U.S. Attorney General William Barr said Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who led a probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, could have reached a decision on whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice, but chose not to.
Mueller said this week that he could not indict Trump because of a Justice Department policy that prohibits indicting a sitting president, and was not even willing to conclude if a crime was committed out of fairness to the president.
But Barr, a Trump appointee who oversaw the final stages of the Russia investigation, gave a starkly different opinion than Mueller’s – saying the special counsel could have made a judgment call even if he could not indict the president.
“I personally felt he could’ve reached a decision,” Barr said, according to an excerpt released on Thursday from an interview with CBS “This Morning.”
“The opinion says you cannot indict a president while he is in office, but he could’ve reached a decision as to whether it was criminal activity,” Barr added. “But he had his reasons for not doing it, which he explained and I am not going to, you know, argue about those reasons.” – READ MORE