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Sarah Sanders accidentally proves the Mueller report was not a waste of time

She contradicted herself in the same breath.

(Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders took to Fox News Tuesday morning to deride a House Judiciary Committee hearing the previous day focused on “Lessons Learned from the Mueller Report.”

Focusing on star witness John Dean, former White House counsel from the Nixon administration, Sanders dismissed the hearing as a “dog and pony show” and disparaged Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) as a “true embarrassment to his committee.”

But while trying to attack House Democrats for wasting time for following up on the Mueller report, Sanders ended up directly contradicting herself in the process.

“Let’s look at the people that they brought before their committee to make their case: Michael Cohen, convicted, had to go to jail,” she said. “Now, John Dean is the latest witness in this — another person who was convicted for lying to Congress. The fact that these are star witnesses tells me everything [I] need to know: There was no collusion, there was no obstruction and it is absolutely time for them to move on and start working with the president….”

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Cohen was convicted of campaign finance violations, tax fraud, and bank fraud, all in the service of President Donald Trump. He was also convicted of lying to Congress — about Trump’s continued pursuit of a Trump Tower project in Moscow, long into his 2016 campaign, after previously stating he had no business ties in Russia.

The entire reason Cohen is in jail is because he broke the law on Trump’s behalf and because the Mueller investigation uncovered his misdeeds.

Dean wasn’t the only witness at Monday’s hearing. Two former U.S. attorneys, Barbara McQuade and Joyce White Vance, both testified that they believed the Mueller investigation demonstrated multiple instances in which Trump had obstructed justice. Both joined over a thousand former federal prosecutors in signing a statement concluding that the Mueller report’s findings would result in “multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice” for anyone who wasn’t the sitting president.

Sanders accused Democrats on Tuesday of not doing enough to work with the president on other issues. The last time House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) came to the White House to do just that, Trump shouted them down, walking out of a meeting moments after showing up and throwing what Pelosi called a “tantrum” on national television, in what appeared to be a prepared press conference.

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For his part, the president spent part of Tuesday morning attacking Dean and House Democrats, and lauding a comment from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) about how the Senate isn’t doing anything with the Mueller report and instead will “harden our Infrastructure against 2020!” Trump continued to insist that “all crimes were by the other side” — a claim that doesn’t explain why Cohen and so many other Trump associates are currently in jail.

Neither Trump nor Sanders seems to be able to fathom that House Democrats are capable of multitasking. The Democratic-controlled House has passed a variety of legislation since January, while the Republican-controlled Senate has done practically nothing other than confirm Trump’s judicial appointees.