Mueller testimony fails to move needle on impeachment

House Democrats hoping that former special counsel Robert Mueller would trigger momentum for impeaching President Trump were met with resistance Wednesday from a witness who often wouldn’t even answer lawmakers’ questions.

Unlike Mueller’s May remarks on his report on Russia’s election meddling, his testimony Wednesday did not spark any new major wave behind the movement to oust the president.

And some of the most vocal impeachment proponents said they don’t expect Mueller’s halting testimony — in which he asked legislators to repeat their questions on multiple occasions and often declined to answer questions at all — to lend any significant new power to the effort.

“I think that there were some persons who were hoping for a seminal moment, a wild moment — a wild, gotcha moment,” said Rep. Al Green (D-Texas). “It didn’t happen.”

Green, who forced a vote to impeach Trump last week, predicted Mueller’s testimony won’t prompt any meaningful change in public support for ousting the president. Only launching the process, he argued, would bring more people on board.

“I think public sentiment will change significantly once you start the process of impeachment,” he said.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), another impeachment supporter, delivered a similar assessment early in Mueller’s testimony.

“I did not have super high expectations for this testimony, and I would say it’s living up to my low expectations,” Huffman said. “He’s made it clear in every possible way that he’s just not going beyond the words he wrote in his report.”

Trump and Republican lawmakers took a victory lap Wednesday after the hearings, ripping Democrats for refusing to move on from the Mueller investigation.