Former special counsel Robert Mueller's reticent testimony to Congress likely confirmed what many Democrats had feared: If they want to end Donald Trump's presidency, their best bet is through next year's election, not impeachment.
Mueller's highly anticipated appearance Wednesday at back-to-back House hearings delivered neither the viral moments nor the bombshell soundbites that the anti-Trump crowd hoped would persuade skeptics or overwhelmingly reshape public opinion.
The contents of Mueller's remarks were damning, several Democrats said, noting the former FBI director's statements that the two-year investigation of Russian election interference was "not a witch hunt," and indeed found substantial evidence of obstruction of justice.
But after Mueller's flat one-word answers, seeming confusion about questions and refusal to produce new information, hopes that the performance would launch lawmakers on a path to impeachment have dimmed.
The 2020 election "is unquestionably the only way he gets removed from office, so we can never lose sight of that," House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, who presided over one of Mueller's hearings, said Thursday.
Trump himself called the hearings "a disgrace from every standpoint" in a television interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday.
"This should never happen to another president of the United States again," he said, adding that the ordeal amounted to an "absolute catastrophe for our country" and calling it as a "fake witch hunt."
But she made clear that she was not shutting the door, saying, "If we have a case for impeachment, that's the place we will have to go."
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