Former Obama aide says Democrats must reveal the key issues Robert Mueller 'missed, bungled or overlooked'

Former White House aide Ron Klain has become a sharp critic of Special Counsel Robert Mueller since his investigation ended, arguing that he missed the opportunity to bring significant charges against Trump associates and his campaign.

And in a new op-ed for the Washington Post, ahead of Mueller's testimony scheduled for Wednesday, Klain argued that Democrats' apparent plan to question Mueller is misguided. While Democratic lawmakers are poised to ask questions that are answered in Mueller's report, thus exposing more of the nation to the special counsel's findings, Klain argued that they should focus on key issues he "missed, bungled or overlooked."

"Democrats should use the hearings to justify continued investigations beyond the report," he said. "Even if Mueller gives good testimony, Wednesday should not be the finale of the Trump-Russia inquiry, with so many questions left unanswered."

First, he thinks that Mueller should be pressed on the charges he didn't bring, such as his decision not to charge Donald Trump Jr. with campaign finance crimes when he solicited help from Russian officials.

But he also argued that there are many questions that Mueller never even broached that are ripe for congressional inquiry:

Unlike [Ken] Starr, who pirated an investigation into an Arkansas land deal into an impeachment case over presidential sexual misconduct, Mueller took the limitations on the scope of his investigation seriously. He handed off the criminal case of Trump’s hush money payment to avoid an October 2016 disclosure of his alleged sexual relations with Stormy Daniels to prosecutors in New York; recent reports suggest that this investigation has mysteriously ended prematurely. Nor did Mueller examine how Russians — and other foreigners — have been putting cash into the Trump family’s pockets since he took office, in violation of the Constitution’s “emoluments clause.” He didn’t consider how or why Trump revealed national security secrets to the Russians in the Oval Office or overrode intelligence community concerns to grant his son-in-law a security clearance.

He continued: "Thus, the Democrats’ first objective must be to reverse the dynamic where 'Mueller Report' and 'full investigation into Trump’s wrongdoing' are synonymous in the public mind and make clear that there are considerable areas of investigation that remain unexplored."

I am skeptical of Klain's recommended approach. While he worries a dry recitation of the facts in the Mueller report will fall flat, I think it's more likely that trying to draw Mueller into a discussion of issues not covered in the report will make the special counsel himself seem superfluous. It's important to make clear that the report doesn't answer many important questions, but focusing on these additional questions during this hearing will send the erroneous message that what's in the report isn't significant and important enough for Congress and the public to care about.

My view is that, while sticking to the known facts in the report, Democrats should use Mueller's testimony to draw out clear narratives that demonstrate exactly why Trump's conduct was so galling, scandalous, and indeed, impeachable.

But Klain is right to point out that the Mueller report isn't the end of the story. As dogged as Mueller was in pursuing the questions he felt were in his purview, the narrow scope of his probe left a lot of avenues unexplored.