On Obstruction, Mueller Abdicates
By Andrew C. McCarthy
March 26, 2019 11:18 AM
What a waste.
The most telling revelation in Attorney General William Barr’s letter about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s much-anticipated final report is that Mueller has punted on the main question he pursued for nearly two years of investigation: Did President Trump commit an obstruction offense?
The Barr letter gingerly states that, after making a “thorough factual investigation†into alleged instances of obstruction, Mueller “ultimately determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment.†Since making a prosecutorial judgment was Mueller’s job, that means he defaulted. What did we need him for?
Not only that, but Mueller determined that it would be better for the attorney general to make the prosecutorial judgment. So, for the millionth time, what the hell did we need a special counsel for? If the Justice Department, in Mueller’s judgment, was perfectly well-suited to make the call, how could there possibly have been a conflict so profound that it was necessary to bring in a special counsel in the first place? A special counsel, mind you, who recruited his staff from the Justice Department, transferred the cases he brought to Justice Department components, and, now, has ultimately delegated his decision-making responsibility to the Justice Department.
The lack of a so-called collusion case is no surprise, as I contended in my weekend column. As far as President Trump and his campaign were concerned, there never was a case of the only kind of actionable collusion that would have been of interest to a federal prosecutor: Knowing complicity in Russia’s cyber-espionage operation to influence the 2016 campaign.
more
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/on-obstruction-robert-mueller-abdicates/
