White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway defended President Trump Thursday after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, emphasizing its conclusion that the president did not collude with Russia.
“This has been a political proctology exam and he’s emerging with a clean bill of health,” Conway told reporters on the White House driveway. “There’s no other way to look at it.”
Conway said today was “really the best day since he got elected,” and added that the White House was “accepting apologies today, too, for anybody who feels the grace in offering them.”
The Department of Justice released a redacted version of the 448-page report Thursday morning, following a press conference by Attorney General William Barr. Barr said that no Americans knowingly assisted Russia in its attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Conway, who said she has read the full report, also said she had not seen the report before its public release.
“We had no advance notice,” Conway said. “But we already knew what was not in the report, and that is collusion or obstruction. This president and his team did not interfere whatsoever in the Department of Justice’s attempt to get millions of pages of documents and dozens of witnesses. There was no attempt to redact any portion of the report. There was no assertion of executive privilege.”
While Mueller found no collusion by the president, he did not determine whether there was obstruction of justice — and investigated ten instances of possible obstruction. When asked about unflattering aspects of the report, however, Conway brushed them off.
“So?” she asked. “Intent matters, and that’s the whole point here. Look, what all these people have had to say over millions of words, thousands of hours on TV, in print, on Twitter, has zero legal significance. What matters is what the Department of Justice and the special counsel concluded here, which is no collusion, no obstruction, and complete exoneration, as the president says.”
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Trump also seems unperturbed by the release of the report. Shortly after Barr gave his remarks Thursday morning, the president said he was “having a good day” and emphasized that there was no collusion.
“This should never happen to another president again, this hoax,” he said.
