Mueller ‘can not indict the US president’

SPECIAL Counsel Robert Mueller’s team has told the White House that whatever evidence it comes up with in the Russian meddling probe, it cannot indict President Donald Trump, according to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani told CNN and Fox News on Wednesday that Mueller’s team had accepted a longstanding, though never tested, Justice Department legal interpretation that a sitting president is immune from indictment.

“All they get to do is write a report,” Giuliani said. “They can’t indict. At least they acknowledged that to us after some battling, they acknowledged that to us.”

Mueller’s spokesman Peter Carr refused to comment on Giuliani’s remarks, which came on the eve of the one-year anniversary of Mueller’s appointment in charge of the probe into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia. But if correct, it would only confirm widespread belief in the legal community that the president is protected from indictment while in office.

As Giuliani said, if Mueller does find wrongdoing by the president, he is confined to submitting a report to the Justice Department. But that report, and the evidence behind it, could serve as the basis for impeachment of the president in Congress.

No one knows whether Mueller’s team has any strong evidence of collusion with the Russians, or of Trump actively obstructing the investigation, another evident thrust of Mueller’s probe.