Mueller: My Hands Were Tied on Charging Trump

Special Counsel Robert Mueller broke more than two years of silence on Wednesday to address the central mystery of his investigation: why he did not make a determination about whether President Trump broke the law.

Mueller said it was because his hands were tied by Justice Department policy that forbids indictment of a sitting president—a statement already being interpreted as an invitation for Congress to impeach Trump.

“Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider,” he said in a surprise press conference at DOJ headquarters.

The special counsel investigation reported 10 episodes of possible obstruction-of-justice offenses allegedly committed by Trump, including the president’s failed efforts to fire Mueller. At the press conference, Mueller said the lack of an official charge of misconduct against Trump should not be interpreted as an exoneration—as Trump and his allies have endlessly claimed.

“If we had had confidence the president clearly did not commit a crime we would have said so,” Mueller said.

Instead, Mueller said “the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.”

Trump tweeted he was innocent, following Mueller’s statement.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said the onus is now on Congress to act.

“Given that Special Counsel Mueller was unable to pursue criminal charges against the president, it falls to Congress to respond to the crimes, lies and other wrongdoing of President Trump—and we will do so,” he said in a statement. “No one, not even the president of the United States, is above the law.”

Rep. Justin Amash, the first Republican lawmaker to call for impeachment, tweeted: “The ball is in our court, Congress.”

Mueller’s statement was in contrast to Attorney General William Barr’s previous comments about the DOJ policy in question, an opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). When Barr gave a press conference before the public release of Mueller’s report, he said he asked Mueller multiple times if the special counsel would have charged Trump absent that OLC opinion.

“[H]e made it very clear several times that that was not his position,” Barr said at the time. “He was not saying that but for the OLC opinion, he would have found a crime. He made it clear that he had not made the determination that there was a crime.”

Barr essentially asked Mueller if he had conducted a thought experiment. Mueller said Wednesday he did not conduct such an experiment, noting that the OLC opinion says Congress is constitutionally authorized to handle the alleged crimes of sitting presidents.

But after Mueller told Barr he had not conducted such a thought experiment, Barr went ahead and did it himself.

Barr said he concluded that even absent the OLC opinion, the Justice Department still wouldn’t have charged Trump. Mueller said he had nothing to do with Barr’s analysis.

“That was the office’s final position and we will not comment on any other conclusions or hypotheticals about the president,” he said, clearly alluding to Barr.

Mueller also dismissed calls for him to appear before Congress to testify on his office’s findings.

“Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report,” he said. “It contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made. We chose those words carefully and the work speaks for itself.” He concluded: “The report is my testimony.”

Ever since the report’s release, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have been battling the Justice Department for access both to Mueller and the un-redacted report. Nadler has pushed the department to schedule testimony from Mueller, but no date has been set. He was noncommittal when asked if he plans to subpoena Mueller.

“Mr. Mueller told us a lot of what we need to hear today,” Nadler said at a press conference.

The special counsel also defended the investigation into Russian influence, a thinly veiled response to years of allegations from Trump that the entire thing was a “witch hunt” based on a “hoax.” His office charged dozens of Russian military officers with conspiracy to illegally influence the 2016 election.

“The indictments allege, and the other activities in our report describe, efforts to interfere in our political system. They needed to be investigated and understood. That is among the reasons why the Department of Justice established our office.”

Investigating acts of obstruction and lying were inseparable from his mandate, Mueller said.

“The matters we investigated were of paramount importance. It was critical for us to obtain full and accurate information from every person we questioned. When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government’s effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable.”

Mueller said his investigation is complete and he would be closing his office and resigning from the Justice Department to “return to private life.”

The statement was Mueller’s first public, on-camera comments since he was appointed as special counsel in 2017 to investigate Russian efforts to meddle in the last presidential election. Mueller’s investigation concluded in April when he sent his long-awaited report to Barr.

Mueller’s final report said his team did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. They did uncover a criminal conspiracy emanating from Moscow to subvert American democracy with the goal of electing Trump.

Barr did not immediately release the report. Instead, he wrote a summary to Congress that Democrats said inaccurately portrayed Mueller’s conclusions as more favorable towards Trump than they actually were.

Mueller then took the extraordinary step of criticizing Barr in a private letter, writing his summary “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions.

Then Mueller asked Barr to immediately release the 448-page report’s executive summaries to clear up the confusion, but he did not. Instead, Barr waited several weeks to release a redacted version of the report—but not before giving a press conference that spun for Trump.

In a contentious Senate hearing after revelation of Mueller’s letter, Barr defended his handling of the report and played down any possibility of tension with Mueller. The letter’s “snitty” tone, he said, suggested that it had been written by special counsel staff rather than Mueller.

