Mueller unfiltered
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s only public comment on his office’s work cut through the confusion President Trump and Attorney General William Barr have deliberately sown about his findings. Mueller stressed that the facts prevented his office from clearing Trump of obstruction of justice, that federal policy prohibited him from charging the president with that crime, and that Congress alone has the power to redress such presidential misconduct through impeachment.
The special counsel’s outgoing statement provided a faithful summary of his voluminous conclusions that was in direct contrast to the attorney general’s willful misrepresentations. Mueller reiterated his report’s pointed refusal to exonerate the president of obstruction, noting that “if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”
Mueller emphasized that he declined to conclude whether the president committed that crime because he was bound by a Justice Department legal opinion holding that a sitting president cannot be indicted. “Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider,” he said.
He added that the same opinion “says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing” — namely, impeachment.
Mueller took pains to describe the gravity of the probe and of obstruction, saying the Russian government “launched a concerted attack on our political system” that “needed to be investigated and understood.”
“It was critical for us to obtain full and accurate information from every person we questioned,” he said. “When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of their government’s effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable.”
The special counsel’s statement clarified his most vigorously distorted conclusion: that there is extensive evidence of wrongdoing for which only Congress can hold the president accountable.