Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano accused Attorney General William Barr of glossing over special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings in the Russia investigation.
Mueller spoke publicly about the investigation for the first time Wednesday, explaining that he did not make a determination on whether President Trump obstructed justice because of longstanding Justice Department guidelines.
“Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider,” he said.
Mueller’s remarks appeared to conflict with comments Barr made in April, in which the attorney general said Mueller told him the Justice Department guidelines on charging presidents had no impact on his investigation.
“Why did Bob Mueller take to the microphones today? I don’t know, but this was not good news for the president because he’s ginned up all the Democrats to believe there must be a there there. And it was a parting shot at his soon-to-be former boss Bill Barr, who basically whitewashed what Mueller said in the four-page summary he distributed back in March,” Napolitano said Wednesday.
In Barr’s summary of the Mueller report, the attorney general said he had concluded there was “not sufficient” evidence to establish that Trump obstructed justice. He also wrote that “The Special Counsel did not find any collusion and did not find any obstruction.”
However, in a redacted version of the report released weeks later, Mueller detailed 10 instances of possible obstruction, though he did not make a determination whether Trump obstructed justice.
“If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that,” Mueller said Wednesday.
Napolitano has previously questioned Barr’s call on obstruction. Last month, Napolitano said he believed Trump obstructed Mueller’s investigation and called the alleged behavior “unlawful, defenseless, and condemnable.”
[Related: Bret Baier ‘struck’ by Mueller statement: It was not ‘no collusion, no obstruction’]
