When Robert Mueller appears before the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees on July 17, Democrats will be scrapping for any new nugget of information while Republicans prosecute a conspiracy-laden smear campaign.
Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, for instance, told Politico that Mueller must answer for the "irreparable damage" he’s caused. To Gohmert, the special counsel's report simply "reinforced the anal opening that I believe Mueller to be.”
Expect dogged Trump allies like Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Matt Gaetz of Florida, and Devin Nunes of California to hatch whatever they can dream up to muddy up the facts of Mueller’s meticulously investigated 448-page report. One tack they plan on taking is to grill Mueller on when exactly he concluded he couldn't charge any Americans with conspiracy in an effort to imply that Mueller allowed the conspiracy chatter to fester longer than necessary.
"Did he intentionally wait until after 2018 midterms, or what?” Jordan wonders, though Politico notes they have "no evidence" to back up such a claim. They're just going to go on a public fishing expedition during the hearing.
They will also try to exploit the bogus claims that Mueller's team was chock full of angry Democrats just trying to settle a score with Trump. So expect lots of talk about former FBI agent Peter Strzok and the texts he exchanged with then-FBI attorney Lisa Page.
And finally, don't forget the infamous Steele Dossier, which is referenced about a dozen times in the redacted version of Mueller's tome. Republicans have spent the entirety of Trump's presidency unsuccessfully trying to make the case that the FBI premised its inquiry on Christopher Steele’s document. But no matter how many hundreds of classified documents they made public, they were never able to find a foundation for that baseless theory. Nothing like a public hearing to give it another go.