WASHINGTON — Former special counsel Robert Mueller offered no new revelations Wednesday into Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections or President Trump’s attempts to derail his investigation. But Mueller offered a stark warning on Russian election tampering — “They’re doing it as we sit here’’ — and a sober assessment of where politics are after the Trump campaign welcomed foreign interference in 2016.
“I hope this is not the new normal,’’ he told Representative Peter D. Welch, Democrat of Vermont, “but I fear it is.’’
In seven hours of highly anticipated back-to-back hearings before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, Mueller, the special counsel who led the inquiry into Russia’s interference and whether Trump associates participated in it, hewed tightly to his script — the 448-page report he and his team produced in April. He declined repeatedly to offer his opinion on key questions or even to read directly from the document.
Democrats did get him to confirm the most damaging elements of his findings. Under intense questioning, Mueller said the president had not been cleared of obstructing justice, nor had he been completely exonerated, as Trump has so often declared; he said that the president had been untruthful in some of his responses during the investigation; and he called Trump’s encouragement of WikiLeaks “problematic,’’ to say the least.
WikiLeaks published e-mails stolen by Russian agents during the 2016 campaign, first from the Democratic National Committee, then from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. Trump cheered the group on repeatedly, praised its actions, and urged voters to read the purloined communications.
But the former special counsel, who sometimes appeared confused or at a loss for words and frequently responded to questions with one-word answers — “no,’’ “true,’’ “that’s accurate’’ — was a reluctant witness whose deflections sucked some of the punch out of his most damning findings, especially as Republicans sought repeatedly to undermine him and his investigation.
Mueller, for his part, defended his work and sought to drive home to lawmakers and the public the grave implications of his report, which laid bare that Trump was elected with Russia’s help and cataloged the president’s frantic efforts to undermine the investigation into Moscow’s election interference.
“It’s not a witch hunt,’’ Mueller told the Intelligence Committee, under questioning from the chairman, Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California.
Schiff said Mueller’s sparse answers demanded more aggressive attempts by Congress to investigate Trump, an indication that the matter is not over, even if the special counsel is.
“You would not tell us whether the president should be impeached, nor did we ask you, since it is our responsibility to determine the proper remedy for the conduct outlined in your report,’’ he said. “Whether we decide to impeach the president in the House or we do not, we must take any action necessary to protect the country while he is in office.’’
Mueller said little about his decision not to compel the president to sit for an in-person interview during his investigation, telling lawmakers he opted against issuing a subpoena for Trump in order to “expedite’’ the probe. But he made it clear near the end that he did not believe that Trump had been honest or transparent in his written responses. Asked by Representative Val Demings, Democrat of Florida, whether it was “fair to say’’ that the president’s answers had been incomplete and those he did supply were not always truthful, Mueller responded, “Generally.’’
Mueller has made little secret of his belief that the public has not fully grasped the elaborate and targeted nature of Russia’s attacks on the 2016 elections that were detailed in his report, nor has the government taken sufficient steps to address it or prevent such an assault from occurring again.
Mueller pleaded for more attention to Russia’s attack.
“We spent substantial time ensuring the integrity of the report, understanding that it would be a living message to those who came after us,’’ he said. “It is a signal, a flag to those of us who have responsibility to exercise that responsibility, not to let this kind of thing happen again.’’
Representative Will Hurd, Republican of Texas, wondered aloud whether Russia might be planning another set of attacks. He received an ominous response from Mueller.
“It wasn’t a single attempt,’’ he said. “They’re doing it as we sit here.’’
Mueller spent most of his time Wednesday avoiding expressing his opinion on the president’s conduct or anything else, but that changed when Representative Mike Quigley, Democrat of Illinois, questioned him on Trump’s response to WikiLeaks.
Asked for his reaction to candidate Trump’s praise for WikiLeaks during the campaign, Mueller did not mince words.
“It’s problematic — is an understatement, in terms of what it displays in terms of giving some hope or some boost to what is and should be illegal activity,’’ Mueller responded.
