Why the House and Senate probes into Donald Trump’s Russia scandal still exist

| 1:04 am EDT August 9, 2017
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Special Counsel Robert Mueller is now deep into running the federal investigation into Donald Trump’s Russia scandal. He’s controlling the FBI’s investigative effort. He’s running grand juries and issuing subpoenas. He’ll prosecute Trump’s associates and get some of them to flip on Trump. In the end, Mueller will expose Donald Trump as a criminal and destroy him. So why do the Trump-Russia probes in the House and Senate even still exist? There’s a good answer for that.

House and Senate hearings, particularly the public ones that take place on television, are largely a matter of show and tell. Each member of the committee in question is trying to steer public opinion on a particular matter by getting friendly expert witnesses to deliver important testimony, or by tripping up hostile witnesses into making embarrassing admissions. For instance, one could argue that the only reason we even have a Special Counsel is that FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Intel Committee that there was in fact an ongoing investigation into Trump’s Russia scandal. Moments like that cause the public to sit up an take notice and demand certain actions, and here we are.

So these committees and their hearings, messy as they can be, have served their purpose. They’ve gotten the ball rolling. It’s now Mueller’s ball. But at this point the Trump-Russia probes in the House and Senate can’t simply shut down. For one thing, Trump would incorrectly point to it as proof that the whole scandal was a hoax. So these congressional probes must continue for the sake of appearances. But it runs deeper than that. These committees still have a legitimate role to play.

By all accounts these committees are now coordinating with Robert Mueller when it comes to matters of evidence and witnesses. That means, for instance, the Senate Judiciary Committee can grill a hostile witness in the hope of getting that person to slip up and admit something that the Special Counsel can then go and investigate. So it’s now more of an ancillary role. But these House and Senate investigations do still exist for a reason. They’re also a backup. Even if Trump did find a way to fire Mueller, it means the investigation wouldn’t simply go away.