[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 75 (Tuesday, May 7, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2663-S2667]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Mueller Report

  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, a little while ago, the majority leader 
stood on this floor to speak about the investigation into the 2016 
Presidential election. He triumphantly declared ``case closed''--``case 
closed.'' Wishing will not make it so.
  I read the Mueller report. I read it cover to cover, every page. I 
read late into the evening on the day it was released and into the next 
morning. I didn't start reading by expecting to make a statement about 
it, but I was shaken by the evidence that the special counsel had 
gathered and by the conclusions that he drew.
  The majority leader would have us believe that scrutinizing this 
evidence is a matter of Democrats refusing ``to make peace with the 
American people's choice.'' He wants to portray this as just an 
``outrage industrial complex'' because some people don't like that 
President Trump won. Again, wishing will not make it so.
  Sure, there is plenty to be outraged about in the special counsel's 
report, but no one here is pitching a fit that Democrats didn't win the 
election. No, what is at stake here is the Constitution of the United 
States of America. Will Congress do its job and fulfill its 
constitutional duty to serve as a check on the President? The answer 
from the majority leader and his Republican colleagues is no--``case 
closed.'' ``Case closed,'' they cry.
  Instead of reading the words of the special counsel's report, they 
just want to circle the wagons around this President. Instead of 
protecting the Constitution, they want to protect the President. This 
is a huge difference.
  At the core of the Constitution is the principle that no one is above 
the law, not even the President of the United States. My oath of office 
is the same as Mitch McConnell's. I swore and he swore to uphold the 
Constitution of the United States. Our Constitution is built on the 
principle of separation of powers precisely to prevent a dictator, an 
autocrat, from taking control of our government. This separation of 
powers is part of the brilliance of our Constitution, and it has served 
us well for centuries.
  Yes, I took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, 
and so did everybody in the Senate and the House, including the 
majority leader. Now we must act to fulfill that oath. There is no 
``political inconvenience'' exception to the U.S. Constitution. If any 
other human being in this country had done what is documented in the 
Mueller report, they would be arrested and put in jail.
  The majority leader doesn't want us to consider the mountain of 
evidence against the President. That is wrong. He and his colleagues 
have moved to protect the President instead of defending the 
Constitution. Maybe my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are 
confused or maybe they just didn't read the report. Well, I did, and 
there

[[Page S2664]]

were some passages that stuck out to me.
  Since the majority leader has pronounced his judgment here on the 
Senate floor, I would like to spend some time reminding him of exactly 
what this report said. Let's start with this one. Robert Mueller's 
report makes clear that the President took steps to impede the Mueller 
investigation and that his report, though it does not charge the 
President, did not exonerate him from wrongdoing. According to Mueller:

       On May 17, 2017, the Acting Attorney General for the Russia 
     investigation appointed a Special Counsel to conduct the 
     investigation and related matters. The President reacted to 
     news that a Special Counsel had been appointed by telling 
     advisors that it was ``the end of his presidency'' and 
     demanding that Sessions resign. Sessions submitted his 
     resignation, but the President ultimately did not accept it. 
     The President told aides that the Special Counsel had 
     conflicts of interest and suggested that the Special Counsel 
     therefore could not serve. The President's advisors told him 
     the asserted conflicts were meritless and had already been 
     considered by the Department of Justice. On June 14, 2017, 
     the media reported that the Special Counsel's Office was 
     investigating whether the President had obstructed justice. 
     Press reports called this ``a major turning point'' in the 
     investigation: while Comey had told the President he was not 
     under investigation, following Comey's firing, the President 
     now was under investigation. The President reacted to this 
     news with a series of tweets criticizing the Department of 
     Justice and the Special Counsel's investigation. On June 17, 
     2017, the President called McGahn [who was White House 
     Counsel] at home and directed him to call the Acting Attorney 
     General and say that the Special Counsel had conflicts of 
     interest and must be removed.

