Fox's Mark Levin calls the Mueller report a “200-page op-ed” and a “political document that he should never have written”
Levin: “This is a hack job”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
From the April 19 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:
MARK LEVIN (FOX NEWS HOST): It's always good to wake up to a slip and fall lawyer like [Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY)]. And they'll bring their lawsuit and they'll lose. So this is all about the press. And I'd like to get to that in a minute. But if I could talk about this report, everybody is focused on volume two, aren't they, including us. Volume two, what did McGahn say and why did the president tell McGahn not to say this? Why do we keep focusing on this? This report, volume two, doesn't have a syllable of legal significance. There's not a syllable of law in it. It doesn't matter what McGahn said or what the president said, none of it's been tested in a court of law. There's been no challenge to it. There's been no cross-examination. Nothing. That's why Mueller wrote this. This is a political document that he should never have written. A political document that's 200 pages long that the press keeps focusing on. That's why he and Weissmann and the others wrote it, because he knew you all -- he knew CNN would be obsessed with it. He knew that MSNBC would be obsessed with it. This is an op-ed. This is a 200-page op-ed. That's all this is. No prosecutor who wouldn't want to be disbarred would ever produce anything like this, talking, well this guy said this, and why did the president say that? How do you know? Well the prosecutor said. Well who gives a damn what the prosecutor said? He's not God. He's not a judge. He's not a jury.
ED HENRY (CO-HOST): But Mark, they're quoting the White House counsel. Doesn't whether or not the president told --
LEVIN: So what?
HENRY: Doesn't whether the president told the truth or not matter to you?
LEVIN: It matters completely to me. So how do you know this is truthful, Ed?
HENRY: He's the White House counsel, you think he lied to the investigators?
LEVIN: How do you know this is truthful, Ed? You have no idea. You know that the prosecutor put words in here that he was told by another individual that has never been challenged. President says he didn't say that so you have no idea. I have no idea. That's why we have a court of law. That's why prosecutors, damn it, are not supposed to write essays like this. Now we have a special counsel. And the Democrats knew a special counsel could write a report. They're not focused on volume one, which is legal, which does cite law, which was an investigation that found no collusion. That was the purpose of the investigation. Obstruction was not the purpose of the investigation. And he didn't have an obstruction case against the president of the United States, or he would have brought it. I'm using plain English so even Joe Scarborough and Jake Tapper can understand this. Volume two is crap. Volume two was written for slip and fall lawyer Nadler, slip and fall lawyer, [Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)]. That's why he wrote it. He knew the media would run with it.
Volume one, Mr. Mueller should have come up to a microphone, six, 12 months into his investigation and announced to the American people, I have great news, the president didn't collude. His campaign didn't collude. There is no collusion. I'm shutting down this investigation. I got [Trump campaign manager Paul] Manafort. I will give it to the U.S. attorney in Virginia. I'll give this one to the Southern District of New York. He didn't do it. Why didn't he do that? And right to the end, they're trying to get the president's in-person testimony about something he knew never happened. Collusion. And yet, why is this report even faulty? How can you talk about Russian interference in our election and ignore the Hillary Clinton campaign, and the DNC, and the senior level of the FBI that's been wiped out by their own conduct? How in the world can you do that? Not interview Barack Obama and Susan Rice and all the rest of them? This is a hack job. Now, where are we here? Where are we here? From my perspective it's now a matter of the American people versus the press. Or how I would call them, the unfree press.
Previously:
Brit Hume says media reporting on Mueller investigation was “dog doo”