Special counsel Robert Mueller refused to admit President Trump committed at least five crimes, according to a top lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment fight.
Norm Eisen, a former President Barack Obama adviser and U.S. ambassador, criticizes Mueller in his new book, A Case for the American People: The United States v. Donald J. Trump, chastising the former FBI director for failing to go “all the way” with his obstruction of justice investigation and letting the country down.
In his report, released in April 2019, Mueller laid out 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice but reached no conclusions. Afterward, Attorney General William Barr and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein determined Trump hadn’t obstructed justice.
“The refusal to admit there were at least five chargeable crimes was his shortcoming, not his lack of style,” Eisen wrote. “I understood his old-fashioned restraint under the special counsel regulations and typical prosecutorial standards. But he had leeway under the rules to do much, much more, and he didn’t.”
Eisen, who served as counsel for the House Judiciary Committee Democrats during the Ukraine-focused impeachment fight, argued that Mueller’s reluctance extended beyond the Russia investigation, hurting the congressional Democrats’ case less than a year later. He specifically lays into Mueller for not cracking down on Trump over his written claim, under oath, that he “didn’t recall” discussions about WikiLeaks releasing hacked emails after former Trump campaign official Rick Gates testified that Roger Stone likely did tell the president about anticipated leaks.
“If Mueller had just done a little more, [impeachment on obstruction of justice] would have been a lock,” he told the Washington Post. “I know [Mueller] personally. I’ve worked with him, I admire him and I think he’s an American hero. But the tragedy of the age of Trump is that so many of our heroes have failed to live up to the moment.”
Eisen was even more critical of Mueller when speaking to Politico.
“He did not finish the job. He did not go to the limits of his prosecutorial authority,” he said when asked about the possibility that new testimony before the Senate could be a do-over of sorts. “When you’re facing down a criminal of the president’s nature, that is unforgivable.”
Mueller’s findings did end up underpinning the two articles of impeachment levied against Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The president was impeached by the Democratic-led House in December but was acquitted by the GOP-controlled Senate in February.
Eisen told NPR that he drafted a much broader array of charges an entire month before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the impeachment investigation.
“Having lived on the Hill for a year, I do think impeachment would have gone differently. I don’t think there would have been an impeachment if we had insisted on all 10 of those articles, however meritorious I may feel they are,” Eisen said.
“Politics is the art of the possible. And Chairman [Jerry] Nadler of the Judiciary Committee, who I worked for; Chairman [Adam] Schiff of the Intelligence Committee, who is a leader on all these matters; and Speaker Pelosi ultimately were able to come together around a set of articles that unified the caucus and that we were able to get through,” he added.
Mueller’s report also showed that his team concluded that Russia interfered in 2016 in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but “did not establish” any criminal conspiracy between the Russians and the Trump campaign. After Mueller completed his investigation, Trump, who long has said he was the target of a “witch hunt,” declared he received “total exoneration.” But Mueller told lawmakers last year that his investigation did not completely exonerate the president.