  That ends the quote from the Mueller report. According to McGahn, the 
President was extremely insistent, calling him repeatedly and not 
taking no for an answer. Here is what McGahn told the special counsel--
back to the Mueller report:

       On Saturday, June 17, 2017, the President called McGahn and 
     told him to have the Special Counsel removed. McGahn was at 
     home and the President was at Camp David. In interviews with 
     this Office, McGahn recalled that the President called him at 
     home twice and on both occasions directed him to call 
     Rosenstein and say that Mueller had conflicts that precluded 
     him from serving as Special Counsel.
       On the first call, McGahn recalled that the President said 
     something like, ``You gotta do this. You gotta call Rod.'' 
     McGahn said he told the President that he would see what he 
     could do. McGahn was perturbed by the call and did not intend 
     to act on the request. He and other advisors believed the 
     asserted conflicts were ``silly'' and ``not real,'' and they 
     had previously communicated that view to the President. 
     McGahn also had made clear to the President that the White 
     House Counsel's Office should not be involved in any effort 
     to press the issue of conflicts. McGahn was concerned about 
     having any role in asking the Acting Attorney General to fire 
     the Special Counsel because he had grown up in the Reagan era 
     and wanted to be more like Judge Robert Bork and not 
     ``Saturday Night Massacre Bork.'' McGahn considered the 
     President's request to be an inflection point and he wanted 
     to hit the brakes.

  That ends the quote from the Mueller report.
  Starting again from the Mueller report:

       When the President called McGahn a second time to follow up 
     on the order to call the Department of Justice, McGahn 
     recalled the President was more direct, saying something 
     like, ``Call Rod, tell Rod that Mueller has conflicts and 
     can't be the Special Counsel.'' McGahn recalled the President 
     telling him ``Mueller has to go'' and ``Call me back when you 
     do it.'' McGahn understood the President to be saying that 
     the Special Counsel had to be removed by Rosenstein. To end 
     the conversation with the President, McGahn left the 
     President with the impression that McGahn would call 
     Rosenstein. McGahn recalled that he had already said no to 
     the President's request, and he was worn down. So he just 
     wanted to get off the phone.
       McGahn recalled feeling trapped because he did not plan to 
     follow the President's directive, but he did not know what he 
     would say next time the President called. McGahn decided he 
     had to resign. He called his personal lawyer, and then he 
     called his chief of staff, Annie Donaldson, to inform her of 
     his decision. He then drove to the office to pack his 
     belongings and submit his resignation letter. Donaldson 
     recalled that McGahn told her the President had called and 
     demanded that he contact the Department of Justice and that 
     the President wanted him to do something that McGahn did not 
     want to do. McGahn told Donaldson that the President had 
     called at least twice and, in one of the calls, asked, ``have 
     you done it?'' McGahn did not tell Donaldson the specifics of 
     the President's request because he was consciously trying not 
     to involve her in the investigation, but Donaldson inferred 
     that the President's directive was related to the Russia 
     investigation. Donaldson prepared to resign along with 
     McGahn.
       That evening, McGahn called both Priebus and Bannon and 
     told them that he intended to resign. McGahn recalled that, 
     after speaking with his attorney and given the nature of the 
     President's request, he decided not to share details of the 
     President's request with other White House staff. Priebus 
     recalled that McGahn said that the President had asked him to 
     ``do crazy shit,'' but he thought McGahn did not tell him the 
     specifics of the President's request because McGahn was 
     trying to protect Priebus from what he did not need to know.

  Priebus and Bannon both urged McGahn not to quit, and McGahn 
ultimately returned to work that Monday and remained in his position. 
He had not told the President directly that he planned to resign, and 
when they next saw each other the President did not ask McGahn whether 
he had followed through with calling Rosenstein. Around the same time, 
Chris Christie recalled a telephone call with the President in which 
the President asked what Christie thought about the President firing 
the Special Counsel. Christie advised against doing so because there 
was no substantive basis for the President to fire the Special Counsel, 
and because the President would lose support from Republicans in 
Congress if he did so.
  That is the end of that part of the Mueller report.
  Now, the other President's aides ultimately refused to carry out his 
orders and prepared to resign rather than do so. The President 
persisted.
  Mueller recounts:

