Terrified to speak the obvious

So former Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller testified before Congress yesterday. And a lot of political voices are talking about his performance.

Many of those voices concluded: it was underwhelming. There were no bold pronouncements that galvanized the watching public into concluding the nasty guy really does need to be impeached.

Sigh.

Though Mueller was “shaky” and “hesitant,” Daily Kos writer Mark Sumner says these hearings provided enough information to begin impeachment proceedings (as did the actual report, which came out months ago). Re. Hakeem Jeffries pointed out that the nasty guy’s actions met every requirement for a charge of obstruction of justice. Rep. Ted Lieu got Mueller to say the nasty guy would have been indicted if there weren’t the Office of Legal Council instructions (which are not law) that a sitting president can’t be indicted.

But there were many more things Mueller refused to talk about. That leaves us wondering what else he knows.

Sarah Kendzior, in an article for the Globe and Mail, published in Canada (tellingly, not in America) talks about that hesitancy Mueller displayed.

Throughout the hearings, Mr. Mueller acted as if outside forces constrained his ability to answer questions. But he is no longer an employee of the Department of Justice, and they can no longer tell him what to say. The decision to narrow the scope of the questions and even his method of response (he refused to read his own report out loud) was Robert Mueller’s.
…
He acted like a man terrified to speak the obvious.

The question remains: why? An informed public is a powerful public, and a powerful public is crucial when a country is transitioning into autocracy. Any attempt of officials to hide the truth – whether through deliberate lies, institutional obfuscation, or pure gutlessness – hurts the body politic. Mr. Mueller had the opportunity to deliver insight and validate his own work. Instead, he was timid in the face of both Republican smears and Democratic inquiries. He kept noting that he knew the answers to questions that are of great public interest, but that he had no intention of revealing them.

The public has the right to know whether its own government constitutes a threat to national security and if the president is complicit in a crime. Testifying to Congress was Mr. Mueller’s patriotic obligation, and he should not have required a subpoena to show up. His question-dodging mirrored the reticence of his probe: he did not want to indict anyone even when their offences were blatant, and he did not want to explain why. It is disconcerting that one of the few things Mr. Mueller would confirm is that Americans are not safe.

Alas, Kendzior does not know the answer to her question.

One thing Mueller confirmed was that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, is meddling now in American politics, and will continue to meddle through the 2020 election. Senate Majority Leader and democracy gravedigger Mitch McConnell has prevented votes on at least a couple dozen bills to fix the problems. In response to Mueller’s testimony Democrats tried to force a couple election protection bills onto the Senate floor for a vote. But Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi blocked that move. She later tweeted that the bills were “partisan.”

Even though Mueller wimped out, the nasty guy and his minions saw the need for a distraction. So this morning Attorney General William Barr announced the resumption of executions of federal prisoners on death row.

There have been no federal executions since 2003, for a variety of reasons. These include not wanting to mistakenly execute an innocent person and being skeptical that existing execution protocols are humane.

The executions probably can’t happen before December and will definitely face court challenges.

Hunter of Daily Kos wrote about this announcement and ends with this:

If we were to be extraordinarily cynical about it, we would note that regimes around the world have long staged new rounds of prisoner executions to distract the public during times of rising opposition to government leaders. Sometimes the prisoners are indeed very bad people. It makes for good press, something new to discuss and have emotions over in the cafes while the government brags about the obvious good it is doing. If we were to be extraordinarily cynical about it.