Actor Robert De Niro, who plays Robert Mueller Robert (Bob) MuellerCNN's Toobin warns McCabe is in 'perilous condition' with emboldened Trump CNN anchor rips Trump over Stone while evoking Clinton-Lynch tarmac meeting The Hill's 12:30 Report: New Hampshire fallout MORE on “Saturday Night Live,” is urging the real-life special counsel to speak out in more detail about his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 White House race.

De Niro wrote an open letter to Mueller in The New York Times on Wednesday, hours after the special counsel made his first public statement about his probe. During his news conference at the Justice Department, Mueller said he did not want to testify before Congress and that his 448-page report "speaks for itself."

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“It may speak for itself to lawyers and lawmakers who have the patience and obligation to read through the more than 400 pages of carefully chosen words and nuanced conclusions (with all due respect, as good a read as it is, you’re no Stephen King),” the 75-year-old Academy Award winner responded in his open letter.

“But the country needs to hear your voice. Your actual voice. And not just because you don’t want them to think that your actual voice sounds like Robert De Niro reading from cue cards, but because this is the report your country asked you to do, and now you must give it authority and clarity without, if I may use the term, obstruction,” De Niro added.

If Mueller has nothing more to say about the investigation, De Niro suggested he could “just read from the report in response to questions from members of Congress.”



De Niro said he wants to see Mueller leave his “comfort zone,” writing, “You are the voice of the Mueller report. Let the country hear that voice.”

The actor noted the character he plays on SNL, saying, "As ‘Robert Mueller,’ my character is intimidating because he is so honest and upright."

While praising Mueller for “never waver[ing] even in the face of regular vicious attacks” from President Trump Donald John TrumpBiden on Trump's refusal to commit to peaceful transfer of power: 'What country are we in?' Romney: 'Unthinkable and unacceptable' to not commit to peaceful transition of power Two Louisville police officers shot amid Breonna Taylor grand jury protests MORE, De Niro said the special counsel’s silence during the two-year investigation “allowed the administration to use its own voice to control the narrative.”

“Say what you will about the president — and I have — when it comes to that lying, exaggerating, bullying thing, no one can touch him,” wrote the actor, who has been one of Hollywood’s most outspoken Trump critics, calling him a “total loser” and a “pig.”



Trump, De Niro wrote, "has set up a world where it seems as if those disapproving of him can effectively challenge him only by becoming just like him."