       Two days after directing McGahn to have the Special Counsel 
     removed, the President made another attempt to affect the 
     course of the Russia investigation. On June 19, 2017, the 
     President met one-on-one in the Oval Office with his former 
     campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, a trusted advisor 
     outside the government, and dictated a message for 
     Lewandowski to deliver to Sessions. The message said that 
     Sessions should publicly announce that, notwithstanding his 
     recusal from the Russia investigation, that the investigation 
     was ``very unfair'' to the President, the President had done 
     nothing wrong, and Sessions planned to meet with the Special 
     Counsel and ``let [him] move forward with investigating 
     election meddling for future elections.'' Lewandowski said he 
     understood what the President wanted Sessions to do.
       One month later, in another private meeting with 
     Lewandowski on July 19, 2017, the President asked about the 
     status of his message for Sessions to limit the Special 
     Counsel's investigation to future election interference. 
     Lewandowski told the President that the message would be 
     delivered soon. Hours after that meeting, the President 
     publicly criticized Sessions in an interview with the New 
     York Times, and then issued a series of tweets making it 
     clear that Sessions's job was in jeopardy. Lewandowski did 
     not want to deliver the President's message personally, so he 
     asked senior White House official Rick Dearborn to deliver it 
     to Sessions. Dearborn was uncomfortable with the task and did 
     not follow through.

  That is the conclusion of that part of the report.
  Now, President Trump also took steps to ``prevent public disclosure 
of evidence'' that was related to the special counsel's investigation.
  Back to the Mueller report:

       In early 2018, the press reported that the President had 
     directed McGahn to have the special counsel removed in June 
     2017 and that McGahn had threatened to resign rather than 
     carry out the order. The President reacted to the news 
     stories by directing White House officials to tell McGahn to 
     dispute the story and to create a record stating that he had 
     not been ordered to have the Special Counsel removed. McGahn 
     told those officials that the media reports were accurate in 
     stating that the President had directed McGahn to have the 
     Special Counsel removed. The President then met with McGahn 
     in the Oval Office and again pressured him to deny the 
     reports.

  That is the end of that section.
  Now, the President also tried to influence witnesses, like Michael 
Flynn and Paul Manafort, while they cooperated with the special 
counsel.
  Back to the Mueller report:

       With regard to Flynn, the President sent private and public 
     messages to Flynn encouraging him to stay strong and 
     conveying that the President still cared about him before he 
     began to cooperate with the government. When Flynn's 
     attorneys withdrew him from a joint defense agreement with 
     the President, signaling that Flynn was potentially 
     cooperating with the government, the President's personal 
     counsel initially reminded Flynn's counsel of the President's 
     warm feelings toward Flynn and said ``that still remains.'' 
     But when Flynn's counsel reiterated that Flynn could no 
     longer share information under a joint defense agreement, the 
     President's personal counsel stated that the decision would 
     be interpreted as reflecting Flynn's hostility toward the 
     President.

[[Page S2665]]

     That sequence of events could have had the potential to 
     affect Flynn's decision to cooperate, as well as the 
     extent of that cooperation.
       With respect to Manafort, there is evidence that the 
     President's actions had the potential to influence Manafort's 
     decision whether to cooperate with the government. The 
     President and his personal counsel made repeated statements 
     suggesting that a pardon was a possibility for Manafort, 
     while also making it clear that the President did not want 
     Manafort to ``flip''--

  That is in quotes in the Mueller report--

     and cooperate with the government. On June 15, 2018, the day 
     the judge presiding over Manafort's D.C. case was considering 
     whether to revoke his bail, the President said that he ``felt 
     badly'' for Manafort and stated, ``I think a lot of it is 
     very unfair.'' And when asked about a pardon for Manafort, 
     the President said, ``I do want to see people treated fairly. 
     That's what it's all about.'' Later that day, after 
     Manafort's bail was revoked, the President called it a 
     ``tough sentence'' that was ``Very unfair!'' Two days later, 
     the President's personal counsel stated that individuals 
     involved in the Special Counsel's investigation could receive 
     a pardon ``if, in fact, the [P]resident and his advisors . . 
     . come to the conclusion that you have been treated 
     unfairly,''--using language that paralleled how the President 
     had already described the treatment of Manafort.

  This is Mueller's report.

       Those statements, combined with the President's 
     commendation of Manafort for being a ``brave man'' who 
     ``refused to break,'' suggested that a pardon was a more 
     likely possibility if Manafort continued not to cooperate 
     with the government. And while Manafort eventually pleaded 
     guilty pursuant to a cooperation agreement, he was found to 
     have violated the agreement by lying to investigators.

