GOP Congressman: Mueller Killed Any Chance Of Public Confidence When He Agreed To Investigate Trump

Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe joined Fox & Friends Wednesday morning to discuss Attorney General William Barr’s impending testimony before Congress. Ratcliffe, a member of the House Judiciary Committee from Texas, returned to all the usual talking points about Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Ratcliffe and host Steve Doocy discussed Barr’s letter summarizing the Special Counsel’s report. New reporting say Mueller was unhappy with the summary and wrote to Barr with his concerns. For Ratcliffe, this was irrelevant.

“One thing that’s not in dispute is that Bill Barr invited Bob Mueller to review the 4-page notice that he sent to Congress. Bob Mueller said no thanks,” Ratcliffe said. “And then after the letter became public, Bob Mueller apparently had a problem with it. The other thing is the reason he said he has a problem with it is that he’s afraid that it will undermine the full confidence of the public in his conclusions.”

“Memo to Bob, when he put Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and Andrew Weissman on the Special Counsel team, when he staffed the special counsel team with folks that had supported only Democrats, and when he himself agreed to investigate Donald Trump as the Special Counsel two days after he interviewed to work for Donald Trump as FBI director and didn’t get the job, when he did all of those things, he killed any chance that there was going to be full public confidence in his conclusions.”

Ratcliffe’s attacks on Mueller are old talking points that bear little resemblance to reality. While Mueller did interview to potentially become FBI director, there is no evidence that Trump refused to hire him or that Mueller was in any way conflicted. Complaints about Strzok and Page have become little more than a right-wing conspiracy theory.

Ratcliffe’s idea that Mueller agreeing to investigate Trump invalidates his conclusions is odd, because later in the segment, he used Mueller’s report to exonerate the President.

“Bob Mueller found there was no collusion, there was no conspiracy. Doesn’t mean there couldn’t be a proper predicate to look for it or probable cause. But, Steve, if the probable cause was the Steele Dossier a fake, phony dossier, if that was the basis of the probable cause, there are a lot of folks at the FBI and Department of Justice that will have some explaining to do.”

The claim that the Steele Dossier was the origin of the Special Counsel’s investigation has been repeatedly debunked. Congressman Ratcliffe tried to discredit Mueller while using Mueller’s report to defend Trump, a difficult balancing act.

Watch the video above, via Fox News.