"People were relying too heavily on Bob Mueller, for years now, to deliver on what they had promised," White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said of the former special counsel's testimony. | Mark Wilson/Getty Image White House Kellyanne Conway says she has ‘great empathy and compassion’ for Mueller

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Thursday she felt “great empathy and compassion” for former special counsel Robert Mueller, who has been the subject of criticism after giving congressional testimony in which he seemed at times unsure of the substance of the report his team released earlier this year.

"I am first and foremost who I will always be, which is a daughter, a mother,” Conway told conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt on his show Thursday morning.


“And, of course, I feel great empathy and compassion for folks who, as some of these headlines suggest, may be feeble or not understanding some of the questions — asking them to be repeated, clearly not conversant with the facts and with his own report,” she continued.

Mueller on Wednesday sat for back-to-back hearings of the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, fielding queries for roughly six hours during the highly anticipated appearances.

But the former FBI director, who led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and potential obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump, appeared at times to struggle with the pace of the proceedings and repeatedly asked members of Congress to re-pose their lines of inquiry. Mueller replied to dozens of lawmakers’ questions by referring them to the 448-page report that he and his team authored and submitted to the Justice Department in March.

While pundits from both ends of the political spectrum largely agreed he failed to deliver the type of made-for-TV moment that could shift public opinion in favor of some Democrats’ calls for impeachment, Conway on Thursday dismissed commentators “who are focused on the optics and the theatrics and the performance” of Mueller’s testimony.

“There was no substance. The best actor in the world can't perform if there's no good script, if there's no plot line, if there is no character development, if there's no conclusion,” she said. “People were relying too heavily on Bob Mueller, for years now, to deliver on what they had promised.”

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