  That concludes that portion of the Mueller report.
  Now, Mueller declined to take a position because of the existing 
Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel policy that you cannot 
indict a sitting President. He intended to leave the matter to 
Congress. He laid the evidence out in the Mueller report, which made 
clear that the President of the United States obstructed justice.
  And don't just take my word for it. Just yesterday, over 600 former 
Federal prosecutors wrote a letter stating that ``the conduct of 
President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report 
would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of 
Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in 
multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.''
  So I am going to read their letter because I think it is important, 
and I want to make sure it is in the Record here. Here is the letter 
from more than 600 former prosecutors.

       We are former federal prosecutors. We served under both 
     Republican and Democratic administrations at different levels 
     of the federal system: as line attorneys, supervisors, 
     special prosecutors, United States attorneys, and senior 
     officials at the Department of Justice. The offices in which 
     we served were small, medium, and large; urban, suburban, and 
     rural; and located in all parts of our country.
       Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump 
     described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report would, 
     in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of 
     Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, 
     result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.

  I just want to read that again: ``would . . . result in multiple 
felony charges for obstruction of justice.''

       The Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all 
     of the elements for an obstruction of justice charge. Conduct 
     that obstructed or intended to obstruct the truth-finding 
     process, as to which the evidence of corrupt intent and 
     connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming. These 
     include:
       The President's efforts to fire Mueller and to falsify 
     evidence about that effort;
       The President's effort to limit the scope of Mueller's 
     investigation to exclude his conduct; and
       The President's efforts to prevent witnesses from 
     cooperating with investigators probing him and his campaign.

  This is under the heading in the letter ``Attempts to fire Mueller 
and then create false evidence.''
  Continuing with the letter:

       Despite being advised by then-White House Counsel Don 
     McGahn that he could face legal jeopardy for doing so, Trump 
     directed McGahn on multiple occasions to fire Mueller or to 
     gin up false conflicts of interest as a pretext for getting 
     rid of the Special Counsel. When these acts began to come 
     into public view, Trump made ``repeated efforts to have 
     McGahn deny the story''--going so far as to tell McGahn to 
     write a letter ``for our files'' falsely denying that Trump 
     had directed Mueller's termination.
       Firing Mueller would have seriously impeded the 
     investigation of the President and his associates--
     obstruction in its most literal sense. Directing the creation 
     of false government records in order to prevent or 
     discredit truthful testimony is similarly unlawful. The 
     special counsel's report states: ``Substantial evidence 
     indicates that in repeatedly urging McGahn to dispute that 
     he was ordered to have the Special Counsel terminated, the 
     President acted for the purpose of influencing McGahn's 
     account in order to deflect or prevent scrutiny of the 
     President's conduct toward the investigation.''

  Also within the letter, under the header Attempts to Limit the 
Mueller Investigation, the report describes multiple efforts by the 
President to curtail the scope of the special counsel's investigation.
  First, the President repeatedly pressured then-Attorney General Jeff 
Sessions to reverse his legally mandated decision to recuse himself 
from the investigation. The President stated the reason was that he 
wanted an Attorney General who would ``protect'' him, including from 
the special counsel's investigation. He also directed then-White House 
Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to fire Sessions, and Priebus refused.
  Second, after McGahn told the President he could not contact Sessions 
himself to discuss the investigation, Trump went outside the White 
House and instructed his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to 
carry a demand to Sessions to direct Mueller to confine his 
investigation to future elections. Lewandowski tried and failed to 
contact Sessions in private. After a second meeting with Trump, 
Lewandowski passed Trump's message on to senior White House official 
Rick Dearborn, who Lewandowski thought would be a better messenger 
because of his prior relationship with Sessions. Dearborn did not pass 
along Trump's message.
  As the report explains, ``[s]ubstantial evidence indicates that the 
President's effort to have Sessions limit the scope of the Special 
Counsel's investigation to future election interference was intended to 
prevent further investigative scrutiny of the President's and his 
campaign's conduct.''
  In other words, the President employed a private citizen to try to 
get the Attorney General to limit the scope of an ongoing investigation 
into the President and his associates.
  All of this conduct--trying to control and impede the investigation 
against the President by leveraging his authority over others--is 
similar to conduct we have seen that has been charged against other 
public officials and people in powerful positions.
  The next section of the special counsel's report establishes that the 
President tried to influence the decisions of both Michael Cohen and 
Paul Manafort with regard to cooperating with investigators. Some of 
this tampering and intimidation, including the dangling of pardons, was 
done in plain sight via tweets and public statements. Other such 
behavior was done via private messages through private attorneys, such 
as Trump counsel Rudy Giuliani's message to Cohen's lawyer that Cohen 
should ``[s]leep well tonight[], you have friends in high places.''
  Of course, these aren't the only acts of potential obstruction 
detailed by the special counsel. It would be well within the purview of 
normal prosecutorial judgment also to charge other acts detailed in the 
report.
  We emphasize that these are not matters of close, professional 
judgment. Of course, there are potential defenses or arguments that 
could be raised in response to an indictment of the nature we describe 
here. In our system, every accused person is presumed innocent, and it 
is always the government's burden to prove its case beyond a reasonable 
doubt. Yet to look at these facts and say that a prosecutor could not 
probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice--the standards 
set out in Principles of Federal Prosecution--runs counter to logic and 
our experience.

