Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith offered her first qualified apology Tuesday to “anyone that was offended” by her remark that she would gladly attend a “public hanging” if one of her supporters invited her.

In the lone public debate of the runoff Senate election between Hyde-Smith and Democrat Mike Espy, the Republican senator said she meant no ill will by her remark, which she said was made to express her deep regard for a young supporter. But then she accused Democrats of distorting her comment, which was caught on video, for political gain.

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“My comments [did not] mean I would enjoy any type of capital punishment sitting there witnessing this. You know, for anyone that was offended by my comments, I certainly apologize. There was no ill will, no intent whatsoever in my statements,” she said. But Hyde-Smith added, “This comment was twisted and it was turned into a weapon to be used against me. A political weapon used for nothing but personal and political gain by my opponent,” Hyde-Smith said.

Espy, who is African-American, said the episode has been an embarrassment to Mississippi, reinforcing stereotypes and giving “our state another black eye that we don’t need.”

“No one twisted your comments because your comments were live, it came out of your mouth,” Espy said. “I don’t know what’s in your heart, but we all know came out of your mouth.”

The exchange came during an hour-long debate in which the two sparred over ethics, health care, President Donald Trump and his proposed wall on the Mexican border. Hyde-Smith attacked Espy over money he’d received from an Ivory Coast dictator as a lobbyist — a charge to which Espy had an anemic response. Espy tried to portray Hyde-Smith as a blind ally of the president, even when his policies hurt Mississippians, such as farmers and people with pre-existing health conditions.

The debate came one week before the Nov. 27 election between the two, which was forced when neither candidate received more than 50 percent in the first round of voting on Nov. 6. Hyde-Smith opened and closed the debate by hyping two campaign rallies Trump is holding to support her Monday, the eve of the election, a sign of how much she is relying on the president to help turn out voters given the unusual timing of the runoff.

Hyde-Smith also repeatedly attacked Espy as a liberal who would follow Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer’s marching orders.

She also repeatedly brought up the hundreds of thousands of dollars Espy received from a former Ivory Coast dictator, attacking his past work as a lobbyist as corrupt. Espy said that he went to the Ivory Coast to help local farmers, and that once he learned about the nation’s leader, he reported those facts to the CIA and canceled the remainder of his contract.

Espy tried to paint himself as above partisan squabbling. He also disagreed with several administration policies, calling Trump’s tariffs a “wrongheaded policy” that hurt Mississippi farmers and calling the proposed border wall “impractical.”

He attacked Hyde-Smith repeatedly on health care, claiming that her opposition to a resolution that would have banned skimpy insurance plans was a vote against protections for pre-existing conditions. Hyde-Smith said she knew what she was voting for, and claimed the bill would not have hurt patients. She also touted her co-sponsorship of a bill from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) that would protect patients with pre-existing conditions. Espy said that particular bill was a “sham” that wouldn’t actually provide those protections.

Hyde-Smith came under fire in the days leading up to the debate over her remark to a supporter early this month that she would be in “the front row” if he invited her to a “public hanging.” In addition to repeatedly attacking her about it during the debate, Espy released a TV ad hours before in which a narrator warns Mississippians, “We can’t afford a senator who embarrasses us and reinforces the stereotypes we’ve worked hard to overcome.”

And outside Democratic groups have pounced on that and another offhand remark by Hyde-Smith, also caught on video, that it was a “great idea” to make it harder for “liberal folks” to vote. Hyde-Smith said she was joking in both cases and that there was no racial intent in her remarks.

Several major companies, including Walmart, asked for their campaign donations to Hyde-Smith to be returned.

Republicans, meanwhile, have attacked Espy, a former congressman and Cabinet secretary, as both a run of the mill Democrat and a corrupt Washington insider. They’ve criticized Espy for his past as a lobbyist, and for his time as agriculture secretary under President Bill Clinton. One ad from super PAC Senate Leadership Fund called him a “shady Clinton crony.”

Espy was forced to resign following an indictment on charges that he improperly took gifts while in office, though he was later acquitted on all charges.

