The political world was stunned on July 24, 2019, when Trump-Russia special counsel Robert Mueller testified before the House and Senate. It was not anything Mueller said that shocked observers — it was his demeanor. The 74-year-old special counsel appeared confused at times. He sometimes had difficulty answering the most basic questions. He had difficulty forming complex sentences.
The Mueller at the witness table was a far cry from the Mueller who took over the FBI 18 years earlier. Colleagues remembered a man who was super sharp, on top of everything, a micromanager. Now, many of those watching were concerned.
“This is delicate to say,” former Obama aide David Axelrod tweeted, “but Mueller, whom I deeply respect, has not publicly testified before Congress in at least six years. And he does not appear as sharp as he was then.”
Fox News’s Chris Wallace was more blunt: “I think it’s been a disaster for the Democrats,” he said, “and I think it’s been a disaster for the reputation of Robert Mueller.”
Twitter buzzed with talk about Mueller. But President Trump’s legal team was not surprised.
More than a year earlier, at a meeting in April 2018, the president’s lawyers had gotten a disturbing look at Mueller’s condition. And even before that, they had cause to be concerned about Mueller’s possible cognitive issues and what those problems might mean for the special counsel investigation.
The meeting took place on April 24, 2018. Rudy Giuliani had just joined Trump’s defense team. Attorney John Dowd had left the team, and two other white-collar defense lawyers, Jane and Marty Raskin, had joined. Given all those changes, it was decided that the new lineup should have a get-acquainted meeting with the Mueller team.
After opening niceties, the conversation turned to a number of legal topics and specifically to the longstanding opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that a sitting president cannot be indicted. It was not an obscure or arcane issue. It was, in fact, perhaps the key legal question in the entire special counsel investigation. But Mueller could not recall it. The old Mueller, of course, would have known all about it. But on that day in April, the Mueller at the meeting could not remember. It was, to say the least, extraordinary that he could not discuss something so basic to the case…
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