Several weeks ago the special counsel’s team told Attorney General Bill Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that Robert Mueller would not be reaching a conclusion on whether President Trump obstructed justice.
That conclusion was “unexpected” and not what Barr had anticipated.
What’s clear is that Mueller did find at least some evidence pointing to possible obstruction by Trump, including evidence not yet in public view.
Justice Department legal opinions say sitting presidents cannot be indicted, and Mueller may have taken that into account.
After weeks of considering whether to charge his boss with a crime, and preparing a reason why not, Barr released his four-page summary Sunday of Mueller’s principal conclusions, writing that the special counsel “did not draw a conclusion — one way or another — as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction.”
Learning about Mueller’s decision to punt on the crucial question of whether Trump’s actions amounted to obstruction of justice was particularly notable given that he never received a sit down interview with the president to assess his state of mind, despite having considered issuing a subpoena for his testimony.
Obstruction of justice requires proof of criminal intent, which may have been hard for prosecutors to establish without an in-person interview with Trump.
And whether expected by Justice officials or not, the new timeline now emerging means that Barr had a head start on developing his own analysis on obstruction of justice well before Mueller delivered his confidential report to the attorney general on Friday.
Barr explained in his summary to Congress that after reviewing Mueller’s report and consulting with Rosenstein, he concluded that based on the evidence developed during the special counsel’s investigation and federal charging guidelines, the Justice Department couldn’t make a prosecutable case against the President for obstruction.
And that conclusion was reached without regard to the Department’s generally recognized policy of not indicting a sitting president.
The American people still have not been told how long the Mueller report is, and how much they will be able to read for themselves.
The Democratic chairs of powerful committees in the House today demanded Barr release Mueller’s entire report, as well the underlying evidence of the nearly two-year investigation, by early next week.
In the letter, the chairs of the House Judiciary, Oversight, Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, Ways and Means and Financial Services committees said they needed access to all of Mueller’s findings and investigative materials by April 2 to make an “independent assessment” of the probe.
The top Democratic legislators expressed concerns over the way Barr characterized Mueller’s findings in his four-page summary.