Dems press for full disclosure of report
Special counsel Robert Mueller did not find evidence that President Donald Trump’s campaign ‘‘conspired or coordinated’’ with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election but reached no conclusion on whether Trump obstructed justice, Attorney General William Barr declared yesterday.
That brought a hearty claim of vindication from Trump but set the stage for new rounds of political and legal fighting
Trump, pleasure tinged with resentment after two years of investigations , declared ‘‘complete and total exoneration. ‘‘It’s a shame that our country has had to go through this. To be honest, it’s a shame that your president has had to go through this,’’ he said.
But Democrats demanded to see the full Mueller report and insisted that even the summary by the president’s attorney general hardly put him in the clear.
Mueller’s conclusions, summarised by Barr in a four-page letter to Congress, represented a victory for Trump on a key question that has hung over his presidency from the start: Did his campaign work with Russia to defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton? That was further good news for the president on top of the Justice Department’s earlier announcement that Mueller had wrapped his investigation without new indictments.
It could deflate the hopes of Democrats in Congress and on the 2020 campaign trail that incriminating findings from Mueller would hobble the president.
But while Mueller was categorical in ruling out criminal collusion, he was far more circumspect on presidential obstruction of justice. Despite Trump’s claim of total exoneration, Mueller did not draw a conclusion one way or the other on whether he sought to stifle the Russia investigation through his actions including the firing of former FBI director James Comey.
According to Barr’s summary, Mueller set out ‘‘evidence on both sides of the question’’ and stated that ‘‘while this report does not conclude the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.’’
Yet Barr, who was nominated by Trump in December, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller in May 2017 and oversaw much of his work, went further in Trump’s favour.
Barr said he and Rosenstein had determined that Mueller’s evidence was insufficient to prove in court that Trump had committed obstruction of justice to hamper the probe. Barr has previously voiced a broad view of presidential powers, and in an unsolicited memo last June he cast doubt on whether the president could have obstructed justice through acts – like firing his FBI director – that he was legally empowered to take.
Barr said their decision was based on the evidence uncovered by Mueller and not affected by Justice Department legal opinions that say a sitting president cannot be indicted.
Mueller’s team examined a series of actions by the president in the last two years to determine if he intended obstruction.
Those include his firing of Comey one week before Mueller’s appointment, his public and private haranguing of then-attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation because of his work on the campaign and his request of Comey to end an investigation into Michael Flynn, the White House’s first national security adviser. –AP