The redacted Mueller report was released on Thursday, giving Congress, the public and the media a glimpse at the 22-month-long investigation in a hefty 381 pages.
In our opinion, the real meat of the report comes from Mueller’s summary on whether President Trump obstructed justice by trying to end the investigation. He broke down the President’s reaction to the investigation into two phases.
According to Mueller’s report: “In the first phase, before the President fired Comey, the President had been assured that the FBI had not opened an investigation of him personally. The President deemed it critically important to make public that he was not under investigation, and he included that information in his termination letter to Comey after other efforts to have that information disclosed were unsuccessful.”
“Soon after he fired Comey, however, the President became aware that investigators were conducting an obstruction-of-justice inquiry into his own conduct. That awareness marked a significant change in the President’s conduct and the start of a second phase of action.”
The report goes on to detail that the President “launched public attacks on the investigation and individuals involved in it who could possess evidence adverse to the President, while in private, the President engaged in a series of targeted efforts to control the investigation.”
According to Mueller, the President “attempted to remove the Special Counsel; he sought to have Attorney General Sessions unrecuse himself and limit the investigation; he sought to prevent public disclosure of information about the June 9, 2016 meeting between Russians and campaign officials; and he used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and praise witnesses who declined to cooperate with the government.”
Trump and his supporters claim that Mueller’s report vindicates the President, saying “no collusion, no obstruction.”
However, Mueller’s report clearly states the following: “Accordingly, based on the analysis above, we were not persuaded by the argument that the President has blanket constitutional immunity to engage in acts that would corruptly obstruct justice through the exercise of otherwise-valid Article II powers.”
And more directly: “Direct or indirect action by the President to end a criminal investigation into his own or his family members’ conduct to protect against personal embarrassment or legal liability would constitute a core example of corruptly motived conduct.”
It seems that while Mueller found evidence of obstruction, murky legal waters prevented the special counsel from making a conclusion to prosecute.
“Because we determined to not make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President’s conduct. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent present difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment.
At the same time, 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, we are unable to reach that judgment.
Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
