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Comparing the Steele Dossier to the Mueller Report

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ObserverArt4/24/2019 6:12:46 pm PDT

I can hear the responses.

WaPo Opinion - Hillary Clinton: Mueller documented a serious crime against all Americans. Hereā€™s how to respond.

Here is the openingā€¦

Our election was corrupted, our democracy assaulted, our sovereignty and security violated. This is the definitive conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIā€™s report. It documents a serious crime against the American people.

The debate about how to respond to Russiaā€™s ā€œsweeping and systematicā€ attack ā€” and how to hold President Trump accountable for obstructing the investigation and possibly breaking the law ā€” has been reduced to a false choice: immediate impeachment or nothing. History suggests thereā€™s a better way to think about the choices ahead.

Obviously, this is personal for me, and some may say Iā€™m not the right messenger. But my perspective is not just that of a former candidate and target of the Russian plot. I am also a former senator and secretary of state who served during much of VladiĀ­mir Putinā€™s ascent, sat across the table from him and knows firsthand that he seeks to weaken our country.

I am also someone who, by a strange twist of fate, was a young staff attorney on the House Judiciary Committeeā€™s Watergate impeachment inquiry in 1974, as well as first lady during the impeachment process that began in 1998. And I was a senator for New York after 9/11, when Congress had to respond to an attack on our country. Each of these experiences offers important lessons for how we should proceed today.

First, like in any time our nation is threatened, we have to remember that this is bigger than politics. What our country needs now is clear-eyed patriotism, not reflexive partisanship. Whether they like it or not, Republicans in Congress share the constitutional responsibility to protect the country. Muellerā€™s report leaves many unanswered questions ā€” in part because of Attorney General William P. Barrā€™s redactions and obfuscations. But it is a road map. Itā€™s up to members of both parties to see where that road map leads ā€” to the eventual filing of articles of impeachment, or not. Either way, the nationā€™s interests will be best served by putting party and political considerations aside and being deliberate, fair and fearless.

Second, Congress should hold substantive hearings that build on the Mueller report and fill in its gaps, not jump straight to an up-or-down vote on impeachment. In 1998, the Republican-led House rushed to judgment. That was a mistake then and would be a mistake now.

Watergate offers a better precedent. Then, as now, there was an investigation that found evidence of corruption and a coverup. It was complemented by public hearings conducted by a Senate select committee, which insisted that executive privilege could not be used to shield criminal conduct and compelled White House aides to testify. The televised hearings added to the factual record and, crucially, helped the public understand the facts in a way that no dense legal report could. Similar hearings with Mueller, former White House counsel Donald McGahn and other key witnesses could do the same today.

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