Hyde-Smith has also leaned heavily on Trump in a state he won by nearly 20 percentage points. Her campaign released a TV ad this week from his last rally in Mississippi in early October, featuring clips of him bashing Espy and endorsing her.

A Democrat hasn’t won a Senate seat in Mississippi since 1982, and both parties view Hyde-Smith as a clear favorite in the race, though Democrats hope that the combination of Hyde-Smith’s recent remarks and the odd timing of the election just a few days after Thanksgiving could give Espy a boost.

Hyde-Smith was appointed to the seat by Gov. Phil Bryant earlier this year after Republican Sen. Thad Cochran retired for health reasons. Hyde-Smith and Espy are in a runoff after neither candidate received a majority in the first round of voting on Election Day. Republican Chris McDaniel, who nearly toppled Cochran in a primary four years ago, finished a distant third.

If Hyde-Smith wins, Republicans will have a 53-47 Senate majority in the next Congress.

Image: Mashable screenshot

Image: Mashable Screenshot

sounds like the world isn’t such a bad place after all.

— Anthony FanTHANOS (@theneedledrop) November 7, 2018

President Donald Trump on Tuesday finally submitted a set of written responses to Robert Mueller, signaling that he was done for good with the special counsel’s questions.

But Mueller is far from done with him.

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The special counsel still wants to question the president over his actions while in the White House — Tuesday’s answers only covered Russian hacking during the 2016 election. It’s a fight that could result in a historic subpoena and eventual Supreme Court ruling, pulling a defiant Trump into a legal squabble that could set groundbreaking precedent for presidential investigations for years to come. Depending on how the battle plays out, House Democrats may even try to pounce and launch impeachment proceedings.

Things could get explosive fast. Next comes the perilous round of negotiations between Trump’s lawyers and Mueller’s prosecutors covering topics like Trump’s intentions when firing FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. That line of questioning — which Trump says he shouldn’t have to answer — is tied to Mueller’s ongoing obstruction of justice investigation.

“These are very deep waters and complicated questions,” said John Q. Barrett, a St. John’s University law professor and former associate who worked under independent counsel Lawrence Walsh during the Reagan-era investigation into secret U.S. arms sales to Iran.

If Mueller can’t get the answers he wants, he will have to decide whether he’s ready to test his power to issue a subpoena for the president’s testimony. Mueller’s prosecutors reportedly have made the threat before, but now the step comes with the added wrinkle that it could spark an internal Justice Department riff with his new supervisor, acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, who previously has been critical of the special counsel’s investigation.

Should the special counsel win DOJ approval and pull the subpoena trigger, he’d still have to face off against a president who has relished taunting Mueller and enter into a legal battle that could quickly elevate to the Supreme Court, where a newly enmeshed conservative majority is widely seen as friendlier to Trump’s arguments.

Round Two of Mueller versus Trump could also fizzle, though.

Legal experts say that the special counsel might have enough information from documents, presidential tweets and witnesses to wrap up the obstruction of justice portion of his investigation and file a report to his DOJ supervisors — all without forcing a court showdown just to nail down an interview with the president.

“My hunch, at least at this time, [is that] the special counsel doesn’t need the president’s testimony and that he has provided the president with the opportunity to testify simply so that the president does not later complain about the special counsel’s further prosecutorial actions or the conclusions of his report when it is made public in one fashion or another,” said Jack Quinn, the former White House counsel under President Bill Clinton.

For now, it’s unclear what path the dispute will take.

Mueller on Tuesday stuck to the same no-comment posture he’s had throughout the 18-monthlong Russia investigation, refusing to show any of his cards in public beyond what’s required in legal filings.

That’s left a large vacuum that Trump and his attorneys have been eager to fill. The president told Fox News’ Chris Wallace in an interview that aired Sunday that he “probably” would not end up sitting for an interview with Mueller despite more than a year of his own public comments expressing a willingness to do so.

“I think we’ve wasted enough time on this witch hunt and the answer is probably, we’re finished,” the president said.

