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Americans Can Handle the Truth. Mueller Needs to Give It to Them.
As balanced and thoughtful a preview as you’re likely to read anywhere:
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IDEAS
Americans Can Handle the Truth. Mueller Needs to Give It to Them.
The special counsel’s report left some crucial questions unanswered.
12:02 PM ET
Stuart Gerson
Former Assistant Attorney General under George H. W. Bush
If former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony will have any value tomorrow, it should be to guide Congress to satisfy its constitutionally distinct role. Mueller, a former FBI director, has always displayed a “just the facts approach.” He already has contradicted Attorney General William Barr’s sycophantic characterization of the results of the investigation by firmly stating that if his staff had concluded that the president was vindicated, he would have said so; he didn’t. But that stance leaves some important questions unasked, and some potentially valuable answers unknown. It’s time for Congress to ask, and for Mueller to answer, those questions.
These questions are not abstract to me. I’m a former federal line prosecutor, and from 1989 to 1993, I served in the administration of President George H. W. Bush as assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. Thereafter, I was the acting attorney general during the early months of the Clinton administration. Representing the United States at all levels of the federal courts, I have, at various times over 50 years, litigated a range of cases involving important public issues, and have more than a little knowledge about what it takes to support an indictment against corrupt public officials and more typical federal criminal defendants. So when I read the Mueller report, I bring a prosecutor’s eye to the work, and as a former colleague of Robert Mueller, I have confidence in his integrity and judgment.
But it’s also why I’m painfully aware that, so far, both Congress and the press have responded to the report by indulging in pettiness and sensationalism, instead of fulfilling the roles that the Framers of the Constitution envisioned. Tomorrow, they will have the chance, instead, to enable Americans and their representatives to make well-informed political choices, and to ensure that this remains a free country governed by the rule of law, not by bombast or political partisanship.
[Read: The dirty secret of Mueller’s testimony? Voters might not care.]
The Mueller report runs 448 pages, and the average person has had little opportunity to read and study it in depth. Congress can satisfy its responsibility to ensure that the American voting public has access to compelling facts on the important national issues that the Mueller report raises, as it logically pursues the legislative avenues that the Framers laid down for it in the Constitution. The press also has a role in separating fact from fiction, and evidence from opinion. And there is much that the press can do with respect to reporting the facts underlying the Mueller findings that hasn’t been done yet. The signal-to-noise ratio of the reporting to date has been less than optimal. Here is the chance to improve that.
....
Americans Can Handle the Truth. Mueller Needs to Give It to Them.
The special counsel’s report left some crucial questions unanswered.
12:02 PM ET
Stuart Gerson
Former Assistant Attorney General under George H. W. Bush
If former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony will have any value tomorrow, it should be to guide Congress to satisfy its constitutionally distinct role. Mueller, a former FBI director, has always displayed a “just the facts approach.” He already has contradicted Attorney General William Barr’s sycophantic characterization of the results of the investigation by firmly stating that if his staff had concluded that the president was vindicated, he would have said so; he didn’t. But that stance leaves some important questions unasked, and some potentially valuable answers unknown. It’s time for Congress to ask, and for Mueller to answer, those questions.
These questions are not abstract to me. I’m a former federal line prosecutor, and from 1989 to 1993, I served in the administration of President George H. W. Bush as assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. Thereafter, I was the acting attorney general during the early months of the Clinton administration. Representing the United States at all levels of the federal courts, I have, at various times over 50 years, litigated a range of cases involving important public issues, and have more than a little knowledge about what it takes to support an indictment against corrupt public officials and more typical federal criminal defendants. So when I read the Mueller report, I bring a prosecutor’s eye to the work, and as a former colleague of Robert Mueller, I have confidence in his integrity and judgment.
But it’s also why I’m painfully aware that, so far, both Congress and the press have responded to the report by indulging in pettiness and sensationalism, instead of fulfilling the roles that the Framers of the Constitution envisioned. Tomorrow, they will have the chance, instead, to enable Americans and their representatives to make well-informed political choices, and to ensure that this remains a free country governed by the rule of law, not by bombast or political partisanship.
[Read: The dirty secret of Mueller’s testimony? Voters might not care.]
The Mueller report runs 448 pages, and the average person has had little opportunity to read and study it in depth. Congress can satisfy its responsibility to ensure that the American voting public has access to compelling facts on the important national issues that the Mueller report raises, as it logically pursues the legislative avenues that the Framers laid down for it in the Constitution. The press also has a role in separating fact from fiction, and evidence from opinion. And there is much that the press can do with respect to reporting the facts underlying the Mueller findings that hasn’t been done yet. The signal-to-noise ratio of the reporting to date has been less than optimal. Here is the chance to improve that.
....
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