Moments after Robert Mueller gave brief concluding remarks about his Russia probe on Wednesday, the former Republican New Jersey governor and sometime Trump adviser Chris Christie declared that the special counsel’s statement “definitely contradicts what the attorney general said when he summarized Mueller’s report.” [...]
Wittingly or not, Mueller spotlighted differences with Barr on several points. While Barr stated in his April news conference that there was “no evidence of collusion,” Mueller said Wednesday he found “insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy.” And while Mueller gave a nod to Congress when he said that “the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing,” Barr said he hoped Mueller hadn’t intended to leave the decision to Congress “since we don’t convene grand juries and conduct criminal investigations for that purpose.” [...]
Perhaps the most significant divergence between Barr and Mueller, who are longtime friends, dating back to their service at the Department of Justice during the George H.W. Bush administration, came on the explosive question of a potential indictment of Trump for obstructing justice. In Mueller’s telling, a Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted guided his investigation and informed his decision not to reach a conclusion about whether Trump obstructed justice. Charging the president with a crime was “not an option,” Mueller said, and accusing him of committing one when he could not try the case in court, Mueller added, violated what he considered “principles of fairness.” [...]
Both Barr and Mueller on Wednesday evening sought to tamp down the fury over their perceived split. In a rare joint statement from Department of Justice spokeswoman Kerri Kupec and Special Counsel spokesman Peter Carr, the two said, “The Attorney General has previously stated that the Special Counsel repeatedly affirmed that he was not saying that, but for the OLC opinion, he would have found the President obstructed justice. The Special Counsel’s report and his statement today made clear that the office concluded it would not reach a determination — one way or the other — about whether the President committed a crime. There is no conflict between these statements.”
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