Matt Gaetz ahead of Mueller hearing: ‘We are going to reelect the president’

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a staunch White House ally and member of the House Judiciary Committee, predicted former special counsel Robert Mueller’s House testimony next week could be a political boon to the president.

“We are going to re-elect the president,” Gaetz told The New York Times when asked about his goal for Wednesday’s hearing in front of the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees.

Gaetz, a vociferous critic of the Justice Department’s upper echelon, has long maintained that the Mueller probe was tainted by allegations of corruption and bias among investigators against President Trump.{mosads}

Trump and his allies have increasingly sought to move on from the Mueller probe heading into the 2020 election after the former special counsel declined to come to a conclusion over whether Trump obstructed justice.

Mueller detailed various contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian figures in his sprawling 448-page report released earlier this year, but he did not establish a conspiracy between the campaign and Moscow to interfere in the 2016 election.

Republicans have pointed to Mueller’s conclusions to suggest that the probe is a facet of Democratic overreach intended to try to oust the president. 

Mueller, however, maintained that his report did not exonerate the president of wrongdoing and noted existing Justice Department guidelines against indicting a sitting president.

For their part, Democrats hope Mueller on Wednesday will expound on parts of his report that may be embarrassing for the president, including 10 “episodes” he laid out of potentially obstructive behavior. 

“People think in narratives,” Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), a Judiciary Committee member, told The Hill this week. “There is an incredibly damning set of narratives in this report, and so that’s what we need Mr. Mueller to show.”