I have been curious for a long time about this Robert Mueller fella. He seems like a formidable guy—war hero, G-man, Washington power player. Honest people that I know to be honest say he's honest. People I know whose integrity is unimpeachable volunteer with no prompting that Mueller's integrity is pure granite.

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I think he circumscribed his own investigation unnecessarily, but I also think the report he produced is pretty damning nonetheless. All of that being said, he has what I believe to be a profound obligation to the American people as a fellow citizen to bring himself forward under oath and explain in his own words and in his own voice what he found out about the president* and his people in the two years he spent investigating them. Which makes this whole thing more than passing strange. From NBC News:

Mueller has told House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler that he would prefer to make a public opening statement, but leave his testimony behind closed doors, Nadler said on "The Rachel Maddow Show" Thursday night...He envisions himself correctly as a man of great rectitude and apolitical and he doesn't want to participate in anything that he might regard as a political spectacle."

This dog declines to hunt. In handing over to the Congress the responsibility for acting—or not acting—on the thick trail of bread-crumbs he left for them to follow in his report, Mueller threw the whole matter into our superheated political context. It's a little late to decide that you're worried about a political spectacle—unless, of course, you've been asleep for the last 50 years. America produces spectacles—political spectacles, sports spectacles, The GRAMMYs. It's one of the few things that we do well.

Sometimes. I think Mueller's going to testify, publicly, under some set conditions and that his request for a closed hearing was merely his opening bid in his negotiations with Nadler and the committee. He owes the country a debt now. That may not be fair given his lifetime of public service, in uniform and out, but that's just the way it is now. Nothing is as it was.

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