Republican Rep. Will Hurd (Texas) on Friday said he believes special counsel Robert Mueller should testify before Congress on the findings of his investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference.
Hurd, in an appearance on CNN, said Mueller testifying could “settle things.”
{mosads}“We’re talking about a report, one dude’s opinion of a report written by another dude. Let’s have that dude that wrote the report come to Congress and talk about that and people get to ask him questions,” Hurd said. “And then, again, we should be talking about this disinformation strategy and how to deal with it in the future.”
“You may be the first person who’s ever called Robert Mueller a dude,” Berman said.
“No disrespect to the attorney general or Bob Mueller,” Hurd responded.
Hurd’s comments come as President Trump has given various answers when asked whether Mueller should testify; most recently, he said it was up to Attorney General William Barr to decide.
Some other House Republicans, including Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), have previously called on Mueller to testify “immediately.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, initially indicated that he wouldn’t ask Mueller to testify, saying that the matter was “over.”
But he later sent a letter to Mueller asking if he would like to testify about any “misrepresentation” about a phone call he had with Barr after the four-page memo was released.
CNN host John Berman pressed Hurd about a subpoena issued to the Justice Department by the House Intelligence Committee this week for all counterintelligence and foreign intelligence materials related to the Mueller report and whether he thinks the agency should be held in contempt if it fails to comply.
“The contempt question, I think, we’re ways away from that,” Hurd said. “I think that this is a good sign that there’s bipartisan support on trying to get to uncover this information and why is this important.”
“Part of this is to get a better understanding of what the Russians were trying to do in our elections so that we can prepare for it in the future,” Hurd said, so “that we can make sure that our intelligence services are doing what they need in order to collect information to prevent this from happening in the future.”
Updated at 9:35 a.m.