Former newsman shares insights into Mueller report

While lawmakers in Washington D.C. continue to digest the details of the Mueller report, a Southwest Florida man gave us new insight into the man responsible for it.

Bob Orr knows Robert Mueller. Orr worked 40 years as a reporter and network correspondent. The last eight years of his career, Orr covered the U.S. Justice Department for CBS News.

“Robert Mueller is a fact-base investigator,” Orr said. “A guy you would call a straight arrow.”

Orr was not surprised by the methodical process of the Mueller report. He said it’s how Mueller works — piece by piece. But it won’t satisfy many people either.

“Mueller didn’t offer a verdict,” Orr said. “He does make the point though by saying while we did not find evidence that in our mind was prosecutable, we also did not find the evidence we looked for that would exonerate the president.”

It’s far from over in our national’s capital.

“This is going to be a circus in Washington,” Orr said. “There’s no doubt about it. You’re going to have hearings, upon hearings. You’ll have calls for impeachment. You’ll have plenty of people citing the report and probably erroneously. Trying to make their case one way or the other. In some ways this is an opening act.”

And the spin on both sides could be enough to make the American people dizzy.

“People who are supporters of the president will find plenty in this report saying, “Let’s move on. It clears him,’” Orr said. “His adversaries will find plenty in this report to say, “Look at this. He wasn’t indicted he wasn’t charged,’ but there is something here to look at. And that becomes a political question.”

Congressional leaders said they will invite Mueller to testify in the coming weeks to fill in the blanks for them.

Orr said don’t expect fireworks. He expects Mueller will stay on script, and his testimony will be fact-based.

“The one thing in this whole investigation that made me sad is that I watched many people take shots at Robert Mueller,” Orr said. “And I think it’s sad that in some ways he’s been demonized, and it’s not fair. And it doesn’t help the process. And I hope the people who’ve taken shots at Bob Mueller would just step back for a moment and thank him for his service because this was a herculean effort.”