Though former FBI Director James Comey said he is pleased with the finding that President Trump did not collude with Russia, there is one thing about special counsel Robert Mueller’s report he finds confusing.
In an NBC interview, Comey said he did not understand why Mueller decided not to make a determination on obstruction of justice charges in his report to Attorney General William Barr.
It was a sentiment he also expressed Tuesday at a speaking engagement in North Carolina.
“The obstruction piece confuses me,” Comey said in the Wednesday interview, his first since the report was delivered. “The purpose of the special counsel is to make sure that the politicals, in this case the attorney general, doesn’t make the ultimate call on whether the subject of the investigation, the president of the United States, should be held criminally liable for activities that were under investigation.
“And so the idea that a special counsel wouldn’t reach the question and hand it to the political leadership doesn’t make sense,” he said.
Mueller spent two years investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, but Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded there is a lack of “sufficient” evidence to conclude the president obstructed justice.
“The Special Counsel states that ‘while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,’” Barr wrote in a letter to Congress summarizing the report.
