One of the first sentences made public from special counsel Robert Mueller’s report read: “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
Now that the full, albeit redacted, report is out, we have the context of this statement. And boy, does that context — in this case, the Executive Summary of Volume II considering Obstruction of Justice Charges — matter.
Far from the seemingly ambivalent statement that Barr made it out to be, that sentence is instead part of a broader paragraph that begins with two important qualifiers. The first of which is:
As the Introduction made clear, the key reasons that a prosecutorial judgment was not made had little to do with Trump’s conduct and everything to do with legal problems of indicting a sitting president.
The first reason cited is an Office of Legal Counsel opinion finding that determined, as Mueller quotes:
Mueller goes on to explain that while the special counsel conducted a full investigation, Mueller “determined not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the President committed crimes.” He added that since a sitting president could not stand trial and thus get his day in court to clear his name, “fairness concerns counseled against potentially reaching that judgment when no charges can be brought.” Similarly, Mueller explained that bringing charges against the president would also raise separate fairness concerns, as such a charge could have consequences “beyond the realm of criminal justice.”
The second bit of context is perhaps worse for Trump. Mueller writes:
That’s pretty self-explanatory. Mueller had two options: either refuse to make a judgment or clear the president of wrongdoing. A finding of Trump’s guilt was never even on the table.
Since Mueller didn’t find that Trump was innocent, he chose not to make a determination. Barr, then, seems to have misrepresented Mueller’s conclusion.
