CHABOT: Thank you.
Director Mueller, my Democratic colleagues were very disappointed in your report. They were expecting you to say something along the lines of he was — why President Trump deserves to be impeached, much as Ken Starr did relative to President Clinton back about 20 years ago. Well, you didnt, so their strategy had to change. Now they allege that theres plenty of evidence in your report to impeach the president, but the American people just didnt read it. And this hearing today is their last best hope to build up some sort of groundswell across America to impeach President Trump. Thats what this is really all about today.
Now a few questions: On page 103 of Volume 2 of your report, when discussing the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, you referenced, quote, the firm that produced Steele reporting, unquote. The name of that firm was Fusion GPS. Is that correct?
MUELLER: And youre on page 103?
CHABOT: 103, thats correct, Volume 2. When you talk about the — the firm that produced the Steele reporting, the name of the firm that produced that was Fusion GPS. Is that correct?
MUELLER: Yeah, I — Im not familiar with — with that. I (inaudible)
CHABOT: (inaudible) Its not — its not a trick question, right? It was Fusion GPS. Now, Fusion GPS produced the opposition research document wide — widely known as the Steele dossier, and the owner of Fusion GPA (sic) was someone named Glenn Simpson. Are — are you familiar with...
MUELLER: This is outside my purview.
CHABOT: OK. Glenn Simpson was never mentioned in the 448-page Mueller report, was he?
MUELLER: Well, as I — as I say, its outside my purview and its being handled in the department by others.
I am still flabbergasted at how little Mueller knew about this whole thing. It was shocking then and it surely has not and will not age well with anyone even halfway paying attention to this farce.
Regarding this piece it is interesting. I think Bongino nailed this long ago and there were multiple efforts to push the Steele dossier and the overall narrative/noise of Russia at this point in the campaign.
There is a good piece linked on Fox right now detailing an interesting interview with Andrew McCarthy on what the “goals” were. Andy seems to be a pretty judicious and sober pundit with a lot of institutional knowledge and he has now finally admitted that the last administration attempted to destroy the next administration.
Yes, we knew it, but his admission is an important step in that he is not a “partisan” like others.
I said long ago that I thought the dam would burst with the media and more of them would begin to see the game that was being played. I was wrong. I think the media is so married to this farce it will be very hard, if not impossible, for them to admit they were (willingly) duped and used unless the facts are incontrovertible. Even then, I expect many in the media to continue the lie about Russia just as the GOPe does.
Can anyone name one thing Russia or Russians did to influence our election and body politic other than some rich men talking to Steele? Anyone? Did they change votes? Did they run meaningful ads? All I know if are some clickbait political ads from a clickbait farm on facebook - pretty much standard fare for the internet and we know there were pro-Hillary ads and pro-Trump ads. The figure I remember was a few hundred thousand dollars. Nothing in comparison to what was spent by HRC and the various PACs and advocacy groups in the last election.
I want to see people start calling out these idiots who keep talking about Russian interference. Fact - the only meaningful Russian interference in our election was coordinated by the HRC campaign and the DNC. Fact. Anything else at this point should be called a lie.
That’s really kind of funny, or it would be funny if it wasn’t so disgusting.
Mueller was like the opposite of Chauncey Gardner.