Will Mueller’s testimony damage President Trump?

With former special counsel set to testify
live on television, will Democrats land a blow on the president, or
will their efforts backfire?

Reaction William Gritten

In short, Mueller will likely continue his policy of simply
reading from the report, the redacted form of which is already
available for anyone to read.

Given this, is there any chance the testimony will hurt
the president politically, or will he prove as impervious as
ever?

How the Testimony will work

Mueller will sit for four sessions. The House Intelligence
Committee will focus on volume I of the report, which is concerned
with collusion and conspiracy with the Russian government. The
House Judiciary Committee will focus on volume II, which deals with
whether or not the president obstructed justice. 

Both committees will sit for one public, televised session
on the redacted report, and a closed hearing that will focus on the
full, unredacted report. 

Why are Democrats so determined to question
Mueller in public?

While there are varying motivations driving the Democrat
and Republican committee members who will question Mueller, there
is a consensus that the testimony will be less about obtaining new
information, and more about narrative control. Fundamentally,
Trump’s critics believe the report is damaging, but that its
density and length mean the vast majority of Americans will only be
exposed to it through the media.

“The hearings are certain to draw serious media attention, which
at least gives Democrats a high-profile way to illustrate the
report’s main findings – which are far more damning than Trump’s
‘no collusion, no obstruction’ mantra suggests,” Jonathan Bernstein
reflects in Bloomberg. “Because of the way information now
spreads, the testimony could have a greater impact than the
publication of the report itself. Even reading the main conclusions
out loud will help whatever audience tunes in… have a better
sense of the full weight of the findings.”

Democrats say that the narrative around the report was
hijacked, when Trump’s Attorney General William Barr released a
summary prior to its release. As Representative Jerrold Nadler of
New York, the Judiciary Committee chairman, said, “Barr led a
campaign of misinformation to deceive the American people about
what was in the report. The president joined in by repeatedly
saying ‘no collusion, no obstruction’ — which is not what the
report found.”

However, Democrats will also try to extract from Mueller his
opinion on certain matters. As the LA Times points out, the report “left
unanswered questions, most notably whether Mueller would have
accused Trump of obstruction of justice if the Justice Department
hadn’t decided that a sitting president couldn’t be indicted. The
report mentioned that long-standing policy, but it left unclear
whether Mueller believed that, in the absence of such a directive,
he would have concluded that Trump committed a crime.

CNN reports that there are 79 House Democrats
calling for an impeachment inquiry into Trump. For them the stakes
are high: “Mueller’s appearance amounts to a make-or-break moment
for the House impeachment caucus. If the special counsel’s
testimony falls flat or doesn’t change minds, it could deflate the
momentum for impeachment.”

Republican goals

“Republicans will try to cast their political opponents as
intent on impeaching the president and unwilling to let go of an
investigation that ended months ago without charges against Trump,”
says the Washington Post, “while some are likely attack
Mueller for his team’s perceived missteps.”

As Douglas A. Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the
House Judiciary Committee, said, he believed Mueller’s testimony
would “bring to House Democrats the closure that the rest of
America has enjoyed for months.”

The risk for Democrats

If Mueller gives Democrats what they want, this could be
the moment the special counsel’s report finally damages the
president politically. However, if Mueller is reticent or
uncooperative, and does not provide any newsworthy comments or
information, Democrats run the risk of looking foolish – even
conniving – in their attempt to keep the report in the public
sphere.

The New York Times reports that “Several
Republicans predicted on Wednesday that the appearance would
backfire on Democrats trying to damage Mr. Trump.”

As one senior Democrat aide said anonymously to the Washington Post: “This can backfire. Big
time.”