GOP congressman brags about not reading Mueller report, then lies about what it says
Republican Rep. Rob Woodall’s excuse for not reading the Mueller report is embarrassing.
Rep. Rob Woodall (R-GA) proudly admitted to being completely ignorant of what the Mueller report says — but that still didn’t stop him from making bogus claims about the report’s contents.
During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Sunday Night Hunt,” Woodall embarrassed himself when he told host Kasie Hunt he didn’t read former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and failed to give an adequate reason why.
Even more embarrassingly, Woodall then tried to summarize what the report he didn’t read said — and completely missed the mark.
After Hunt asked Woodall whether he’d read Mueller’s report in full, he said he hadn’t — because, he claimed, the report was only meant to “drive a message.”
Hunt pushed back on the idea that Mueller’s report was only pushing a political agenda.
“Why not read when there’s 10 things in there on obstruction, where he said, hey, the president may have obstructed justice here,” Hunt said. “‘Congress,’ he seems to say, ‘You need to figure that out.'”
“Well, he didn’t say to Congress, ‘You need to figure that out,'” Woodall said. “Obstruction is not a political issue, obstruction is a criminal issue.”
But as Hunt pointed out, that’s exactly what Mueller did say in his report: that because Mueller legally couldn’t indict a sitting president, only Congress could determine whether Trump should face consequences — like impeachment — for the crime of obstructing justice.
But Woodall kept defending his willful ignorance, saying that he “didn’t read the Bill Clinton report, either.” That’s a totally unrelated point, given that Woodall wasn’t in Congress then and thus didn’t have the duty only 435 people in the entire world have to determine whether a U.S. president deserves to be punished for their actions.
It’s not hard to guess the real reason why Woodall didn’t read Mueller’s report: Not reading the report allows Woodall to avoid confronting the evidence Mueller found that Trump likely violated his oath of office, and lets Woodall avoid feeling guilty about shirking his constitutional duty.
Woodall’s House colleague, Rhode Island Democratic Rep. David Cicilline, called Woodall out Monday morning during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“It’s a grave dereliction of duty,” Cicilline said. “I read the Mueller report in its entirety the day it was released. Everyone should do that.”
Woodall also claimed during the interview that his constituents didn’t really care about the Mueller report, but those constituents won’t get the chance to vote him out if he’s wrong. Woodall, who only managed to eke out a 433-vote win over his 2018 Democratic opponent in a historically GOP-leaning district, has chosen to retire when his current term expires.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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