It’s Mueller (Report) Time

If you are like me, you long to spend your summer enjoying a good mystery or even a romance on the beach. Instead, I am reading the Mueller report, a 448-page document by special counsel Robert Mueller on a probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.

The report was on the New York Times best seller list for 10 weeks. Go to the Amazon website and see what a best seller it is. My favorite quote from a book review is:

“The Mueller report is that rare Washington tell-all that surpasses its pre-publication hype…the best book by far on the workings of the Trump presidency.” —Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post

Sadly, many have the “best book,” but few have read the report otherwise known as the Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election. A recent Politico article documents this unfortunate state of affairs, ‘What’s the point?’ Lawmakers fess up to not fully reading the Mueller report.

The point for Black women is that the Mueller report spotlights a tale of two criminal justice systems, one for the well-connected and another for the rest of us. Prisons are overcrowded with Black and brown people and the poor. We cannot even imagine our people being called an unindicted co-conspirator, a name frequently used to describe the President of the United States during the probe.

Fortunately there is a new reason for lawmakers and their constituents to listen to the free audio of the Mueller report. At a hearing scheduled for July 24, the former special counsel will testify before Congress on his findings.  The New York Times has a good recap of the two-year investigation that “issued more than 100 criminal counts against dozens of people, including six Trump advisers or officials.” 

The hearing, like the report itself, has been a long hard-fought road with lots of delays. First there were extended negotiations about whether Mueller would testify. He does not want to testify. He stated that “the report is my testimony.” But as part of lawmaker’s oversight role Congress has a responsibility to demand answers to some serious questions. Lawfare blog’s Ben Wittes does an excellent job of pretending to be a member of Congress with five minutes to question Mueller.

In a July 11th article, Politico reporter Andrew Dsiderio asked one of the more pressing questions that Mueller should answer:

In your report, you noted that Donald Trump satisfied all three elements required in a court of law to show that the president committed obstruction of justice. Yet you declined to recommend charges. Isn’t demonstrating that the president committed all the elements of a crime essentially the same as saying that he broke the law?

Mueller’s answers to this question and others like it are a big deal. The televised responses from the former special counsel may shift momentum in the presidential election. We should pay attention. That means reading the Mueller report, watching the hearing and following #SisterWatch. We cannot afford to let any messenger spin answers away from the truth.

Holli L. Holliday is a practicing lawyer and president of Sisters Lead Sisters Vote, a nonprofit c4 organization for, by and of black women.