WASHINGTON — More Democrats are calling — and more loudly — for impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump after his latest defiance of Congress by blocking his former White House lawyer from testifying.

A growing number of rank-and-file House Democrats, incensed by former counsel Don McGahn’s empty chair in the Judiciary Committee hearing room on Tuesday, are confronting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and pushing her and other leaders to act. Their impatience is running up against the speaker’s preference for a more methodical approach , including already-unfolding court battles.

Pelosi summoned some of them — still a small fraction of the House Democratic caucus — to a meeting of investigators Wednesday to assess strategy.

Some other Democratic leaders, while backing Pelosi, signaled that a march to impeachment may at some point become inevitable.

“We are confronting what might be the largest, broadest cover-up in American history,” Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters. If a House inquiry “leads to other avenues including impeachment,” the Maryland Democrat said, “so be it.”

Reps. Joaquin Castro of Texas and Diana DeGette of Colorado added their voices to the impeachment inquiry chorus.

It’s not just ordinary Americans who are craving clarity.

Having pored over the report once, Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., is now on her second reading of it. And she still has questions.

“That’s why we need him to testify,” she said. “I think he owes it to us.”

Richard Ben-Veniste, who served as one of the lead prosecutors on the Watergate investigation, says Mueller “probably could have been clearer.”

“It would certainly be in the public interest for Robert Mueller to answer questions, clarify and expound upon his investigation and his report,” says Ben-Veniste.

David Kendall represented President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky investigation and currently represents the Clintons. He goes further in a Washington Post opinion piece and says Mueller made a “massive flinch” in declining to draw a conclusion on obstruction.

Absent a firm answer from the special counsel himself, plenty of others — including Trump — have stepped forward to act as interpreters of the oracle.

In a letter summarizing the report before its release, Attorney General William Barr declared he did not believe the evidence was sufficient to prove that Trump had obstructed justice.

Trump, no fan of the special counsel, this past week called Mueller’s report “the Bible” and inaccurately claimed it was “totally exonerating.”

Hundreds of former federal prosecutors, on the other hand, signed on to an open letterconcluding that Mueller’s report shows Trump would have been charged with obstruction if he were anyone other than the president.

Jacob Frenkel, a former federal prosecutor, sees a case for impeachment in what he describes as Mueller’s “clear and comprehensive report.” He puts the blame for any confusion on those engaged in “politics and prejudgment.”

Likewise, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, blames Barr for creating “deliberate confusion” about Mueller’s findings by misrepresenting his “very precise” report. Even so, Schiff says he, too, would like to hear directly from Mueller.

So far, Mueller has largely let the report speak for itself and left the chattering class to provide the commentary.

He did send Barr a letter in March complaining about how Barr had summarized the report’s key findings, writing that he had left “public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation.”

Beyond that, though, all the public has gotten of Mueller in the past few weeks is fleeting glimpses of him exiting a Georgetown tavern, walking into church on Easter Sunday, driving to his office.

Democrats on Capitol Hill are pushing for Mueller, who is still an employee of the Justice Department, to testify before the House Judiciary Committee but that’s up in the air. Trump has both said that Mueller shouldn’t testify and that it’s up to Barr to decide. Barr himself has said he wouldn’t object. But hopes that Mueller would testify this coming week appear to have faded as behind-the-scenes talks drag on.

If the Justice Department tries to block Mueller’s testimony, Democrats could issue a subpoena to try to compel his appearance.

In the meantime, plenty of people are itching to get a firsthand fill from Mueller.

Without that, “it’s almost like going off of hearsay,” says Michelle Martin, a 48-year-old physician’s assistant from Round Rock, Texas. “You have to have the facts to make an educated opinion.”

Attorney Frenkel, though, warns people shouldn’t get their hopes up too high even if Mueller does testify.

“The speechmaking and agenda-driven questioning on both sides, unfortunately, will leave few satisfied if the special counsel testifies before Congress,” he wrote in an email. “Mr. Mueller testifying may wrap up a few issues but will do little to curtail the debate.”

___

Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Lisa Mascaro in Washington, Michael Rubinkam in Schuylkill Haven and Quakertown, Pennsylvania, Clarice Silber in Austin, Texas, and Ellis Rua in Miami contributed to this report.

AP

22/5/2019