Opinion: Robert Mueller failed to do his duty
By Ronald A. Klain Ronald A. Klain Contributing columnist focused on public policy, legal issues and political affairs Bio Follow Contributing columnist April 19 at 4:43 PM Robert S. Mueller III is a distinguished public servant. But his much-anticipated report comes up short in many respects, and Democrats made a mistake to put so much confidence in it as the touchstone of accountability for President Trump and his campaign.
The oft-repeated wisdom that Mueller “knew things we did not know” turned out to be vastly overestimated.
This starts with his failure to get Trump to answer questions in person. There was ample precedent for insisting on such an interview: Bill Clinton testified before a grand jury in the Whitewater investigation; George W. Bush submitted to an interview with special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald about the Valerie Plame matter. In this case, with uncertainty about what the president knew about his son Donald Trump Jr.
Instead, Mueller only offers the wan explanation that — by the time he formally asked for an interview with Trump — he already had “substantial evidence” about the events being investigated, and therefore, “the costs of potentially lengthy constitutional litigation, with resulting delay in finishing our investigation, [outweighed] . . . the anticipated benefits for our investigation and report.”This reflects two mistakes of historic proportion.
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