Robert Mueller Tells Congress to Do Its Job - DMT NEWS

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Robert Mueller Tells Congress to Do Its Job

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On Wednesday morning, special counsel Robert Mueller delivered a previously unannounced speech, his first public statement on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and, in fact, his first public comments at all since being appointed to lead the investigation two years ago. He took the opportunity to reiterate Russians made "multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. And that allegation deserves the attention of every American."

If anyone was hoping for a pointed, fiery rebuke of Attorney General William Barr, who depicted the results of the investigation as an exoneration of Donald Trump, that didn't happen. Unsurprisingly, Mueller soberly delivered his comments, which he opened by saying that not only is the investigation formally closed but that he will be retiring from the Justice Department now that it's concluded.

But he made it explicitly clear that his report doesn't exonerate the president. "If we had had confidence that the president had clearly not committed a crime we would have said so," he remarked. While the investigation didn't provide sufficient evidence to charge Trump or his campaign with colluding with Russians, Mueller decided not to charge Trump with obstruction of justice because it's not constitutional for him to do so. “A president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional,” he noted. “Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider.” The avenue for leveling charges against a president is laid out in the constitution: the impeachment process.

That puts the burden squarely on Congress to do something. Mueller, as my colleague Jay Willis wrote, has practically given Democrats an invitation to start impeachment proceedings. Even Fox News anchor Bret Baier expressed shock at how Mueller's account of the report differed from Barr's, saying, "this was not 'no collusion, no obstruction.'"

This is probably going to be a headache for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who has already declared that she's "not for impeachment" and instead claimed that Trump is "self impeaching" every day. Meanwhile, Michigan Republican representative Justin Amash—who has been forcefully pounding the impeachment drum for the past week—got a standing ovation at a town hall in his district last night for his "courage." But she is coming at the issue from a different angle. Mueller is concerned with whether or not the president broke the law; Pelosi is concerned with the next election.





DMT.NEWS

via DMT.NEWS Luke Darby, Khareem Sudlow