House Democrats are finally getting the wish they’ve been demanding — former special counsel Robert Mueller is going to take the stand to give testimony on his investigation into Russian election meddling in 2016.
July 24 is the set date. The entire world will be watching.
The Democrats want Mueller to bash President Donald Trump. Their questions are expected to be tough.
But the House Republicans have their own plan.
Republican leaders plan a set of fierce questions for Mueller when he testifies before Congress this week — an offensive strategy of their own aimed to put the Russian collusion conspiracy to rest.
Rep. Doug Collins, D-G.A., the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said the American public is sick of the exhaustive Russia investigation three months after the release of the special counsel’s 448-page report.
He said Republicans have one goal in their questioning.
To make sure that this is the “final episode” in the so-called Russia probe.
“Remember, the Mueller report is a one-sided report,” Collins said. “It has not been questioned from the other side. This is our chance to do that.”
Mueller has said he doesn’t intend to speak beyond the findings of the report in congressional hearings.
Collins, meanwhile, said Republicans will focus in part on the origins of the Russia investigation, which Trump has long derided as a political “witch hunt” as well as evidence they see of potential bias in the FBI’s handling of the probe.
“There’s going to be a lot of questions for what he did say, what he didn’t say, and how this thing started,” he said, referring to Mueller.
“This is the time that the Democrats have got to show on their end how much time they have been wasting of our committee and how we have not been getting things done because they simply don’t like this president, who was elected by the people in 2016, and they’re just trying to derail him for 2020.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article