Are Mueller and Barr really on different pages about Trump and obstruction? Here is where they seem to agree—and where they don’t.
Shortly after special counsel Robert Mueller on Wednesday offered his first public remarks about his two-year investigation into Russian meddling and possible efforts by President Donald Trump to obstruct the probe, House Democrats and others began describing Mueller’s account as “a direct rebuke” and a “contradiction” to Attorney General Bill Barr’s own public statements on the matter.
On Wednesday, Mueller was explicit: “[U]nder long-standing department policy, a President cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional.”But Barr and Mueller disagree on a key question: Even if a president can’t be indicted, can a prosecutor publicly accuse a president of committing crimes?
“An individual who believes he was wrongly accused can use [the trial] process to seek to clear his name,” but a prosecutor's public statement of criminal conduct"affords no such adversarial opportunity for public name-clearing before an impartial adjudicator,” Mueller said. “[F]or each of the relevant actions investigated, [Mueller’s] report sets out evidence on both sides of the question,” Barr wrote in his March 24, 2019, letter to Congress.
Barr recently told Congress that he specifically asked Mueller multiple times whether Mueller would have recommended charges against Trump if only the OLC opinion didn't stand in his way. And, according to Barr, Mueller denied that was the case. “The president took no act that in fact deprived the Special Counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation,” and “there is substantial evidence to show that the president was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency,” Barr said in prepared remarks on April 18, 2019, just minutes before releasing a redacted version of Mueller’s report.
“[W]hile this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” Mueller and his team wrote. And on Wednesday, Mueller pointedly repeated a line from his report, insisting,"If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so."
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