David Frum: Mueller helped Trump keep his most important secrets

That said, a failure to act, to do anything meaningful to bring this president and his gang of corrupt miscreants to heel, would rightfully enrage most liberal voters. Remember that the rage Republican-primary voters felt at their party establishment in 2016, over broken promises to bring Barack Obama to his knees, led to the nomination of Trump. A parallel rage among Democrats could lead to a deeply divided party and a disastrous presidential nomination.

There is, I believe, a reasonable path forward that, besides being politically palatable, has the added advantage of being the right thing to do. It starts with a coordinated and in-depth examination of the Mueller report by the House.

What we need is for the Judiciary, Intelligence, and Homeland Security Committees to conduct a series of deep dives into the areas of communication and coordination between Trump and his campaign with Russians and their surrogates, such as WikiLeaks; the multiple categories and areas of obstruction of justice that Robert Mueller outlined; the threats to our intelligence operations and our justice system from Trump and his operatives; and the moves by Russia to interfere in and influence our elections used by Trump and unchecked by Republicans. Other committees, such as Ways and Means and Banking, need to be ready to do the same thing as more information emerges from the SDNY and the New York attorney general, among others, about Trump’s financial dealings, including with the Russians, and about Russian money laundering. The witnesses need to include Mueller and Rosenstein, of course, but also the range of figures mentioned in the report, and also a range of experts in areas such as ethics, constitutional violations, intelligence operations, and election administration and security.

Read: The Mueller report could alienate the voters Republicans need

Democrats need to stage and coordinate hearings across committees and subcommittees, to make sure they do not overload Americans’ ability to pay attention. Most important, they need to structure the public hearings in a dramatically different way than usual. Each committee needs to use experienced counsel—a good example might be former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara—and limit, if not abandon, opening statements, except from the chairs. No five-minute rounds of questions going down the line of every committee member, leading to utterly disjointed discourse, making it easy for hostile witnesses to evade, filibuster, or otherwise avoid follow-ups and get through a five minute period, which is then followed by a five-minute breather with an ally on the Republican side, and then another five minutes from the next member of the panel that may have nothing to do with the previous round of questions.