Mueller reaches deal with House lawmakers pushing testimony to July 24

Former special counsel Robert Mueller will testify before the House Intelligence Committee and the House Judiciary Committee on July 24 — pushing the hearings back one week from their initial July 17 schedule.

The agreement, announced Friday evening by Reps. Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff, chairmen of the Judiciary Committee and Intelligence Committee respectively, will allow lawmakers more time to question Mueller.

“We are pleased to announce that Special Counsel Mueller will provide additional public testimony when he appears before our committees,” Nadler and Schiff said in a joint statement. “At his request, we have agreed to postpone the hearing for one week, until July 24, at which time Mr. Mueller will appear in public before the House Judiciary Committee followed by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.”

The public testimony will begin at 8:30 a.m. EDT in the House Judiciary Committee and will last three hours. At 12:00 p.m. EDT the House Intelligence Committee will begin its hearing.

“All members — Democrats and Republicans — of both committees will have a meaningful opportunity to question the Special Counsel in public, and the American people will finally have an opportunity to hear directly from Mr. Mueller about what his investigation uncovered,” according to the joint statement.

Initially, Mueller’s testimony was going to be limited to two hours — and only senior House lawmakers were going to be given time for questioning, according to The Washington Post.

Read more: We hired the author of ‘Black Hawk Down’ and an illustrator from ‘Archer’ to adapt the Mueller report so you’ll actually read it

Mueller, in his only public statement since the conclusion of the investigation, said that any testimony would not go beyond his 448-page report, which was submitted in March and made public (minus redactions) in April.

However, lawmakers are banking on public testimony to reveal the contents of the report to Americans who have not read it. (Additionally, you can read INSIDER’s re-writing and illustrating of the report, done by “Black Hawk Down” writer Mark Bowden and “Archer” illustrator Chad Hurd.)

Mueller’s report — the culmination of a nearly two-year investigation into alleged Russian meddling into the 2016 presidential election and potential coordination with the Trump campaign, and subsequently obstruction of justice — found that while there was Russian interference in the election, there was not enough evidence to point to criminal conspiracy or coordination between the Trump team and the Russians.

In terms of obstruction of justice, Mueller declined to make a “traditional prosecutorial judgment” citing a Department of Justice policy to not charge a sitting president.

“At the same time,” the report continued, “if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice we would so state.”

Some Democratic House lawmakers have called the report a road map for further investigations and more than 80 House Democrats have called to begin an impeachment inquiry for President Donald Trump.