president? >> no. we understood we could subpoena the president. >> so the only other explanation, well, there's two others, one that you just flinched that you had the opportunity to do it and you didn't do it. >> but, sir, you don't strike me as the kind of guy who flinches. >> i hope not. >> and the third explanation -- and i hope not too. and the third explanation i can think of is that you didn't think you needed it. and, in fact, what caught my eye was page 13 on volume ii where you said, in fact, you had a substantial body of evidence and you cite a bunch of cases there, don't you, about how you often have to prove intent to obstruct justice without an in-person interview. you used terms like a substantial body of evidence, significant evidence of the president's intent. so my question, sir, did you have sufficient evidence of the president's intent to obstruct justice, and is that why you didn't do the interview? >> theres a balance. in other words, how much evidence that you have that would satisfy the last element against how much time are you

willing to spend in the courts litigating the interview with the president. the. >> and in this case you felt that you had enough evidence of the president's intent? >> we had to make a bald decision in terms of how much evidence we had compared to the length of time it would take -- >> and, sir, because i have limited time. you thought that if you gave it to the attorney general or this congress that there was sufficient evidence that it was better than that delay? >> can you state that again? >> that it was better than the delay to present of the president's intent to the attorney general and to this committee. isn't that why you didn't do the interview? >> no. the reason we didn't do the interview is because of the length of time that it would take to resolve the issues attended to that. >> thank you, sir. >> ms. demmings. >> thank you so much, mr. chairman and director mueller, thank you so much for being a person of honor and

integrity. thank you for your service to the nation. we are certainly better for it. director mueller, i too want to focus on the written responses that the president did provide and the continued efforts to lie and cover up what happened during the 2016 election. were the president answers submitted under oath? >> yes. >> thank you. were these all the answers your office wanted to ask the president about russia interference in the 2016 election? >> no, not necessarily. >> so there were other -- >> yes. >> questions that you wanted to answer? did you analyze his written answers on russian interferes to -- >> no. it was perhaps one of the factors, but nothing more than that. >> it was one of the factors so what did you determine about the president's credibility? >> that i can't get into. >> director mueller based on

your decades of experience, you probably had an opportunity to analyze the credibility of countless witnesses, but you weren't able to do so with this witness? >> well, with every witness, particularly a leading witness, when one assesses the credibility day by day, witness by witness, document by document. that's what happened in this case. so we started with very little. and by the end we ended up with a fair amount. >> thank you. well, let's go through some of the answers to take a closer look at his credibility because it seems to me, director mueller, that his answers were not credible at all. do some of president trump's incomplete answers relate to trump tower moscow? >> yes. >> for example, did you ask the president whether he had had at any time directed or suggested that discussions about trump moscow projects should cease? >> should what? >> cease. >> do you have a citation? >> yes. we are still in appendix c-section i, 7. >> that first page?

>> uh-huh. >> it says the president did not answer whether he had at any time suggested that the trump moscow project should cease, but he has since made public comments about this topic. >> okay. and the question was? >> did the president -- let me go on to the next. did the president fully answer that question in his written statement to you about the trump moscow project ceasing? again, in appendix c? >> and can you direct me to the particular paragraph you're averting to? >> appendix c dash c 1. nine days after he submitted his answers, didn't the president say publicly that he, quote, decided not to do the project, unquote. and that is in your -- >> uh. >> -- report. >> i'd ask you if you would to point out the particular

paragraph that you're focused on. >> okay. we can move on. did the president answer your follow-up questions according to the report there were follow-up questions because of the president's incomplete answers about the moscow project. did the president answer your follow-up questions either in writing or orally? and we're now in volume two. >> no. >> in fact, there were many questions that you asked the president that he simply didn't answer. isn't that correct? >> true. >> and there were many answers that contradicted other evidence you had gathered during the investigation. isn't that correct, director mueller? >> yes. >> director mueller, for example, the president has written answers stated he did not recall having advanced knowledge of wikileaks releases. is that correct? >> i think that's what he said. >> but didn't your investigation uncover evidence that the president did in fact have advanced knowledge of public

releases of emails damaging to his opponent? >> i can't get into that area. >> did your investigation determine after very careful vetting of rick gaetz and michael cohen that you found them to be credible? >> that we found the president could be credible? >> that you found gaetz and cohen to be credible in their statements about wikileaks. >> those areas i'm not going to discuss. >> 'cuse director mueller that the president was credible? >> i can't answer that question. >> director mueller, isn't it fair to say that the president's written answers were not only inadequate and incomplete because he didn't answer many of your questions, but where he did his answers show that he wasn't always being truthful? >> i would say generally. >> generally. director mueller, it's one thing for the president to lie to the american people about your investigation, claiming that you found no obstruction or no

collusion, but it's something else altogether for him to get away with not answering your questions and lying about them. and as a former law enforcement officer of almost 30 years, i find that a disgrace to our criminal justice system. thank you so much. i yield back to the chairman. >> director mueller, thank you for your devoted service to your country. earlier today, you described your report as detailing a criminal investigation, correct? >> yes. >> director, since it was outside the purview of your investigation, your report did not reach counterintelligence conclusions regarding the subject matter of your report? >> that's true. >> for instance, since it was outside your purview, your report did not reach counterintelligence conclusions regarding any trump administration officials who might potentially be vulnerable

to compromise or blackmail by russia, correct? >> those decisions probably were made of the fbi. >> but not in your report, correct? >> not in our report. we advert to the counterintelligence goals of our investigation which were secondary to any criminal wrongdoing that we could find. >> let's talk about one administration official in particular, namely, president donald trump. other than trump tower moscow, your report does not address or detail the president's financial ties or dealings with russia, correct? >> correct. >> similarly, since it was outside your purview, your report does not address the question of whether russian oligarchs engaged in money laundering through any of the president's businesses, correct? >> correct.

