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Reaction to Mueller Report Divides Along Partisan Lines
By Peter Baker and Nicholas Fandos
WASHINGTON — House Democrats vowed on Friday to pursue the revelations in the special counsel’s report on President Trump but drew little Republican support in a nation still deeply polarized over the investigation that has dogged the White House for two years.
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena demanding that the Justice Department hand over an unredacted copy of Robert S. Mueller III’s report along with underlying evidence by May 1 and promised “major hearings” into its findings. And Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts became the most prominent Democrat to call for impeachment.
But most Republican lawmakers remained silent on the report, meaning any effort to force Mr. Trump from office faced long odds barring an unexpected change of political circumstances. The months to come may see more fireworks over the report, including a constitutional clash in court over releasing it in full, but privately some Democrats have concluded that the president’s fate will probably be decided at the ballot box next year.
While Mr. Trump had initially greeted the report as an exoneration, he spent at least part of the day in Florida stewing about disloyal aides who talked with investigators and sounded more defensive than celebratory. He expressed particular unhappiness over the report’s inclusion of granular accounts of his efforts to derail the investigation based on F.B.I. interviews and notes of his own advisers.
“Statements are made about me by certain people in the Crazy Mueller Report, in itself written by 18 Angry Democrat Trump Haters, which are fabricated & totally untrue,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “Watch out for people that take so-called ‘notes,’ when the notes never existed until needed.”
“Because I never agreed to testify, it was not necessary for me to respond to statements made in the ‘Report’ about me, some of which are total bullshit & only given to make the other person look good (or me to look bad),” he went on. “This was an Illegally Started Hoax that never should have happened, a…”
At that point he stopped and did not finish the thought until eight hours later: “…big, fat waste of time, energy and money.” He went on to vow to go after his pursuers, whom he called “some very sick and dangerous people who have committed very serious crimes, perhaps even Spying or Treason.”
The mention of notes appeared to refer to his former White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, who told investigators that the president pressed him to have Mr. Mueller fired and complained when he took notes. Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, challenged the credibility of Mr. McGahn’s account later on Friday. “It can’t be taken at face value,” he said in an interview. “It could be the product of an inaccurate recollection or could be the product of something else.”
But Mr. McGahn had no motive to lie, according to Mr. Mueller, and he rebutted Mr. Giuliani through his own lawyer. “It’s a mystery why Rudy Giuliani feels the need to relitigate incidents the attorney general and deputy attorney general have concluded were not obstruction,” said the lawyer, William A. Burck. “But they are accurately described in the report.”
On the campaign trail, Democratic presidential candidates condemned the president’s conduct and called for action against him.
“The severity of this misconduct demands that elected officials in both parties set aside political considerations and do their constitutional duty,” said Ms. Warren, who is seeking the Democratic nomination. “That means the House should initiate impeachment proceedings against the president of the United States.”
In an era of deep polarization, Mr. Mueller’s 448-page report quickly became yet another case study in the disparate realities of American politics as each camp interpreted it through its own lens and sought to weaponize it against the other side.
The president’s defenders insisted he was cleared because even though Mr. Mueller confirmed a wide-ranging Russian effort to interfere in the 2016 election on Mr. Trump’s behalf, the special counsel established no criminal conspiracy with his campaign and opted not to decide whether to accuse the president of obstruction of justice. Mr. Trump’s critics called it a devastating indictment of a candidate willing to profit from the help of a foreign power and a president who repeatedly sought to disrupt or end the investigation even if he was not charged with violating the law.
[Read the Mueller Report: Searchable Document and Index]
Few Republicans expressed concern about Mr. Mueller’s findings, with most lawmakers out of town for the spring recess studiously avoiding comment. One of the exceptions was Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who said he was “appalled” that the president’s campaign welcomed help from Russia.
“I am sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office of the land, including the president,” he said in a statement. “Reading the report,” he added, “is a sobering revelation of how far we have strayed from the aspirations and principles of the founders.”
Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said the report “documents a number of actions taken by the president or his associates that were inappropriate,” but pointed to the conclusion by Attorney General William P. Barr and his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, that the evidence did not warrant charging Mr. Trump.