The special counsel also vigorously defended his investigation and his team, denying that they had been responsible for leaks and flatly rejecting the president’s incessant undercutting of his probe.
“Absolutely, it was not a hoax,’’ Mueller said.
Mueller used his opening statement before the Intelligence Committee to correct his earlier testimony before the Judiciary panel, in which he appeared to suggest that he believed that Trump should have been indicted.
In the earlier hearing during an exchange with Representative Ted Lieu, Democrat of California, an early proponent of impeachment, Mueller seemed to say that the reason he did not indict Trump for obstruction of justice was because of a Justice Department opinion stating that a sitting president cannot be indicted. It was unclear what he meant, or whether he understood the question.
“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,’’ Lieu said, referring to the Mueller report’s lengthy description of actions the president took to try to interfere with his investigation.
“I’d like to ask you the reason, again, that you did not indict Donald Trump is because of the OLC opinion stating that you cannot indict a sitting president, correct?’’ he asked, referring to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
“That is correct,’’ Mueller said.
That assertion directly contradicted the report itself and Mueller’s statement in May describing it, in which he said that he and his team had decided not to decide whether to charge the president because of the Office of Legal Counsel opinions.
By afternoon, Mueller walked back the inconsistency, saying that Lieu had incorrectly described his decision.
“What I wanted to clarify is the fact that we did not make any determination with regard to culpability in any way,’’ Mueller said.
Mueller, who opened his testimony by repeating that he was not willing to go beyond his report, nonetheless obliged Democrats who prompted him to restate the most damning aspects of his findings to Trump.
“The finding indicates that the president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed,’’ Mueller told Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the Judiciary Committee chairman, under questioning about his conclusions on whether Trump obstructed justice.
It was one of the rare instances in which Mueller strayed outside of one-word answers or short phrases in response to lawmakers’ questions about his investigation.
But in a carefully steered line of questioning, Nadler got Mueller to agree with him that the president’s frequent declarations that the investigation had found “no obstruction’’ and had “completely and totally exonerated’’ Trump were false.
“Correct, that is not what the report said,’’ Mueller said.
Mueller spoke haltingly as he testified, blunting attacks on him by Republicans but also limiting Democrats’ efforts to elevate his words and raising questions about his acuity.
Democrats could not even get Mueller to read from his own report, instead performing their own dramatic recitations about the episodes they sought to highlight in which Trump was found to have tried to derail the investigation. Mueller’s team had informed both committees holding hearings Wednesday that he would decline to read from the tome if asked to during the hearings.
Later, asked by Representative Greg Stanton, Democrat of Arizona, which president had first appointed him as a US attorney in Massachusetts, Mueller could not remember, offering, “I think that was President Bush.’’
“According to my notes, it was President Ronald Reagan who had the honor to do so,’’ Stanton replied.
“My mistake,’’ Mueller answered.
The performance drew concern from some Democrats. David Axelrod, the strategist who served as a senior adviser in Barack Obama’s White House, gently suggested that Mueller might not be up to his task.
“This is delicate to say, but Mueller, whom I deeply respect, has not publicly testified before Congress in at least six years,’’ Axelrod wrote on Twitter. “And he does not appear as sharp as he was then.’’
After the testimony, Trump declared himself vindicated by Mueller’s testimony, calling it a “devastating’’ day for Democrats that exposed the Russia investigation as a “hoax’’ and a years-long “phony cloud’’ over his head.
Speaking to reporters as he boarded Marine One for a brief trip to West Virginia to host a fund-raiser, the president said that Mueller was “horrible’’ during his testimony before two House committees and in his handling of the investigation.
“We had a good day today,’’ Trump said, echoing a sense of jubilation inside the White House that Democrats had failed in their bid to use Mueller to build a case for impeachment against the president.
“This was a devastating day for the Democrats,’’ Trump said, adding: “The Democrats had nothing. And now they have less than nothing. And I think they are going to lose the 2020 election very big, including congressional elections.’’
