Mueller Investigation McConnell on Mueller report: 'Case closed' Schumer hit back, saying ‘It’s sort of like Richard Nixon saying, “Let’s move on.”’

Mitch McConnell pointedly declared “case closed” on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation on Tuesday, in an extended partisan riff mocking Democrats for being fixated on bringing down President Donald Trump and being slow to respond to Russian election threats.

The GOP leader offered little defense of the Mueller report’s depiction of Trump repeatedly trying to derail the investigation, instead saying that it was time to move on to other issues and that Democrats were “angry that our legal system will not magically undo the 2016 election.”


McConnell further accused the Democratic Party of being slow to take on the threat from Russia, reading a 2012 quote from President Barack Obama mocking presidential opponent and future Sen. Mitt Romney for declaring Russia the top threat to the United States. McConnell cast blame on the Obama administration for making it so “tempting” for Russia to play in U.S. elections.

“The previous administration sent the Kremlin the signal they could get away with almost anything,” McConnell said.

The speech brought a fiery rejoinder from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who said McConnell will not allow an all-senators briefing on Russian electoral threats even though he’s been “asking for two weeks.” Schumer also accused McConnell of not taking “seriously” the possibility of Russian interference, citing reports that McConnell wouldn’t sign off on a bipartisan statement calling out the Kremlin in 2016.

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And the New York Democrat said McConnell’s claims that Republicans want to boost election security rang hollow given that the GOP leader won’t call up a bipartisan election security bill written by Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).

“Despite a preponderance of testimony from intelligence officials, not politicians, intelligence officials who are in charge of our security and well-being … that foreign powers are ramping up to interfere in our next election, the Senate has done nothing. Nothing to grapple with the problem,” Schumer said.

Schumer was joined in his rebuttal to McConnell by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a presidential candidate who has called for Trump's impeachment over the Mueller report's revelations.

"If any other human being in this country had done what's documented in the Mueller report, they would be arrested and put in jail. The majority leader doesn't want us to consider the mountain of evidence against the president. That is wrong," she said.

Klobuchar said last week in an interview that McConnell and former White House Counsel Don McGahn opposed the elections bill and scuttled it last summer.

The legislation has become a central point of contention between the two Senate leaders, with Schumer hammering McConnell for not taking it up. Meanwhile, Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin last week for an hour reportedly without giving the Russian leader any warning not to mess in the U.S. elections this time around — something Obama had done in 2016.

McConnell signaled he was satisfied with what the Senate has done so far in doling out money to the states and said that local jurisdictions are focused on election security “thanks to this administration’s leadership.”

And as House Democrats try to call in Mueller and McGahn and move to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt for not turning over the full, unredacted Mueller report, McConnell made clear he has little interest in the Senate holding more hearings on the matter after Barr’s appearance last week.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has no plans to bring Mueller to his committee, though he said he would entertain the notion if he believes there is a discrepancy between Mueller’s views and Barr's comments at last week’s Senate hearing.

Instead, McConnell said his chief goal is getting Congress “to move on from partisan paralysis and breathless conspiracy” and said he wants Democrats to join Republicans when they recover from their “absolute meltdown.”

“Whenever our Democratic friends can regain their composure and come back to reality, we look forward to their help,” McConnell said, ending his speech.

Schumer quickly took to the floor to decry McConnell’s “astounding bit of whitewashing,” unleashing a 10-minute response that suggested McConnell was trying to perform a cover-up for Trump.

“Our leader says, ‘let’s move on.’ It’s sort of like Richard Nixon saying, ‘let’s move on’ at the height of the investigation of his wrongdoing,” Schumer said. “If the leader is sincere, then put election security on the floor.”

