And it doesn’t need embellishment, or so says Mikhaila Fogel of Lawfare, with regard to the upcoming grilling of Robert Mueller by the House Judiciary and Intel Committees. After reviewing a production put on by Hollywood, she has some words of advice to the notably attention-hungry House members sitting on these committees:
Robert Mueller, whatever his skills may be as a prosecutor or FBI director, is no classically trained actor. If his public remarks on the report and his congressional testimony in his role as FBI director are any guides, Congress should expect an unemotional performance. He will be dry and, as he promised, will not go outside the bounds of the report. He will present the evidence, plain and simple. But because the evidence is quite compelling, members of Congress should embrace the opportunity to present that evidence, without taint of political dogma or high emotion. In short, they should work with the script and the leading man they’ve got.
“The Investigation” gave Congress a low-stakes dry run of presenting the Mueller report to the public. While a group of Hollywood A-listers can’t tell Congress much about what to ask Mueller when he sits down to testify on July 17, they can show members of Congress where to look in crafting their own questions and how to deliver those questions. To the question of where, the answer is the 448 pages Mueller has already written. As for how, the answer is with seriousness of purpose and without pretentious or pontification. The hearing will be a spectacle—but it doesn’t have to be a circus.
And, for goodness’s sake, let Mueller have the last word.
They say that presentation is as important as content, and that’s certainly true. The job of the committee is to elicit information from Mueller in a language that is easily understood by the citizenry, not in obscure jargon. Here’s hoping these members of the House of Representatives can manage it.
