House Democrats shift back to reality in aftermath of Mueller probe

As special counsel Robert Mueller's findings on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election continued to reverberate throughout the capital, Democrats attempted to shift the conversation back to their "For the People" agenda Tuesday, touting their efforts derived from a comprehensive legislative playbook -- from healthcare to the economy -- in the new Democratic majority.

Now that Attorney General William Barr has released a summary of Mueller's findings that indicate Donald Trump's campaign didn't conspire with the Kremlin in 2016, the pivot was an attempt to move past Democratic rhetoric that attempted to tie the president to Russia.

Beyond demanding the public release of the Mueller report by April 2, Democratic leaders are taking a "wait and see" approach with respect to their oversight of the 22-month investigation, while eagerly highlighting kitchen table topics from their agenda.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday emphasized that impeachment is "not on the table until it is on the table," adding that Democrats remain committed to pushing for the release of the full Mueller report.

"We don't need an interpretation by an attorney general, who was appointed for a particular job, to make sure the president is above the law," she said. "We need to see the report. So that is my message to our members."

At a briefing for reporters in his Capitol office Tuesday morning, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., stressed Democrats don't know the full details of what's in Mueller's report.

"We need to review and analyze the full report, and the supporting documents and communications and testimony that was received by the special prosecutor, so that we can make our own judgment," said Hoyer, the No. 2-ranked House Democrat.

Following a caucus meeting Tuesday, House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told reporters that Democrats are not focused on impeachment.

"We didn't run on impeachment. We didn't win the House of Representatives on impeachment. We're not focused on impeachment," Jeffries said. "What is clear is that the overwhelming majority of the House Democratic Caucus want to drive our ‘For the People' agenda."

That tone is a striking departure from the party's messaging over the past two years, when Democrats pressed the Trump-Russia question to justify their demand to review the president's tax returns.

"What is the hold that the Russians have on President Trump that is dangerous to our democracy and dangerous to our national security?" Pelosi said Feb. 16, 2017, after the president fired his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, less than a month after taking office. Democrats later bolstered the case for seeing the president's tax returns after an October 2018 New York Times report that Trump helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents' real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, "sharply reducing his tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings."

The new Democratic House majority brought lofty aspirations of impeachment to Capitol Hill, leading dozens of Republican veterans to retire long before the blue wave arrived in November.

Pelosi perpetuated the impression that something just wasn't right about the president's camaraderie with Russian President Vladimir Putin, repeatedly asking, "What do the Russians have on Donald Trump, politically, financially and personally?"

Even as recently as Jan. 31, Pelosi teased the ominous narrative that Putin had compromising information on the president.

"I've been asking that question for two years," Pelosi remembered.

She began to publicly put the brakes on the caucus's bullish charge toward impeachment proceedings earlier this month, when she said that impeaching Trump "is not worth it" in an interview with The Washington Post.

Still, a few Democrats want to continue the impeachment discussion.

Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, who has introduced articles of impeachment against Trump, tweeted that he would be meeting with pro-impeachment activist Tom Steyer for lunch at the Capitol.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who announced, "we're going to impeach the motherf-----" at an event shortly after taking office, has introduced a resolution to begin impeachment proceedings in the House Judiciary Committee. The resolution is focused on whether the president obstructed justice in the Mueller probe, what role he played in hush-money deals with two women who claimed having affairs with him and whether he violated the Constitution's foreign emoluments clause by benefiting from the patronage of foreign dignitaries at the Trump International Hotel.

House Democratic leaders have signaled little appetite for the resolution, which is non-binding and would face a GOP roadblock in the Senate.

Throughout the Mueller investigation, Trump has maintained there was "no collusion" and "no obstruction."

"There was no collusion with the Russians. There was nothing. There was no obstruction," Trump said May 4, 2018. "If somebody says something wrong, and you fight back, they say that's obstruction of justice. It's nonsense."

Trump has denied the affairs, and attorneys for the president appeared in court earlier this month to argue against claims he violated a constitutional clause that prohibits elected officials from doing business with foreign governments, saying that attorneys general from Maryland and Washington, D.C., don't have the authority to sue him.

"Congress can provide an open and transparent process with the sole goal of ensuring we know the truth and make sure it does not continue, nor happen again," Tlaib, D-Mich., wrote in a letter to colleagues.

But even some of Tlaib's allies on the left suggested Democrats are better focused, at least for the moment, on their priorities and the release of the Mueller report, over impeachment.

"We need to be running on our agenda, we need to be running on health care," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. said. "If folks are running on this president, I hope we run more on ideas."

"With respect to any of those kinds of proceedings, we can walk and chew gum at the same time," Ocasio-Cortez added. "I think that right now, in the short term, what we have control over is bringing bills to the floor that embody our values."

With the Mueller investigation over, Democrats deny playing an outsized role in drumming up chatter about the Russia investigation, insisting their focus has been -- and continues to be -- on the economy and health care.

"This was a defining issue of the 2018 midterm elections," Jeffries argued. "We embraced this fight because House Democrats were given the majority in order to defend health care on behalf of everyday Americans and that is exactly what we are doing."

Hoyer, citing hearings on pre-existing conditions and prescription drug costs as concrete examples on their campaign rhetoric said, "This just does not require a pivot, and the reason it doesn't require a pivot is because we are focused very, very strongly and our committees are focused.

"We have been in a place for a long period of time where we said impeachment was a distraction and that we were not pursuing impeachment."

It's also a reality of divided government, with Democrats conceding there is not bipartisan support to impeach Trump, or vote to convict him in the GOP-led Senate.

"I think what's tough is impeachment, in principle, is something I openly support, but it's also just the reality of having the votes in the Senate to pursue that," Ocasio-Cortez said. "And so that's something that we have to take into consideration."