Many Democrats have been categorizing the Mueller report as alluding to the fact that Mueller would have charged Trump had he not been president. During his recent testimony on Capitol Hill Attorney General Barr stated that this was not the case.
According to The Daily Wire:
Attorney General William Barr revealed during a hearing on Wednesday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had repeatedly told Barr that he was not indicating that he would have charged President Donald Trump if Trump were not a sitting president.
Special counsel Mueller stated three times to us in that meeting in response to our questioning that he emphatically was not saying that but for the OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion, he would have found obstruction,” Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “He said that in the future, the facts of the case against a president might be such that a special counsel would recommend abandoning the OLC opinion, but this is not such a case.”
The point made by Barr was significant, as some Democratic politicians and journalists had tried to push the narrative that Mueller would have charged Trump but could not do so because Trump is a sitting president.
Attorney General Bill Barr: “Special Counsel Mueller stated three times to us…that he emphatically was NOT saying that but for the OLC opinion he would have found obstruction” pic.twitter.com/fwEkYo2tP7
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) May 1, 2019
Barr also responded to reports that he mischaracterized Mueller’s report:
“[Mueller] was very clear with me that he was not suggesting that we had misrepresented his report,” Barr told the committee. “I told Bob that I was not interested in putting out summaries, and I wasn’t going to put out the report piecemeal. I wanted to get the whole report out. And I thought summaries by very definition, regardless of who prepared them, would be under-inclusive and we’d have sort of a series of different debates and public discord over each tranche of information that went out, and I wanted to get everything out at once.”
It looks like the Dems will continue to push their narrative and the GOP will continue to push theirs but it doesn’t look like anyone’s opinions will change.