Trump and his attorneys have also left open some wiggle room for what’s next. Giuliani recently explained to POLITICO that while the president’s legal team has been focused on getting through the first round of questions related to the Russian hacking, they hadn’t foreclosed holding talks with Mueller about an in-person Trump interview.

“We both agreed to leave it open to discussion,” Giuliani said.

But Giuliani noted there is a catch: Trump’s lawyers would fight a special counsel subpoena forcing his testimony on topics tied to his time in the White House — whether the questions cover the Comey firing or other areas tied to an obstruction of justice probe.

“I wouldn’t argue that you can never a subpoena a president. I would argue that you can’t in this particular case because to subpoena a president you have a burden you don’t have with anybody else,” Giuliani said. “Because you’re intruding on his presidential time. You’ve got to show a real need for it. A real need for it in terms of developing your case and not a real need in order to try to trap him. Trapping is not a legal legitimate objective.”

Whether Giuliani’s arguments would hold up in court is an open question, and many legal experts say Trump would be up against a unanimous 1974 Supreme Court ruling that found President Richard M. Nixon had to comply with the request of the Watergate special prosecutor to relinquish Oval Office recordings of conversations with his aides.

But despite that historic Nixon opinion, Trump allies and even some of his critics say there’s still wiggle room for a narrow ruling that deals directly with a subpoena for a sitting president’s testimony related to a criminal probe involving his time while in office.

“It would be a fascinating legal battle and probably a razor-thin margin,” said Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor from New York.

Trump allies say they are also bolstered by the views of Brett Kavanaugh, the newly confirmed Supreme Court justice. While Kavanaugh once helped craft a set of graphic questions for Clinton about his sexual affair with a White House intern while serving on independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s team, he later opined in favor of a change in law that would protect a president from a criminal trial subpoena.

“Mueller has the most to lose in terms of litigating the authority of the Office of the Special Counsel,” said a source close to the Trump White House. “If the president gets a subpoena, he’s got a million ways to say, ‘no.’”

Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and National Review columnist whom the president has cited on Twitter for Mueller matters, said the special counsel faces the burden of proving a presidential interrogation is necessary.

“I think that the prosecutor should neither interview or subpoena the president unless he’s got strong evidence implicating the president in a potential crime,” he said. “Mueller is no dope. He knows that, too.”

Trump’s first round of written answers do mark the end of one critical phase of the Mueller probe. The president told reporters in the spring of 2017 he was “100 percent” willing to testify under oath about alleged Russian ties to his campaign. He has since backtracked on the pledge and pushed instead for Mueller to accept written answers.

During the negotiations earlier this year, the Trump legal team compiled a list of about four dozen questions Mueller wanted to ask the president, covering everything from what knowledge he had of his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s outreach to Russia, to what he knew about national security adviser Michael Flynn’s call to the Russian ambassador to the U.S. after the 2016 election.

According to Giuliani, the special counsel also rejected the written Q&A format earlier this year but later acceded to try out the approach — though the Trump lawyer also insisted the president was under no obligation to answer all of Mueller’s questions.

Trump’s first round of written answers do have some downsides for prosecutors since the one-sided approach allows for evasive responses. His prosecutors also can’t ask in-person follow-ups.

“Written questions are a very poor substitute for an actual interview,” said William Jeffress, a white-collar defense attorney who represented Nixon after he left the White House.

But they do carry some legal weight. The president is indeed now locked in on answers that carry the same legal burden of truthfulness as an in-person session — and they can be used for years to come.

President Ronald Reagan, for example, delivered written answers in 1987 to the Iran-Contra investigators. Three years later, prosecutors relied on the submissions to cross-examine the former Republican president when he appeared as a witness during a trial of his former national security adviser, John Poindexter.

In Clinton’s case, one of the four articles of impeachment adopted in December 1998 by the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee accused the Democrat of “willfully” committing perjury and giving “false and misleading testimony” in writing as part of a federal civil rights lawsuit.

That specific article was later rejected on the House floor, though Clinton was nonetheless impeached on two other counts.