Thursday during MSNBC’s coverage of the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) said the report shows the Russians “succeeded” in helping Donald Trump to win the 2016 presidential election.
Speier said, “We have an ultimate responsibility to dig very into this document, to have Special Counsel Mueller come and testify. I actually think that the report is weak, as it relates to volume one, in terms of asking subsequent questions of the various parties that they talked to. I would also say that what we have here now is a situation where the attorney general of the United States of America has been corrupted. For him to say this morning, and I agree with Chris Matthews, that somehow there was an attempt to intervene in the election. There was no attempt. They succeeded. Russia succeeded in intervening in our election. The real test right now is where Congress will lay aside political interests and do what I think special counsel Mueller is jumping up and down and telling us to do is do what he could not do because the office of legal counsel has a guideline that you cannot indict a sitting president.”
She continued, “I think that it is very fundamental; the president does not want to suggest that he didn’t win this election above board. The truth of the matter is, he probably should not be the president of the United States but for the Russian intervention. So denying the Russian intervention in the election serves his purposes and that is why there has been a reluctance by the attorney general, the president of the united states and so many others to somehow minimize the Russian engagement that was a frontal attack on the United States of America.”
On Mueller, Speier added, “I don’t know to what extent he felt that time was of the essence he wanted to get the report out. And since the office of legal counsel has guidelines that says you cannot indict a sitting president, he is really throwing the ball to the Congress to take action that he felt his hands were tied from doing.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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