Mr. Mueller's Damning Report
The final report by the special counsel Robert Mueller is devastating for the president. Far from the “total and complete exoneration” that President Trump prematurely claimed when Attorney General William Barr released his four-page summary of Mr. Mueller’s work, the special counsel’s report, over the course of 400-plus pages, lays out a compelling case — even absent a prosecutive conclusion — of obstruction of justice by the president.
The report makes clear that the president’s obstruction of the F.B.I. and special counsel investigations crossed constitutional boundaries that could have merited criminal prosecution, if not for the Justice Department’s policy against indicting sitting presidents. Mr. Mueller’s report notes that his office explicitly considered absolving the president of obstruction of justice, but emphatically chose not to.
Instead, Mr. Mueller laid out 181 pages detailing the substantial evidence that Mr. Trump obstructed justice. His team also concluded that even if legal constraints prevented them from seeking to indict a sitting president for obstruction of justice, “Congress has authority to prohibit a president’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.”
Far from ending the matter, the Mueller report is an unmistakable act of deference to Congress’s primary jurisdiction over accountability for the president. The House Judiciary Committee must now pick up where Mr. Mueller left off and begin holding proceedings to determine whether Mr. Trump abused the powers of his office.
The report details egregious evidence of obstruction, emphasizing the pattern of conduct that the president took after James Comey, then the F.B.I. director, confirmed the bureau’s investigation into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/mr-muellers-damning-report/ar-BBW595f?li=BBnb7Kz
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