The Left accusing their "golden boy", Mueller of now colluding with Barr to hide POTUS' "crimes". You just can't make this bs up! lmao
Questions mount over Mueller, Barr and obstruction
Questions are mounting over special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into whether President Trump obstructed justice as lawmakers on Capitol Hill await the release of his report.
While Barr’s four-page letter to Congress on Sunday silenced suspicions Mueller would charge Trump or members of his campaign with conspiring with the Russian government, its contents only amplified the mystery surrounding the obstruction inquiry.
It remains unclear why Mueller declined to make a decision one way or another on whether Trump impeded his investigation, and Democrats have grown increasingly skeptical of Attorney General William Barr’s judgment that the evidence was insufficient to accuse Trump of obstruction. They also argue he is not a neutral arbiter.
Lawmakers are unlikely to get answers for weeks, as the Justice Department combs through Mueller’s 300-to-400-page report to determine what can be publicly released.
Barr told Congress on Friday that he expected to have the report prepared for public release by mid-April, after officials scrub it of grand jury material, sensitive national security information and details that could impact ongoing investigations.
In the meantime, Democrats are focused on a lengthy memo Barr penned last year criticizing the obstruction inquiry and labeling the theory Trump impeded the probe by firing FBI Director James Comey “fatally misconceived.”
Some legal experts have described Mueller’s decision to not make his own call on obstruction charges as unusual. Regulations governing Mueller’s appointment required him to submit a report to Barr that lays out his why he decided to prosecute, or against charging, certain crimes.
“It is a little unusual because there is a charging decision and either someone is charged or the prosecution is declined – a declination. It’s more unusual for a prosecutor to say, I don’t know, or I don’t know enough to reach a firm conclusion,” said Jack Sharman, a defense attorney at Lightfoot, Franklin and White and a former special counsel to Congress during the Whitewater investigation.
Some say it’s possible that Mueller meant to lay out the facts and let Congress decide on whether Trump obstructed the investigation; or that he meant for Barr, a political appointee, to ultimately make the call.
Mueller was also keenly aware of the Justice Department policy not to indict a sitting president, which may have affected his reasoning.
Some argue Barr overstepped his bounds by making his own judgment on obstruction without releasing Mueller’s report or the evidence backing it up.
Others say it was Barr’s call to make given Mueller’s decision to not make a decision.
“It doesn’t say what happens if Mueller says, I’m unable to make a determination,” Steven Cash, a lawyer at Day Pitney and former counsel to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), said of Mueller’s original mandate.
Broadly, legal experts agree that proving obstruction of justice is difficult; it requires establishing that the offender acted to impede an official proceeding and that the person acted with “corrupt intent.”
Doing so would almost certainly require Mueller to interview Trump in order to get to the bottom of his reasons for firing Comey or taking other actions that the special counsel likely examined, such as his tweets attacking then-attorney general Jeff Sessions and calling on him to end Mueller’s probe.
Mueller never reached an agreement with Trump’s personal lawyers on an interview and ultimately did not pursue a subpoena to compel his testimony. Why he did not subpoena Trump is another mystery.
“The fact that we ended up right on a tight rope on whether or not it was obstruction underscores how important it was for Mueller to interview or subpoena Trump,” said Elie Honig, a defense attorney at Lowenstein Sandler and former federal prosecutor.
Barr’s letter, quoting from Mueller’s report, notes that Mueller recognized “‘the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference’” and suggests that makes it more difficult to prove the president was deliberately improper in his actions.
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