Almost immediately after Robert Mueller stepped away from the podium on Wednesday after giving his first and final remarks on the Russia probe, speculation turned to Attorney General William Barr, as Democrats and the media speculated that the special counsel had just delivered a painful snub to his longtime friend and erstwhile boss.
Some felt that Mueller’s terse account of the investigation, and more critically, his explanation for why he and his team stopped short of making a recommendation about wrongdoing allegedly committed by the president, contradicted the summary of the report’s findings released by Barr a few weeks before the redacted report was made public. In his summary, Barr said Mueller found no evidence of collusion or obstruction committed by the president, a conclusion that Mueller apparently felt was misleading.
But two can play at that game, and in a brief excerpt from an interview with CBS News that’s set to air on Friday morning, Barr undermined Mueller’s account of his team’s conclusion by telling CBS that he felt Mueller could have made a conclusion about presidential wrongdoing if he wanted to - the Office of Legal Counsel opinion Mueller cited simply suggests a sitting president can’t be indicted.
“I personally felt he could have reached a decision as to whether it was criminal activity…the opinion says you can’t indict…but he had his reasons for not doing it which he explained…but when he didn’t make a decision the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I felt it necessary as the heads of the department to make a decision.”
After Mueller decided to leave the conclusion open-ended, Barr and Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein felt they needed to say something about Mueller’s conclusions in their summary. But presumably, if Mueller really felt Trump had committed crimes, he could have conclusively said so in his report.
During yesterday’s press conference, Mueller appeared to press Congress to pursue impeachment, saying “if we had confidence that the president had not committed a crime, we would have said so.”
As for Mueller’s argument that he would leave the task of prosecuting the president to Congress, Barr said the DOJ typically doesn’t resign itself to playing second fiddle to Congress.
“The DoJ doesn’t use our powers of investigating crimes as an adjunct to Congress.”
In a second clip, Barr responded to criticisms that he was protecting the president by saying these claims “just go with the territory of being the attorney general in a hyperpartisan time.”
“We live in a hyperpartisan age where people no longer really pay attention to the substance of what’s said but instead who said it…the Department of Justice is all about the law and the facts and the substance…I’m going to make the decision based on the law and the facts…I think it just goes with the territory of being attorney general in a hyperpartisan period of time.”
Watch two clips from the interview below:
via zerohedge
I believe we have reached a point in the States that we can never return. Our Colleges and Universities have become a platform again for underdeveloped children to be sold a false dream. Our States are no longer United as if they really were before. California can declare they are a sanctuary State and the Feds can do nothing about it all the while it’s the fight to retain the $98 Billion in HHS money they really care about. It seems as if now Illinois has tried to outdo New York on the most brutal and inhumane practice that we now say is choice instead of uncivilized. We all know what’s coming, bloodshed will be the only thing to right this ship.
But, a decision would take away he suspicion, which good communists need to herd the voters.
Mueller is a disgrace. He should be arrested for treason. He helped Hillary scam America with the uranium deal. He lied about the witch hunt. Democrat party is nothing but traitors to America. Killing babies, dumb downing the children of America. Dividing the country by race and money. Anyone voting for the Nazi party needs to pack your bags leave America. Hillary and her cartel are going down. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are going down. People of America better wake before the Democrat party takes your freedoms and money away. Stop listening to CNN and the rest of the fake news. These reporters or hacks are getting paid by Iran and Soros to take down America. We have exprofessor making up lies about the president that could of started a war. Hollywood perverts dancing around your children with lust in their disgusting hearts to abuse them. Democrat party cares more about illegals than Americans only for votes and power. Obama in the back ground paying terrorist organization to run for government jobs to destroy America with in. American women now thinking abortion is a right to kill babies at nine months and after birth. That is truly disgusting. What distain that women have become.using abortion for birth control. Because to lazy to control their bodies and souls for sex. America is doom with the mental ill running the show. Civil war will happen if America doesn’t realize what the people like Bernie Sanders, Harris, corker and the rest of the Democrat party will do to our freedoms and rights and the constitution. A dictator will be elected. Just like Hitler, promises everything but then steps on your backs, death,no food, killing people if they don’t like or you disagree with them. Read Hillary’s book and Obama’s books. America was lucky that Hillary wasn’t elected. She would of been the next Hitler.
Mr. or Ms. or Mrs. Pj, all females truly need to wear a Chasity Belt, up to the time after they get married, but females like Mrs. HRC and the like need an extra Chasity Belt covering their mouths too!
I agree but what you fail to mention is that the democratic Party has shown their true face and if it wasn’t for Trump we would have still gone on thinking that things woyks,stay status quo. Also if Clinton would have won we would have already turned Socialist and Sharia Law and loss of many freedoms would have already been full steam ahead to breaking down what we know to be our Country
Mueller was, is , and will always be a coward. He is a tried and true Trump hater and staffed his entire legal team with Trump haters.
why didn’t mueller after 2 years of investigations read his report to congress himself. after all he is the chief investigator. secondly why didn’t he balance his investigators into equal groups,democrats and republicans. what he did just didn’t make sense,the only thing he accomplished is he got richer.
A couple of views……..Now that we have found the cowboy “not guilty” of horse theft, are we to now prosecute him for resisting the mob that threatened to hang him for that horse theft?
—At what point did the Special Counsel know and conclude that no collaboration between Trump campaign and Russia occurred? Why did they let that perception linger and fester for over half the life of the Special Counsel, instead of informing the DoJ, Congress and the public, to ease tensions? Wouldn’t that have also ended any further resistance by the President, eliminating any further behaviour that could be perceived as obstruction? Even if the President had actually fired Rosenstein, Mueller or others, or threatened to, any act that happened after a conclussion had been reached cannot be considered obstruction or attempted obstruction, because anything to obstruct was already concluded. We can only consider acts prior to the Special Counsel’s conclusion. It is the Special Counsel’s own fault for any acts after the conclusion, as they needlessly prolonged a perceived crime to the public and a perceived threat to the President.
—Glass half full or half empty? Regardless of how you describe it, the state of the water in the glass is exactly the same. “If we were confident the President HAD NOT committed a crime, we would so state”. Or perhaps, “if we were confident the President HAD committed a crime, we would so state”. Both statements describe the same physical state of the situation. Obviously, the Special Counsel is bias to prefering to view the glass being half empty instead of half full in contradiction to an established legal system that he has taken an oath to that mandates that he view it as half full until proven otherwise. Presumed “innocent until proven guilty”, not “guilty until proven innocent”.