Constituting Ethos as a Response to the Problem of Paradox: Robert S. Mueller III's Testimony Before Congress

Robert Mueller faced the problem of responding in non-partisan ways in a partisan context when the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees invited him to testify after the report of his investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign was released. This paper draws on ethos as a way to explain how Mueller navigated the treacherous situation<br> through an awareness that his integrity needed to be constituted, and thus renewed, in each argumentative encounter after the report’s release, so that it might be intact for the next challenge. We conclude that Mueller’s performance of ethos constituted an exemplar of public service demonstrating that the integrity of the nation’s political institutions was still alive, and possible to sustain, if the public would only attend to his model.<br>