and of course your office did not obtain the president's tax returns which could otherwise show foreign financial sources, correct? >> i'm not going to speak to that. >> in july 2017, the president said his personal finances were off limits or outside the purview of your investigation. and he drew a,quote/unquote, red line around his personal finances. were the president's personal finances outside the purview of your investigation? >> i'm not going to get into that. >> were you instructed by anyone not to investigate the president's personal finances? >> no. mr. mueller, i'd like to turn your attention to counterintelligence risk associated with lying. individuals can be subject to blackmail if they lie about their interactions with foreign countries, correct? >> true. >> for example, you successfully charged former national security adviser michael flynn of lying to federal agents about his

conversations with russian officials, correct? >> correct. >> since it was outside the purview of your investigation, your report does not address how flynn's false statements could pose a national security risk because the russians knew the falsity of those statements, right? >> i cannot get into that, mainly because there are many elements of the fbi that are looking at different aspects of that issue. >> currently? >> currently. >> thank you. as you noted in volume ii of your report, donald trump repeated five times in one press conference, mr. mueller, in 2016, quote, i have nothing to do with russia. of course, michael cohen said donald trump was not being truthful because at this time trump was attempting to build trump tower moscow. your report does not address whether donald trump was compromised in any way because of any potential false

statements that he made about trump tower moscow, correct? >> i think that's right. >> director mueller, i want to turn your attention to a couple other issues. you have served as fbi director during three presidential elections, correct? >> yes. >> and during those three presidential elections, you have never initiated an investigation at the fbi looking into whether a foreign government interfered in our elections the same way you did in this particular instance, correct? >> i would say i personally know but the fbi quite obviously has the -- having a defense and attack such as the russians undertook in 2016. >> now, director mueller, is there any information you'd like to share with this committee that you have not so far today? >> that's a broad question. and it'd take me a while to get

an answer to it. but i'll say no. >> mr. mueller, you said that every american should pay very close attention to the systematic and sweeping fashion in which the russians interfered in our democracy. are you concerned that we are not doing enough currently to prevent this from happening again? >> i'll speak generally and what i said in my opening statement this morning and, no, much more needs to be done in order to protect against intrusions not just by the russians but others as well. >> thank you, director. >> we have two five-minute periods remaining. mr. nunes and myself. mr. numnes, you are recognized. >> mr. mueller, it's been a long day for you, and you've had a long, great career. i want to thank you for your long-time service starting in

vietnam. obviously, in the u.s. attorney's office department of justice and the fbi. and i want to thank you for doing something you didn't have to do. you came here upon your own free will, and we appreciate your time today. with that i yield back. >> thank you, sir. >> dr. mueller, i want to close out my questions, turn to some of the exchange you had with mr. welsh a bit earlier. i'd like to see if we can broaden the appertoire at the end of the hearing. from your testimony today, i gather that you believe that knowingly accepting foreign assistance during a presidential campaign is an unethical thing to do. >> and a crime. >> and a crime. >> and a given circumstances. >> and to the degree that it undermines our democracy and our institutions, we can agree that it's also unpatriotic.

>> true. >> and wrong. >> true. >> the standard of behavior for a presidential candidate or any candidate for that matter shouldn't be merely whether something is criminal, they should be held to a higher standard. do you agree? >> i will not get into it because it goes to the standard to be applied by other institutions besides ours. >> i am just referring to ethical standards. we should hold our elected officials to a standard higher than mere avoidance of criminality, shouldn't we? >> absolutely. >> you have served this country for decades. you've taken an oath to defend the constitution. you hold yourself to a standard of doing what's right. >> i would hope. >> you have. i think we can all see that. and but fitting the times i'm sure your award will be unending criticism. but we are grateful. the need to act in an ethical

manner is not just a moral one but when people act unethically, it also exposes them to compromise, particularly in dealing with foreign powers. is that true? >> true. >> because when someone acts unethically in connection with a foreign partner that, foreign partner can later expose their wrongdoing and extort them, true? >> true. and that unethical conduct can be of a financial nature if you have a financial motive or an illicit business dealing. am i right? >> yes. >> but it can also just involve deception if you are lying about something that can be exposed, then you can be blackmailed? >> also true. >> in the case of michael flynn, he was secretly doing business with turkey, correct? >> yes. >> and that could open him up to compromise that, financial relationship? >> i presume. >> he also lied about his discussions with the russian ambassador, and since the

russians were on the other side of the conversation, they could have exposed that, could they not? >> yes. >> if a presidential candidate was doing business in russia and saying he wasn't, russians could expose that, too, could they not? >> i leave that to you. >> well, let's look at demitri peskov, the spokesperson for the kremlin, wto make that happen. your report indicates that michael cohen had a long conversation on the phone with someone from demitri peskov's office. presumably the russians could record that, could they not? >> yes but the russians had a tape recording they could expose that, could they not? >> yes. that's the stuff of counterintelligence nightmares, is it not? >> well, it has to do with counterintelligence and the need for strong counterintelligence entity. >> it does indeed.