Attorney General Bill Barr on Wednesday acknowledged that special counsel Robert Mueller did not ask him to reach his own conclusion about whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice.
During testimony before the Senate, Barr said that Mueller did not ask him to reach a conclusion on obstruction charges, nor did he indicate that he believed Congress should resolve the matter.
However, as reported by CNN’s Manu Raju, he justified his decision to personally clear the president of obstruction charges by saying, “that’s generally how the Department of Justice works.”
Some news from Barr: He says Mueller did NOT say that he meant to punt the question to Congress on whether Trump obstructed justice; He said that Mueller did not ask the AG to make the decision either. But said: “That’s generally how the Department of Justice works.”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) April 10, 2019
According to Barr’s memo of Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the special counsel did not exonerate Trump from committing the crime of obstruction. Rather, Mueller laid out evidence to support both that the president was guilty of obstruction and that he wasn’t guilty.
Barr, however, cleared Trump of any wrongdoing in his four-page summary of the Mueller report without revealing any of Mueller’s actual evidence for and against obstruction charges.