       As former Federal prosecutors, we recognize that 
     prosecuting obstruction of justice cases is critical because 
     unchecked obstruction, which allows intentional interference 
     with criminal investigations to go unpunished, puts our whole 
     system of justice at risk. We believe strongly that but for 
     the OLC memo, the overwhelming weight of professional 
     judgment would come down in favor of prosecution for the 
     conduct outlined in the Mueller report.

  Over 600 former Federal prosecutors are saying that if we were 
talking

[[Page S2666]]

about any person in this country other than the President of the United 
States, that person would be prosecuted for obstruction of justice. 
Because of that OLC opinion that a sitting President cannot be 
indicted, the only mechanism to hold the President accountable and to 
ensure that the President is not above the law is for Congress to 
initiate impeachment proceedings.
  There has been more commentary. Scholars at Lawfare have put together 
a very helpful piece that breaks down all of the examples documented in 
the Mueller report in which Trump may have obstructed justice. Then it 
analyzes the strength of the case to be made that the President is 
guilty of obstruction of justice.

  Per Lawfare:

       The key question is how Robert Mueller and his team 
     assessed the three elements ``common to most of the relevant 
     statutes'' relating to obstruction of justice, which are an 
     obstructive act, a nexus between the act and an official 
     proceeding, and corrupt intent.
       As Mueller describes, the special counsel's office 
     ``gathered evidence . . . relevant to the elements of those 
     crimes and analyzed them within an elements framework--while 
     refraining from reaching ultimate conclusions about whether 
     crimes were committed'' because of the Office of Legal 
     Counsel (OLC)'s guidelines against the indictment of a 
     sitting president.

