As Republicans go on the offensive in the post-Mueller world, Democrats are trying to pick up the pieces.
For two years, House Democrats insisted they'd wait for special counsel Robert Mueller's findings. Now that he's concluded President Donald Trump didn't collude with the Russian government in the 2016 campaign, Democrats found themselves at an awkward standstill Monday.
Multiple Democrats, including key chairmen, are vowing to press ahead with expansive probes into Trump — with some lawmakers seizing on the fact that Mueller did not exonerate the president on the question of whether he obstructed justice.
"There are other issues for us to look at. There is the obstruction of justice, there's conflict of interest, there's corruption. There's a variety of things that we do need to investigate and provide oversight for," Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) said Monday on CNN, referring to the House Judiciary Committee's wide-ranging probe into abuse of power allegations against the president.
Other Democrats sought to downplay the conclusion of the long-running Russia investigation, insisting that their own probes didn't hinge on Mueller. One member of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), called it "just one piece of the puzzle."
"To be honest with you, I don't think much changes. None of us were waiting on the Mueller report in terms of deciding what we were going to be doing. Our investigations didn't depend on the Mueller report," Rep. Katie Hill (D-Calif.) said in an interview Monday.
Regardless, Democrats return to Capitol Hill Monday night grappling with how to proceed, with some of their biggest questions from the last 48 hours still unanswered.
A fuller Democratic strategy will likely become more apparent after Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her top deputies meet for their weekly meeting Monday evening. House Judiciary Democrats are also planning their own separate huddle Monday.
And the battle on Capitol Hill has already begun to take form. Democrats have said they will do everything in their power to make Mueller's full report public — a process that could take days, if not weeks.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler and his team have already reached out to the Justice Department to schedule a date for Attorney General William Barr to testify before the panel, according to a person familiar with the matter. The committee could also call Mueller himself to testify.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will also seek Barr's testimony, Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Monday.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said that she would prefer the Justice Department address the question of obstruction in a closed setting with senators.
"It would be helpful if the attorney general and the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, who's been really the central player in this long saga, testified in closed session on the obstruction issue on how they reached their decision. In Judiciary or perhaps in the SCIF, if we could get senators to not leak," Collins said.
But many Democrats also realize they must proceed cautiously, after the initial description of the Mueller report failed to live up to the hype that some of their own members had helped fuel.
Without proof of criminal misconduct, many Democrats — including dozens of moderate freshmen — will be anxious to retrain attention on the party's ambitious agenda. This week, the House will vote on measures to condemn Trump's transgender troop ban, as well as legislation to tackle the gender pay gap. Democrats will also vote to override Trump's veto on legislation terminating his authority to declare a national emergency to build a border wall.
Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) said in an interview that he hopes Democrats — particularly those on the left who have been demanding impeachment for months — hit the pause button while lawmakers try to learn the full scope of Mueller's probe and its findings.
"This is something that obviously, had the wrong decision been made, it could've threatened our majority," Veasey said, commending Pelosi and other Democratic leaders' decision not to prematurely pursue impeachment before the Mueller investigation concluded.
"We live in such a different time now, a time where people want instant gratification because of social media… The fact of the matter is it would've been easy to try and quench the thirst of all of the people that are on Twitter, on social media," he said.
Still, Barr's summary of Mueller's findings have left many Democrats frustrated, including those who aren't itching for impeachment. They note that Mueller specifically did not make a determination on the question of obstruction of justice and that the attorney general's decision to not charge Trump — as well as his broader summary of the report — must be scrutinized.
Democratic lawmakers were left fuming after Trump himself claimed to have been completely exonerated by Mueller's findings, even as Republicans demanded that Democrats drop all of their investigations into Trump.
"Right there in black and white, we have the special prosecutor saying, he might have committed a crime," Rep. Gerry Connolly said Monday. "Wouldn't you want to know a lot about that, versus declaring, this is over, let's move on?"
"It's not a norm that American presidential campaigns consult with Russians and it shouldn't be, and yet we know 17 officials did, on 100 occasions, and lied about it. So, there's still plenty to look at," the Virginia Democrat added.
Democrats also noted that Barr wrote a lengthy memo last year — before Trump appointed him to lead the Justice Department — arguing that a sitting president could not obstruct justice.
Nadler raised similar concerns on Sunday after reviewing Barr's letter to Congress.
"We need to know why he came up with the conclusion that there was no obstruction. But again, I will remind you, he came to that conclusion over a year ago," Bass said.
Meanwhile, some Democrats are eager to focus on Mueller's other conclusion — which has been sometimes disputed by the president — that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help elect Trump.
"I hope that if you put the criminal conspiracy part aside, even Republicans will say, yeah, it's time to do something," Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said. "Mueller's done a real service to this country for exposing this, and that's really what we should act on."
Burgess Everett contributed to this report.
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