Donald Trump, the President who refused to release his tax returns, just made an unexpected gesture towards transparency, saying he’d be happy for Americans to see Robert Mueller’s final report.
His comment is probably worth taking with a large pinch of salt. After all, just last week, Trump tweeted “there should be no Mueller report.”
The President, with his talent for shifting the terms of a debate, weighed in on the fate of Mueller’s yet-to-be-filed final report before heading to Ohio on Wednesday.
“I don’t mind. I mean, frankly, I told the House, ‘If you want, let them see it,'” Trump said when asked whether the American public had the right to see the fruits of the special counsel’s labors.
Trump’s offer was surprising since it appeared to conflict with a long record of attempts to either obstruct or discredit Mueller’s investigation, which he has branded a “witch hunt” and something no President should suffer.
Indeed, once he returned from Ohio Wednesday night, Trump tweeted some commentary from Fox News: “‘The reason we have the Special Counsel investigation is that James Comey (a dirty cop) leaked his memos to a friend, who leaked them to the press, on purpose.’ @KennedyNation Totally illegal!”
It also came amid concerns on Capitol Hill that the White House will try to gut Mueller’s findings before they can reach lawmakers and a new CNN poll showed that a huge majority of the public wants to see the results.
It is often difficult to know whether Trump is working to a long-term strategic plan, testing out new political ground or just riffing in the moment to get past bad news and onto another subject.
But it’s hard to take his comment seriously, partly because it recalls his frequent statements that he’d love to sit down in an interview with Mueller, an offer that never appears to have been taken seriously by his lawyers.
Trump provided the special counsel with a set of written answers to questions prepared in coordination with his legal team, but never went head-to-head with prosecutors.
With his comment on Wednesday, the President could have simply been recognizing strong support among Americans for a public accounting of Mueller’s work — in the belief that he could not shape it without first acknowledging it.
The CNN/SSRS poll released on Wednesday found that 87% of Americans believe that the Mueller report should be made public. Just 9% disagree.
The President’s sincerity is also called into question by a tweet last weekend that appeared to signal he was more interested in going through the motions of accountability than adopting it as a practice.
“On the recent non-binding vote (420-0) in Congress about releasing the Mueller Report, I told leadership to let all Republicans vote for transparency. Makes us all look good and doesn’t matter. Play along with the game!” Trump wrote.
Trump’s Democratic foes don’t really think he wants the Mueller report made public.
“I don’t believe him because he has obstructed every step along the way,” Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California said on “Erin Burnett OutFront” on Wednesday.