White House cites defect in Mueller report

WASHINGTON — White House lawyer Emmet Flood accused Robert Mueller of failing to follow the regulations creating his post and said the special counsel’s report has an “extraordinary legal defect,” in a letter sent to Attorney General William Barr the day after the document’s public release.

In the newly disclosed letter dated April 19, Flood scoffed at Mueller’s work as “part ‘truth commission’ report and part law school exam paper.” He accused the special counsel of writing it with the intent of providing Congress with a “road map” to take action against the president on obstruction of justice, which Flood called an improper use of Mueller’s position.

President Trump has boasted that Mueller’s report amounted to “total EXONERATION” from the investigations into his campaign’s ties to Russian election interference and whether Trump obstructed justice. But Flood’s letter betrayed a less enthusiastic appraisal than the president’s tweets and the assessments offered by Barr in public summaries and Senate testimony.

Mueller said he couldn’t make a finding on obstruction because Justice Department regulations don’t allow indicting a sitting president. But he laid out more than a dozen instances that he said could have amounted to obstruction. Flood said that wasn’t Mueller’s job and that his office failed to act as a prosecutor, whose job is simply to determine whether to bring charges in the belief that a crime can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Flood wrote that Trump wants it known that his decision to allow the release of material in Mueller’s report concerning his time in office doesn’t mean he’s waiving his right to assert privilege in the future for other material.