House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler continued to claim Sunday that special counsel Robert Mueller would have charged President Trump with obstruction of justice, had not the Department of Justice kept him from doing so.
Arguing the case for impeachment during an interview with Jake Tapper, Nadler maintained that Mueller was restrained only by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted. Mueller publicly walked back such a claim while speaking in front of Congress on Wednesday.
Mueller made it clear, both in his report and his follow up testimony, that the special counsel’s office had not reached a determination on obstruction of justice one way or the other.
But at a press conference held on Friday, Nadler tried to lay the groundwork for why he believed impeaching Trump would be justified. As part of his argument, he referenced an exchange between Democratic California Rep. Ted Lieu and Mueller, which Mueller disavowed a few hours later.
“He told us in a remarkable exchange with Mr. Lieu that, but for the Department of Justice policy prohibiting him from doing so, he would’ve indicted President Trump,” Nadler said Friday. “Indeed, it is clear that any other citizen of this country who has behaved as this president has would have been charged with multiple crimes.”
Jake Tapper pointed out that “Mueller walked that whole statement back before his afternoon testimony before the House Intelligence Committee,” and then played the clip of it.
“Were you not aware that Mueller had walked that back?” Tapper asked.
Nadler declined to say that he had misrepresented Mueller or that he had ignored Mueller’s correction.
“Well, Mueller very carefully in the report said that he did not make a decision, but he did not make a decision only because he thought — and he says this in this report. He thought it unfair to the president to say he was guilty, likely guilty of a crime when the president couldn’t defend himself in a trial that wouldn’t occur because he could not be indicted because of the Department of Justice’s decision,” Nadler said.
Saying that Mueller laid out evidence of obstruction of justice, Nadler again claimed that Mueller’s report “shows that had he not been the president, he would have been indicted for those crimes.”
Tapper responded by saying that “the exchange with Ted Lieu is misleading because Mueller walked it back” and that “he said he didn’t mean to say what he said.”
Nadler again claimed that Mueller “was very careful not to say what the report makes clear, if you read the report, because he doesn’t think it’s fair to charge — to say the president is charged when he can’t — when there can be no trial because of the Department of Justice rule.”
“But he lays out in the report evidence that clearly establishes all three elements of the crime of obstruction of justice on at least five different counts,” Nadler insisted.
Mueller’s 448-page report laid out 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice, but Mueller did not reach a determination on obstruction charges, referencing the longtime Office of Legal Counsel opinion, though his report did not state that was the only reason they didn’t reach a decision.
