At times, lawmakers appeared more intimately familiar with the Robert Mueller's report than he did, and he repeatedly asked to be directed to the section at issue for his own reference. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO Robert Mueller Testimony 'Euphoria': White House, GOP exult after a flat Mueller performance West Wing aides were spiking the proverbial football even before the former special counsel had finished testifying.

The tense opening moments of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s much-anticipated testimony on Capitol Hill gave way to an early sense of relief at the White House, where aides were quietly celebrating what they viewed as disjointed questioning from Democrats and a weak performance from the star witness himself.

Mueller, whose steely reputation has cast a long shadow over Trump’s tenure, proved — at least in the early offing — a less formidable witness in the flesh than Democrats had hoped, offering up clipped, monosyllabic responses and repeatedly asking lawmakers to repeat their questions. Watching from the White House, at least one Trump aide said the former FBI director, who spent some 22 months investigating the president, simply seemed past his prime and incapable of doing Trump much harm.


“The Democrats built up these two Mueller hearings as their Super Bowl, and at halftime, it is not looking good for their side,” said Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh. White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, who has kept a low profile since she was tapped for the job late last month, said in a statement, “The last three hours have been an epic embarrassment for the Democrats. Expect more of the same in the second half.”

“So far, so good,” a senior White House official said in a text message when lawmakers took a brief break about 90 minutes into the Judiciary Committee hearing. Another Trump ally described the mood in the White House simply as “euphoria.”

The president himself, who said Monday he was unlikely to tune in to the hearings, has been gleefully telling people he thinks Mueller’s testimony will stop any momentum toward impeachment, according to a source familiar with the conversations. At last count, 95 House Democrats had gone on the record favoring impeachment, a move Speaker Nancy Pelosi has derided as premature and politically unwise.

“We had a very good day today, the Republican Party,” Trump told reporters as he prepared to depart for a fundraiser in West Virginia. “There was no defense of what Robert Mueller was trying to defend. … There was no defense to this ridiculous hoax, this witch hunt.”

Mueller had specifically said during his testimony, “It was not a witch hunt,” adding at another point: “It was not a hoax.”

Trump criticized the former special counsel’s performance before Congress, as well as how Mueller conducted the investigation.

“I think Robert Mueller did a horrible job, both today and with respect to the investigation. But in all fairness to Robert Mueller, he had nothing to work with,” he told reporters at the White House. “You can be a builder, but if they don’t give you you the right materials, you’re not going to build a very good building.”

The president, said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who visited the White House on Wednesday afternoon for a previously scheduled meeting, “was in a very upbeat mood.”

Trump declared the hearing an unmitigated catastrophe for Democrats early on as he live-tweeted from the White House. Quoting the Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, he tweeted that the hearing “‘has been a disaster for the Democrats and a disaster for the reputation of Robert Mueller.’ Chris Wallace @FoxNews.”

“I would like to thank the Democrats for holding this morning’s hearings,” he wrote three hours later.

To be sure, Democrats managed to land some blows against the president despite Mueller’s reticence. They got him to rebut the president’s “no collusion, no obstruction” mantra. They extracted a firm statement that Justice Department regulations that prohibit the indictment of a sitting president barred him from pursuing obstruction charges — though he clarified his comments in the second hearing — and that the Russian government sought specifically to aid the Trump campaign.

But at times, lawmakers appeared more intimately familiar with the report than did Mueller himself, who repeatedly asked to be directed to the section at issue for his own reference. Republicans got Mueller to say he was not aware of the investigative firm Fusion GPS, the subject of intense media scrutiny for several years. The opposition research outfit hired, at the behest of a law firm representing Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, the retired MI-6 spy Christopher Steele, who ultimately produced the so-called Russia dossier than has dogged the president since he was sworn into office two and a half years ago.

On some matters, Mueller simply declined to say much of anything at all. He refused to comment on whether his report was intended to nudge Congress into impeachment proceedings, which is less than he said at his news conference in late May, when he addressed the issue directly, noting that Justice Department guidelines require “a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.” And he wouldn’t even read the words his own team had written, deferring instead to lawmakers on multiple occasions.

Republicans on Capitol Hill were spiking the football before the hearings were out. “This is the death rattle for impeachment. The Democrats on the dais looked as if they had been held at a funeral for too long,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), one of the president’s closest allies on Capitol Hill.

Inside the White House, preparations to respond to what Mueller might say began on Tuesday, with deputy press secretary Steven Groves overseeing the official communications response. The president began hammering away at the former special counsel late Tuesday evening, decrying Mueller’s last-minute request to have his longtime deputy, Aaron Zebley, accompany him for the back-to-back hearings. “This should NOT be allowed,” he boomed from behind the keyboard. “Rigged Witch Hunt!”

Some inside the White House were especially pleased with the questioning of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), another close Trump ally, who hammered Mueller over his failure to charge a key figure, the Maltese academic Joseph Mifsud, for making false statements to the FBI. Mifsud, according to Mueller’s report, told Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, but lied to the FBI about his interactions with Papadopoulos.

When Mueller said he could not “get into” his decision not to charge Mifsud, Jordan snapped, “A lot of things you can't get into...You can charge all kinds of people who are around the president with false statements. But the guy who launches everything, the guy who puts this whole story in motion, you can't charge him. I think that's amazing.” Trump later retweeted video of the exchange posted by a supporter.

Another of the president’s allies in the House Republican Conference, Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, even suggested that the former special counsel wasn’t in full command of his faculties. “Mueller still struggling to answer even basic questions,” he tweeted. “He can’t accurately remember facts, evidence, or even his own conclusions. Folks—this guy didn’t run the investigation. His team of Resistance Democrats did. And they used it as a weapon to target a President they hated.”

Meadows doesn’t serve on the Judiciary Committee but sat in the audience and live-tweeted the entire, three-hour hearing. He could barely contain his excitement when speaking with reporters afterward.

“The expectations set by Democrats didn’t come close to delivering… I’m certainly very pleased,” he said with a smile. “It’s obviously a good day for the president. It’s hopefully a good day for America.”

The Trump campaign was also locked into the hearings, setting a goal of raising $2 million off of the event. In a plea to supporters, the campaign asked for $5 contributions “to send a powerful message to the entire nation that this WITCH HUNT must end.”

Murtaugh, the Trump campaign communications director, argued that the Russia investigation has from the outset been an attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election — and said the hearings were a continuation of that effort.

“They took a big swing at it with these hearings and they whiffed,” he said.

Marc Caputo contributed to this report.