responding to the president. and he did not want to put himself in the middle of that. he did not want to have a role enasking the attorney general to fire the special counsel. correct? i would again refer you to the report and the way it was characterized in the report. thank you. at volume 2, page 85 it states that he didn t want to have the attorney general he didn t want to have a role in trying to fire the attorney general. so at this point i would yield back. thank you, mr. chairman. mr. mueller well, first let me ask your unanimous consent, mr. chairman, to submit this article, robert mueller unmasked for it record. without objection. now, mr. mueller, who wrote the nine minutes comments you
report. have the attorney general asked you to provide a did he ask for you a version with the grand jury material being separated? i can t get into details. is it your belief that an unredacted version of the report could be released to congress or to the public? that s not my purview. why did you not take a similar action so congress could view this material? we had a process that we were operating on with the attorney general s office. are you aware of any attorney general going to court to receive similar permission to redact the material? i m not aware of that being done. the attorney general released a special counsel s report with
yes. and yet the president repeatedly expressed his disploegser to recuse himself from oversight of that investigation? is that not correct? that s accurate based on what s written in the report. and the president s reaction to the recusal as noted in the report, mr. bannon recalled that the president was mad was mad as bannon had ever seen him and he screamed at mcgahn about how weak sessions was. do you recall that from the report? that s in the report, yes. despite knowing attorney general sessions were nauz supposed to be involved n investigation the president still tried to get the attorney general to enrecuse himself after you were appointed special counsel. is that correct? yes. in fact your investigation found at some point after your appointment the president, quote, called sessions at his home and asked if he would recuse himself. is not not true? it s true. it wasn t the first time the
i send you back to the report. okay. well on page 113, it says, quote, the president then directed porter to tell mcgahn to create a record, to make it clear that the president never directed mcgahn to fire you. end quote. is that correct? that is as it s stated in the report. and you found, quote, the president said he wanted mcgahn to write a letter to the file for our records. correct? correct. and to be clear the president is asking his white house counsel don mcgahn to create a record that mcgahn believed to be untrue while you were in the midst of investigating the president for obstruction of justice, correct? generally correct. and mr. mcgahn was important in that investigation? i would have to say yes. did the president tell porter to threaten mcgahn if he didn t create the written denial? i d refer you to the write-up
confidential report explaining the prosecution or declamation decisions reached by the special counsel. that s the very first word of your report, right? that s correct. here s the problem, director, the special counsel didn t do that. on volume 1, you did. on volume 2 with respect to potential obstruck of justice the special counsel made neither a prosecution decision nor a declamation decision. you made no decision. you told us this morning and in your report you made no determination where so respectfully, director, you didn t follow the special counsel regulations. it clearly says write a confidential report about decisions reached. nowhere in here does it say write a report about decisions that weren t reached. you wrote 180 pages, 180 pages about decisions that weren t reached, about potential crimes that weren t charged or decided. and respectfully, respectfully