What Is Congress Doing?

Benjamin Wittes: “Congress’s current strategy is an incoherent muddle. While individual Democratic leaders may well have their eye on the ball, the aggregate output of a disparate committee chairs has reflected no discernable strategy. Some, judging from their statements, seem focused chiefly on getting the full, unredacted Mueller report and the investigative work product that underlies it. Why exactly this is the focus is unclear to me; the marginal information Congress is likely to glean from the full report is small. Much of this material is already available to certain members under admittedly limited conditions. And the legal impediments to the production of the remainder are substantial. Focusing on laying bare what is currently redacted is most unlikely to produce any game-changers. Other than establishing the principle that Congress can get it, it’s not clear what great oversight interest it serves.”

“At the same time, the key committees have only shown limited interest in actually unpacking in public the voluminous material that Mueller has publicly reported and that is thus readily available for discussion. As of today, this requires a major rethink. Mueller himself is not riding in on a white horse to explain it all. If Congress is going to highlight what’s in that report and what Mueller found, it’s going to have to do it on its own.”