  The Lawfare blog identified four instances in the Mueller report that 
documented ``substantial'' evidence of all three of those elements. In 
other words, in the following four examples that were documented in the 
Mueller report, there is ``substantial'' evidence on all three of the 
elements that Mueller based his assessment on that the President 
obstructed justice.
  First, when it comes to the President's efforts to fire Mueller, the 
report found ``substantial evidence''--that is from the report--that 
the President's actions constituted an obstructive act. On page 89, it 
found that the former White House Counsel, Don McGahn, was a ``credible 
witness'' in providing evidence that Trump, indeed, attempted to fire 
Mueller. The report reads that this ``would qualify as an obstructive 
act'' if the firing ``would naturally obstruct the investigation and 
any grand jury proceedings that might flow from the inquiry.''
  Then it established that there was a nexus between the act and an 
official proceeding, reading on page 89 that there is ``substantial 
evidence'' that Trump was aware that ``his conduct was under 
investigation by a federal prosecutor who could present any evidence of 
federal crimes to a grand jury.''
  On the question of intent, the Mueller report found ``substantial 
evidence indicates that the President's attempts to remove the Special 
Counsel were linked to the Special Counsel's oversight of 
investigations that involved the President's conduct[.]''
  The second example that Mueller cites is the President's efforts to 
curtail Mueller. On the question of whether those actions constituted 
an obstructive act, Mueller found that Trump's effort to force Sessions 
to confine the investigation to investigating only future election 
interference ``would qualify as an obstructive act if it would 
naturally obstruct the investigation and any grand jury proceedings 
that might flow from the inquiry.'' The report continues: ``Taken 
together, the President's directives indicate that Sessions was being 
instructed to tell the Special Counsel to end the existing 
investigation into the President and his campaign[.]''
  On the question of whether there was a nexus between the act and an 
official proceeding, Mueller found that at the relevant point, ``the 
existence of a grand jury investigation supervised by the Special 
Counsel was public knowledge.''
  On the question of intent, Mueller found ``substantial evidence'' 
that indicates that Trump's efforts were ``intended to prevent further 
investigative scrutiny of the President's and his campaign's conduct.''
  Mitch McConnell came to the floor to declare that there will be no 
more investigation into what the President has done. Yet the Mueller 
report has made clear that there are repeated instances of obstruction 
of justice. More than 600 Federal prosecutors have now said that what 
is laid out in the Mueller report would constitute obstruction of 
justice and would trigger a prosecution for any human being in this 
country other than for the President of the United States.
  Robert Mueller has put all of the facts and information together for 
us and has abided by the Trump administration's declaration, under the 
Office of Legal Counsel, that a sitting President cannot be indicted 
for his crimes. He has handed it over to the Congress of the United 
States of America for us to do our constitutional duty.
  We are a government that works by a separation of powers. We are not 
a government that circles the wagon around a leader and says that 
everything else falls away. Instead, we say there are powers that are 
given to the President and powers that are given to Congress, and each 
operates as a check on the other.
  The information that has been given to us in the Mueller report 
clearly constitutes adequate information to begin an impeachment 
proceeding in the House of Representatives. No matter how many times 
Mitch McConnell or the rest of the Republicans want to wish that away, 
it is there in black and white in the report.
  I urge every Republican in this Chamber, every Republican and 
Democrat in Congress, and every person in this country to read the 
Mueller report.
  Robert Mueller makes clear that the President of the United States 
worked actively to obstruct justice. There is enough here to bring an 
impeachment proceeding. For us, for this body, for Congress, to back up 
from that and to say that protecting the President is more important 
than protecting the Constitution is not only wrong, it is a violation 
of our oath of office.
  I am here to say one more time and publicly this is not a fight I 
wanted to take on, but this is the fight in front of us now. This is 
not about politics. This is about the Constitution of the United States 
of America.
  We took an oath not to try to protect Donald Trump; we took an oath 
to protect and serve the Constitution of the United States of America, 
and the way we do that is we begin impeachment proceedings now against 
this President.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cruz). The assistant Democratic leader.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from 
Massachusetts for her statement and for going into depth on the Mueller 
report and talking about the findings.
  This morning, of course, we heard the Republican leader, Senator 
McConnell, come to the floor and say something quite different--to 
quote what he said, the work of the special counsel and the Attorney 
General ``and how we can finally end this `Groundhog Day' spectacle, 
stop endlessly relitigating a 2\1/2\-year-old election result, and move 
forward for the American people.''
  It is pretty clear the Republican leader would like to say to the 
American people: Keep on moving, there is nothing to be seen here. But 
we know better.
  If you take a look at the Mueller report: $26 million spent, 50 
attorneys and agents, almost 2 years, scores of indictments that came 
down and some guilty pleas already and yet even more to follow. This 
isn't over, and it will not be over soon, nor should it be.
  It is obvious my Republican colleagues want to move on as quickly as 
possible from talking about how Russia interfered in the 2016 election 
with the stated intent of helping to elect Donald Trump President. They 
definitely don't want to talk about the many links between the Russians 
and the Trump campaign or how, in the words of the Mueller report: 
``The campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information 
stolen and released through Russian efforts.''
  They certainly don't want to talk about the overwhelming evidence 
that Donald Trump obstructed justice.
  Today I believe the count was up to 566 former prosecutors, including 
U.S. attorneys, who believe that, reading the Mueller report, there is 
ample evidence to go forward with the prosecution on obstruction.
  We know Mueller himself has said in the report that it is an opinion 
by the Office of Legal Counsel precluding the indictment and 
prosecution of a President while in office that stopped him short of 
either charging or exonerating the President on this charge.

