Ex-prosecutor suggests what Congress could do that would be even more revealing than Mueller testifying

Former special counsel Robert Mueller's resignation speech reiterating that President Donald Trump was not cleared of wrongdoing has sparked a flurry of new calls for Mueller to testify publicly before Congress — something he has expressed reluctance to do.

But as former prosecutor Glenn Kirschner, a longtime colleague of Mueller's, told MSNBC's Ari Melber, such a hearing might not actually be that useful. Rather, he suggested, Congress should focus its efforts on grilling the witnesses Mueller named in his report.

"Ari, I'm going to make the case, controversial though it may be, that Bob Mueller does not need to testify before, and here's why," said Kirschner. "First of all, prosecutors don't testify about what witnesses in courtrooms around the country every day, judges instruct juries that the words of a prosecutor and the words of a defense attorney are not evidence. The evidence are the words that come from the mouths of the witnesses."

"That's point number one. We don't need Bob Mueller to say, oh, Don McGahn told us that the president told him to fire the special counsel and when he refused, the president told him to lie," said Kirschner. "We need Don McGahn to say that to the American people and to Congress. Number two, I suspect that a congressional appearance by Bob Mueller would turn into a circus."

"I would love to have a beer and hear everything he thinks about the probe," Kirschner concluded. "But the intro to those questions are all interesting and things we want to know the answer, to but none of them go to the core of whether this president committed impeachable offenses. And to get to that and to cull away everything else, we need the witnesses."

Watch below: