Is there any organization as slow and lacking in common sense as Congress? I don’t mean every member in there, but as a whole. Robert Mueller finished his investigation of Russia in March and handed his report to Attorney General Barr. After Barr blacked out about five percent of it because of top secret material, he published it. Weeks later, Congress is still arguing about it.

Last week Barr was called on to explain what’s in the Mueller report to both the Senate and the House.  But after Barr answered questions from Senators, the Chairman of the Judicial Committee in the House decided they needed to bring in an expert lawyer to interrogate him, thereby admitting the members weren’t smart enough to question him alone. Next they want to question the source himself, Mr. Mueller, in late May.

Here’s my question: why drag this out over two or three months? See, right after they read the 400-page report, why didn’t a few of the top leaders in Congress have a sit down meeting with Barr and Mueller? Mr. Mueller spent two years preparing the report, so he probably has a pretty good idea what is in it.  Mr. Barr would have had a couple of weeks to get familiar with it, but couldn’t be expected to know all the background details.

I would suggest starting with these questions:
“Mr. Mueller, in how many instances did Russia try to conspire with the Trump campaign?” Answer: “13.”
“In how many of these attempts was Russia successful?”  “None.”
“So there was no collusion, no conspiracy. When did you reach that conclusion?” “About a year ago, confirmed for sure in February 2018.”
“Is that when you began Part 2 of your investigation, obstruction of justice?” “Yes.”
“If there was no conspiracy, why did you suspect obstruction of justice?” “Well, President Trump kept insisting, vehemently, there was no collusion so we felt like he was trying to hide something and obstruct us from finding it.”
“Did you find any obstruction?” “Well, (long pause) we spent another year investigating, and another ten million dollars, and my longtime acquaintance, Bill Barr, had just been named Attorney General so I wanted to give him the opportunity to make at least one decision, based on our evidence.”
“Let me switch to Mr. Barr. What is your decision on obstruction of justice?” “Since there was no conspiracy, no crime, then it’s hard to find obstruction. And keep in mind that you can talk about it, even discuss it with colleagues, but if there is no action taken to obstruct, then no judge or jury would convict you of obstruction.”

Of course, this informative meeting never took place in late March, although it could have. Do you like the questions? I can’t vouch for the answers, but they seem reasonable.

We’ll have to wait another month or two for these Congressional investigations to finish. Several folks in Congress seem to want the questions to continue for many more months, maybe even to October 2020.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

“It looks like you don’t make a good witness or committee member in a Washington investigation unless you call each other a liar or insult the President of the United States.” DT #2787, July 11, 1935

“Mr. Roosevelt gets back tomorrow and his fishing trip will be followed by an investigation. The Democrats claim he caught some fish and the Republicans are equally insistent that he didn’t. It’s like all investigations. It’s going to have a big bearing on the future of this country. If there is men in this country that claim they caught fish when they didn’t catch one, it should be known by the people of this country.” DT #2400, Apr. 12, 1934