anymore. i don t know about that, sean, but thank you very much, i appreciated. the the testimony of special counsel robert mueller is about to devour capitol hill beginning at 8:30 wednesday with an opening statement by mueller, we are told that they are still negotiations about the terms of engagement for the hearing. you tonight, a letter from the justice department to mueller. the doj tells mueller any testimony must remain in the boundaries of your report, because matters of the scope of the investigation were covered by executive privilege. the justice department tells mueller should you testify they expect him to not go beyond the report. they are holding mueller to what he said in may and will not stray from the report. we are learning about the lines of questioning, the judiciary committee will probe five areas of what democrats he of obstruction to fires mueller himself and the dangling apart in spite of the intelligence committee will ask about what the president may h
i don t know about that, sean, but thank you very much, i appreciate it. the testimony of special counsel robert mueller is about to devour capitol hill beginning at 8:30 wednesday with an opening statement by mueller. we are told that there are still negotiations about the terms of engagement for the hearing. new tonight, a letter from the justice department to mueller. the doj tells mueller, any testimony must remain in the boundaries of your public report, because matters of the scope of the investigation were covered by executive privilege. the justice department tells mueller should you testify they expect him to not go beyond the report. doj is holding mueller to what he said in may and will not stray from the report. we are learning about the lines of questioning, the judiciary committee will probe five areas of what democrats see as obstruction to fire mueller himself and the dangling of pardons.
mueller s lawyer said at the sentencing hearing he gave us nothing and maybe because he had nothing. and so he ends up with 47 months, and i think that it sort of suggests he did commit a crime. he lied, he hid the tax returns, but this suggests that this is what is going to come from the mueller report. and after the president was saying two years and all this investigation, we re coming up with less than we expected. charles: and, kim, on that note, this is perhaps why the democrats are really getting ready, i guess, for the ultimate. they re digging into every crevice of president trump s life, and who knows how far they re prepared to go, but maybe mueller has come up with a dry hole which would be very embarrassing for them. yeah, it s a huge admission, because we are moving on to stage two. and now suddenly, charles, your not hearing any of these names that we ve heard so much over the last years, manafort, cohen,
papadopoulos, the steele dossier. they don t want to talk about any of that anymore. they want to move on to a whole new field. in particular you see in the house the campaign the committee chairman focusing on, for instance, whether or not donald trump committed any collusion with regard to his financial dealings in russia, which ises a whole new field and area. but i think the problem that they face, the risk here is that they do look like it s a fishing expedition and that comes out a, indeed, it says that there is nothing there and they continue this, i think they risk a backlash with some of the public wondering if we have now verged beyond investigation into harassment. charles: bill, of course, maybe we won t be able to measure that depending how much of the mueller report is released to the public, if and i know there s a lot of political calculus here, but if it s not released to the public, then the democrats will be able to, perhaps, leak certain parts of it and to specu
going on for the last two and a half years. charles: all this as former trump campaign chairman paul manafort is sentenced to just 47 months in prison on tax and bank fraud charges, far shorter than what was recommended by the special counsel s office. let s bring in the wall street journal s deputy editor, dan henninger. kim strassel and bill mcgurn with us as well. it just never stops, but going into the weekend, everyone s still kind of reeling from the manafort sentencing. yeah, the 47 months instead of the 21 years that they expected him to get. i think in many ways, charles, this is a preview of the mueller anti-climax to come. because the manafort was being concentrated on here because he had been donald trump s campaign manager. his case was handed off from the justice department to mueller s investigation in the expectation he would give them information about trump and collusion.