KaiserSouze on May 29th, 2019 at 18:33 UTC »

"The onus is now on Congress to act."

Welp... There goes any chance of anything happening.

Admiral_Red_Wings on May 29th, 2019 at 16:08 UTC »

Here is the transcript:

Thank you for being here. Two years ago, the Acting Attorney General asked me to serve as Special Counsel, and he created the Special Counsel’s Office. The appointment order directed the office to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. This included investigating any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign. Now I have not spoken publicly during our investigation. I’m speaking out today because our investigation is complete. The Attorney General has made the report on our investigation largely public. We are formally closing the Special Counsel’s office, and as well I’m resigning from the Department of Justice to return to private life. I’ll make a few remarks about the results of our work. But beyond these few remarks it is important that the office’s written work speak for itself.

Let me begin where the appointment order begins: and that is interference with the 2016 presidential election. As alleged by the grand jury in an indictment, Russian intelligence officers who were part of the Russian military launched a concerted attack on our political system. The indictment alleges that they used sophisticated cyber techniques to hack into computers and networks used by the Clinton campaign. They stole private information and then released that information through fake online identities and through the organization Wikileaks. The releases were designed and times to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate.

And at the same time as the grand jury alleged in a separate indictment, a private Russian entity engaged in a social media operation where Russian citizens posed as Americans in order to influence an election. These indictments contain allegations, and we are not commenting on the guilt or innocence of any specific defendant. Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

The indictments allege, and the other activities in our report describe, efforts to interfere in our political system. They needed to be investigated and understand. And that is among the reasons why the Department of Justice established our office. That is also a reason we investigated efforts to obstruct the investigation. The matters we investigated were of paramount importance and it was critical for us to obtain full and accurate information from every person we questioned. When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government’s effort to find the truth and hold wrong doers accountable.

Let me say a word about the report. The report has two parts, addressing the two main issues we were asked to investigate. The first volume details numerous efforts emanating from Russia to influence the election. This volume includes a discussion of the Trump campaign’s response to this activity, as well as our conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy.

And in a second volume, the report describes the results and analysis of our obstruction of justice investigation involving the president.

The order appointing the Special Counsel authorized us to investigate actions that could obstruct the investigation. And we conducted that investigation and we kept the Office of the Acting Attorney General apprised of the progress of our work.

And as set forth in the report after that investigation, if we had had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.

We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime. The introduction to the volume two of our report explains that decision. It explains that under long-standing Department policy, a President cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that too is prohibited. 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.

The Department’s written opinion explaining the policy makes several important points that further informed our handling of the obstruction investigation. Those points are summarized in our report, and I will describe two of them for you. First, the opinion explicitly permits the investigation of a sitting President because it is important to preserve evidence while memories are fresh and documents available. Among other things, that evidence could be used if there were co-conspirators who could be charged now. And second, the opinion says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting President of wrong doing. And beyond Department policy we were guided by principles of fairness. It would be unfair to potentially — it would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of the actual charge.

So that was Justice Department policy. Those were the principles under which we operated and from them we concluded that we would not reach a determination, one way or the other, about whether the President committed a crime. That is the office’s — that is the office’s final position, and we will not comment on any other conclusions or hypotheticals about the President.

We conducted an independent criminal investigation and reported the results to the Attorney General, as required by Department regulations. The attorney general then concluded that it was appropriate to provide our report to Congress and to the American people. At one point in time I requested that certain portions of the report be released. The Attorney General preferred to make that — preferred to make the entire report public all at once, and 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.

Now I hope and expect this to be the only time that I will speak to you in this manner. I am making that decision myself. No one has told me whether I can or should testify or speak further about this matter. There has been discussion about an appearance before Congress. Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report. It contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made. We chose those words carefully and the work speaks for itself. And the report is my testimony. I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before congress.

In addition, access to our underlying work product is being decided in a process that does not involve our office. So beyond what I have said here today, and what is contained in our written work, I do not believe it is appropriate for me to speak further about the investigation or to comment on the actions of the Justice Department or Congress. And it’s for that reason I will not be taking questions today as well.

Now before I step away, I want to thank the attorneys, the FBI agents, and analysts, the professional staff who helped us conduct this investigation in a fair and independent manner. These individuals who spent nearly two years with the Special Counsel’s Office were of the highest integrity.

And I will close by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments — that there were multiple, systematic efforts to interference in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American.

Thank you. Thank you for being here today.

edit: Thanks for the gold and silver! I'm going to use this opportunity to encourage people to join r/VoteBlue, a subreddit dedicated to electing Democrats across the US.

SynGaren on May 29th, 2019 at 16:06 UTC »

The scary thing is everyone wants to hear him testify... when the guy practically wrote a book telling you every bit of information he could; yet everyone refuses to read it.