Obsession: Inside the Washington Establishment's Never-Ending War on Trump by Byron York

Author:Byron York [York, Byron]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2020-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

Volume Two

The second volume of Mueller’s report was devoted to obstruction. It elaborated on what Mueller and Quarles told Justice Department officials at the March 5 meeting—that Mueller did not draw a conclusion on whether the president obstructed justice. The report used the phrase “traditional prosecutorial judgment” five times to explain what the report was not providing. “A traditional prosecution or declination decision entails a binary determination to initiate or decline a prosecution,” the report said, “but we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment.”

Why not? In the very next sentence, Mueller explained, “The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) has issued an opinion finding that ‘the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting president would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions.’ ” In short, it appeared Mueller was saying he chose not to charge Trump only because of the OLC decision.

That was precisely the opposite of what Quarles, in Mueller’s presence, had told Barr and the other DOJ officials on March 5, when he said, “We are not going to say we would indict but for the OLC opinion.” A fair reader of the report might well conclude that Mueller was saying he would have concluded that Trump obstructed justice but for the OLC opinion.

Even more serious, in the eyes of the Trump team, was the report’s statement that prosecutors would have exonerated the president if they could, but the evidence did not allow it:

If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment. The evidence we obtained about the president’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

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