More typical among Republicans was the reaction of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who has been working closely with the White House on the crisis in Venezuela. “We should ALL be alarmed at how effective Putin was & we should ALL be relieved, not disappointed, that President didn’t collaborate with him,” he tweeted.
The subpoena issued on Friday by Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, escalated a fight with Mr. Barr over what material Congress is entitled to see from the investigation even as Democrats continued to pummel the attorney general for effectively serving as the president’s defense lawyer.
Mr. Nadler asked for all evidence obtained by Mr. Mueller’s investigators, including summaries of witness interviews and classified intelligence — and indicated that he intended to air it to the public.
“Even the redacted version of the report outlines serious instances of wrongdoing by President Trump and some of his closest associates,” Mr. Nadler said in a statement. “It now falls to Congress to determine the full scope of that alleged misconduct and to decide what steps we must take going forward.”
The Justice Department dismissed the subpoena, saying that Mr. Barr had made “only minimal redactions” and offered to allow congressional leaders to view a version with even fewer deletions.
“In light of this, Congressman Nadler’s subpoena is premature and unnecessary,” said Kerri Kupec, a department spokeswoman. “The department will continue to work with Congress to accommodate its legitimate requests consistent with the law and long-recognized executive branch interests.”
Mr. Barr redacted about 10 percent of the report, blacking out information that would divulge secret grand jury evidence, expose classified intelligence, compromise continuing investigations, or invade the privacy or damage the reputation of “peripheral third parties.” Democratic leaders on Friday rejected Mr. Barr’s offer to show just select leaders a version with only the grand jury material redacted.
[See which sections of the Mueller report were redacted.]
Mr. Nadler’s May 1 deadline falls a day before Mr. Barr is scheduled to testify publicly before the Judiciary Committee in what is expected to be an explosive session in which Democrats plan to excoriate his handling of the report and Republicans will urge their colleagues to accept that there was no criminality and move on.
In addition to Mr. Barr’s testimony and an outstanding invitation for Mr. Mueller, Mr. Nadler said on Friday that he would hold additional hearings to “get to the bottom of this” and “educate the country as to what went on.”
“The idea is not to decide whether to debate articles of impeachment — we may get to that point,” Mr. Nadler said in an interview with WNYC. “The idea is to find out exactly what went on, who did what, what institutional safeguards were gotten around and how, and then decide what to do about it.”
Mr. Nadler’s Republican counterpart on the Judiciary Committee, Representative Doug Collins of Georgia, blasted the subpoena as going “wildly overbroad” and encouraged Mr. Nadler to narrow its terms and extend the response time. As written, he said, Mr. Nadler’s subpoena was demanding “millions of records that would be plainly against the law to share” because of investigators’ extensive use of a grand jury.
“The attorney general offered up a 400-page report that he wasn’t bound to provide,” Mr. Collins said. “The attorney general stands ready to testify before our committee and to have the special counsel do the same. Yet Chairman Nadler disregards all of this good-faith transparency without even taking the department up on its offer to review material under the redactions.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has publicly opposed impeachment unless Democrats can attract bipartisan support in the House and the Senate, where 20 Republicans would be needed to achieve the two-thirds vote required for conviction.
Ms. Pelosi has scheduled a conference call for all House Democrats on Monday to discuss what she called “a grave matter.” Speaking to reporters in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she was meeting with political leaders on Friday morning, Ms. Pelosi said she would not, as a matter of principle, criticize the president while out of the country.
But she signaled that Congress would not sit by. “We believe that Article I, the legislative branch, has the responsibility of oversight of our democracy, and we will exercise that,” she said.
She faces a restive liberal base that is pressing her to go further and open a formal impeachment inquiry.
“Many know I take no pleasure in discussions of impeachment,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the closely watched New York freshman, wrote on Twitter. “But,” she added, “the report squarely puts this on our doorstep.”
Other Democrats were more reticent, arguing that the party was better off litigating the future on the campaign trail.
“We should certainly see the entire, unredacted report,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey. “But if we spend the next six months obsessed with this alone, instead of job training, health care and infrastructure, that would be a big mistake.”
Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from New York.
Follow Peter Baker and Nicholas Fandos on Twitter: @peterbakernyt and @npfandos.
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