President Donald Trump has repeatedly described special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report for the Russia investigation as a total vindication of him, insisting that Mueller ruled out the possibility of obstruction of justice. But Mueller never ruled out that possibility; he simply didn’t reach a conclusion on the matter. And Rebecca Roiphe, a New York Law School professor and former Manhattan prosecutor, explains why Mueller was right to do what he did — and why Attorney General William Barr’s response to Mueller’s report is deeply problematic.
Mueller, Roiphe notes inThe Daily Beast, has allowed for Congress to evaluate the obstruction matter — which was exactly what he should have done.
“To be sure, by handing over the lightly redacted results of Mueller’s investigation to Congress, Barr served the purpose of the Constitution and special counsel regulations,” Roiphe observes. “But by making his own call on criminal obstruction, Barr made a serious error.”
View the completeMay 7 article by Alex Henderson of AlterNet on the National Memo website here.