The Justice Department and its Office of Special Counsel put on a united front to end speculation that Robert Mueller contradicted Attorney General William Barr on the decision-making on whether President Trump could be charged with obstruction of justice during his public address.
“The Attorney General has previously stated that the Special Counsel repeatedly affirmed that he was not saying that, but for the OLC opinion, he would have found the President obstructed justice. The Special Counsel’s report and his statement today made clear that the office concluded it would not reach a determination — one way or the other — about whether the President committed a crime. There is no conflict between these statements,” a joint statement from DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec and Mueller spokesman Peter Carr said.
Mueller spoke publicly for this first time on Wednesday about his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election at the Justice Department. Citing long-standing Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel policy, Mueller said he never considered charging a sitting president with a crime and noted that doing so would be unconstitutional.
“The special counsel’s office is part of the Department of Justice, and by regulation, it was bound by that department policy. Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider,” he said. “The department’s written opinion explaining the policy makes several important points that further informed our handling of the obstruction investigation.”
After Mueller’s roughly nine-minute statement, politicians, pundits, and journalists interpreted his remarks as a clear break from what Barr has said.
Former Gov. Chris Christie said his address “definitely contradicts what the attorney general said when he summarized Mueller’s report and said that he then had to draw the conclusion on that.”
CNN published a report with the headline: “Mueller undercuts Barr’s narrative that downplayed the impact of DOJ guidelines against charging a sitting president.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff called Mueller’s address a “rebuke” of Barr.
“Finally, in a direct rebuke of Attorney General William Barr — who deliberately and repeatedly misled the American people — Mueller today confirmed that he was unable to consider criminal charges of obstruction of justice against the President specifically because of Department of Justice policy prohibiting the indictment of a sitting president,” the California Democrat said in a statement. “Mueller reiterated that ‘if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.’ Instead, he made clear that, because of the Department’s own policy, it is left it to Congress — not the Attorney General — to evaluate and further investigate the president’s misconduct.”
Fox News host Bret Baier questioned Barr and President Trump’s characterization of Mueller’s findings. “This was not — as the president says time and time again — no collusion, no obstruction. It was much more nuanced than that,” Baier said.
Chuck Todd, the moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” claimed that Mueller’s press conference, including his statements related to his decision-making on obstruction of justice, should be seen as a “rebuttal” to Barr.
Before the joint statement came out, Mueller’s office released a handout comparing his assertions about obstruction of justice to what Barr said about it. The document, which seeks to provide context, contains quotes from Barr’s press conference before the release of Mueller’s report in April in which he said Mueller repeatedly assured him that he did not think they would have found a crime if not for the OLC opinion, Mueller’s address Wednesday, and a paragraph from his report.
Mueller did object to Barr’s initial roll-out of his findings, which took the form of a letter to Congress on March 24.
Barr wrote that Mueller did not find that anyone associated with Trump, or any Americans, had conspired with Russia. Barr also stated that he, in conjunction with then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, made the final determination that Trump had not committed obstruction of justice.
Trump and his allies seized on Barr’s letter, declaring that he had been completely vindicated. Mueller’s report, released in April with redactions, shows he declined to make a decision on obstruction, but he laid out 10 possible scenarios in his report, which Democrats argue gives them a roadmap to continue to investigate and possibly seek impeachment.
After Barr released his four-page summary, Mueller communicated his dissatisfaction to Barr, stating that he believed Barr’s memo “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions.”
“There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation,” Mueller said to Barr in a letter. “This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”
Barr sent another letter to Congress on March 29 emphasizing that his earlier letter was not meant to be a “an exhaustive recounting of the Special Counsel’s investigation or report” but was rather meant to communicate “a summary of its principal conclusions” or its “bottom line.”
During his press conference on Wednesday Mueller offered some cover to Barr in explaining his point of view on what transpired behind the scenes.
“At one point in time, I requested that certain portions of the report be released,” Mueller said. “The attorney general preferred to make the entire report public all at once. We appreciate that the attorney general made the report largely public, and I certainly do not question the attorney general’s good faith in that decision.”
