Robert Mueller held a 10-minute conference this morning and talked about two things; 1) he’s resigning from the defense department and 2) he confirmed what he had already stated in his report.
As we had covered before, Mr. Mueller reaffirmed there had not been enough evidence to indict anymore people, than he already had, with conspiracy. He further reaffirmed the only possible outcome of his investigation with regards to obstruction of justice were; 1) no obstruction, or 2) his report.
In his report, he stated that under the OLC’s guidance, a sitting President cannot be indicted or prosecuted of a crime. Therefore, if there was evidence the President committed a crime, he could not be indicted. Even a sealed indictment, under the OLC opinion, is prohibited (see below).
Many talking heads in the media are claiming that Mueller could have, if there had been enough evidence of obstruction of justice, put forth his recommendation and let the Attorney General make his decision, even though Mueller clearly states this was not possible according to the OLC opinion. In other words, they claim that since the Special Counsel’s report lacks a recommendation, this is an indication there was no obstruction of justice.
They use the Starr report as an example, where the investigator did in fact make a recommendation after his report. Yet, they purposely fail to remember that Mr. Mueller and Mr. Starr had to follow very different procedures. Mr. Mueller lead a Special Counsel investigation, while Mr. Starr lead an Independent Counsel investigation. The former is limited in scope from the start, while the scope of the latter was left to Mr. Starr himself.
Mr. Mueller further explains, the OLC’s opinion is such because the constitution has a process in place (impeachment) to address his findings.
I am not sure what congress will do with Mr. Mueller’s statement as he concluded his press conference by stating that would not testify to congress anything more than was already in his report by stating; “the report is my testimony”.
I have some thoughts on Mr. Mueller’s and Mr. Comey’s handling of Trump, but I’ll leave those to another day. In the meantime, let the spinning of the story carry on.