[[Page S2667]]

  No, my Republican colleagues want to put the Russia investigation in 
the past, and as quickly as possible. And then in the next breath, of 
course, at the hearing where Attorney General Barr appeared, we see 
that they want to return to those thrilling days of yesteryear. They 
say we need to look at Hillary Clinton's emails all over again. That, 
to them, is a more compelling issue. I think they are wrong. The 
interference by a foreign power in the U.S. election is the most 
compelling issue before us, and it cannot and should not be ignored.
  The work on the Russia investigation is not over. The Mueller report 
has 14 criminal investigations that have been referred by the special 
counsel to other Justice Department components. Twelve of those 
referred investigations are redacted so we don't know their nature.
  There is also the counterintelligence side of the investigation. We 
need to fully understand what evidence Special Counsel Mueller 
uncovered about how the Russians were able to accomplish what they did.
  A spokesman for the White House said several days ago that he 
couldn't understand all the furor behind this Russia interference. 
After all, they just bought a couple Facebook ads. Well, it turns out 
he was wrong. There was a lot more involvement, and the Mueller report 
pointed to it.
  Here is my concern: Attorney General Barr's actions have compromised 
his credibility when it comes to overseeing the continuing 
investigations that were brought on by the Mueller inquiry. Barr's 
blatant mischaracterization of the Mueller report in his March 24 
letter and April 18 press conference, his 19-page memo in 2018 that 
showed bias on the question of obstruction, his decision to make a 
prosecutorial judgment on obstruction despite Mueller's view that it 
was not appropriate for the Department to do so in light of that OLC 
opinion, and Barr's many stunning statements before Congress have 
undermined confidence in his independence and his judgment.
  I have called on him publicly and renew that call that he recuse 
himself from those pending criminal investigations and prosecutions 
that emanate from the Mueller report. At a minimum, he should recuse 
himself from the 14 ongoing referred criminal investigations, and 
Special Counsel Mueller and Don McGahn should be called on to testify 
about unresolved questions.
  Why in the world are they trying to cover up this investigation? Why 
wouldn't we bring Bob Mueller before the Senate Judiciary Committee, 
for example, and ask obvious questions?
  Remember, there are two volumes in the Mueller report. The first 
volume relates to Russian interference in the election and our 
continuing concern that they are going to try it again in 2020. 
Shouldn't it be priority one of the Senate Judiciary Committee to have 
Bob Mueller before us, to have the evidence he accumulated carefully 
evaluated to protect the integrity of the election process in 2020? Is 
there any higher priority in a democracy than the integrity of an 
election?
  Clearly, there is, and we have seen it and heard it from the chairman 
of the Judiciary Committee as well as from the Republican leader today. 
The highest priority for them is to move on; make certain that we don't 
spend any moment contemplating, considering, or even arguing about what 
we could do to make this a better and safer democracy in the next 
electoral cycle.
  On the issue of obstruction of justice, I am afraid we are going to 
be debating that for some time, but I certainly would like to hear from 
Bob Mueller, directly, what he did find and why he did not reach a 
conclusion to exonerate the President on that charge. That is a 
critical element.
  Let me say one last word about a recurring theme and message from the 
Republican leader about how the previous President, Barack Obama, did 
not take seriously the threats of Russian involvement in the 2016 
election.
  I think the record speaks for itself. Leading up to October 7, when 
the President came forward and publicly stated what he had been doing--
what his administration had been doing to investigate this Russian 
interference, he called for a bipartisan commitment of Republicans and 
Democrats to stop it in place.
  There was one voice of resistance, and it came from Senator 
McConnell, the Republican leader. He didn't want to take this as 
seriously as President Obama did. So for him to blame President Obama 
for not doing enough is to ignore the obvious. Given the chance, as the 
Republican Senate leader, he did little or nothing to acknowledge the 
Russian threat or do anything about it.
  Now we should do something to make sure 2020 turns out to be an 
election we can be proud of, regardless of the outcome. Let the 
American people have the last word, not Vladimir Putin.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.