Robert Mueller Testimony Could Start Donald Trump Impeachment Process, Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler Suggests

Former Russia investigation special counsel Robert Mueller is scheduled to appear before two House committees on Wednesday, July 24, delivering what could be explosive testimony as he testifies about his findings in the investigation which were summed up in a 448-page report. Despite remaining available online via The New York Times and other sources, however, very few Americans have actually read Mueller’s report.

In fact, a CNN poll in May found that only three percent of Americans claimed to have read the entire report. Just 24 percent — fewer than one of every four — said they had read any part of Mueller’s report at all.

Mueller’s testimony, Democrats in Congress hope, will make Mueller’s findings more accessible to the United States public. “It’s a pretty dry, prosecutorial work product,” House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff told CBS News on Sunday.

“We want Bob Mueller to bring it to life.”

Schiff chairs one of the two committees that will, assuming Mueller keeps his scheduled appearance, take the former special counsel’s testimony on Wednesday. But the Democratic House rep who chairs the other of the two committees, the House Judiciary Committee, suggested on Sunday that — going beyond merely bringing the Mueller report “to life” — Mueller’s testimony may become the catalyst to start the impeachment process for Donald Trump, according to a New York Post report.

“The report presents very substantial evidence that the president is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors,” Nadler told Fox News Sunday in an interview also posted to the networks’ Twitter account.

“We have to let Mueller present those facts to the American people and then see where we go from there because the ?a?dministration must be held accountable and no president can be above the law.”

Nadler’s comments follow the introduction of articles of impeachment against Trump on the House floor on July 17 by Texas rep Al Green, as ABC News reported. But Green’s impeachment push was based not on evidence of Trump’s obstruction of justice or collusion with Russia in the 2016 election as presented in Mueller’s report.

Instead, Green’s articles of impeachment cited Trump’s racist attacks on four Democratic women of coloring Congress, as The Washington Post reported.

But ultimately, the House voted to table Green’s impeachment resolution, by a vote of 332-95. All of the 95 who voted to move ahead with impeachment were Democrats. Nadler was one of those 95 Democrats in favor of impeachment proceedings, according to NBC News. But a spokesperson for Nadler told NBC News that Nadler opposed tabling Green’s impeachment articles because he believed that the resolution should have been considered by his Judiciary Committee before heading to the House floor for a vote.