“The Special Counsel’s Office is part of the Department of Justice and, by regulation, it was bound by that Department policy. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view-that too is prohibited,” he said. It explains that under long-standing department policy, a President cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. The introduction to volume two of our report explains that decision. “We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the President did commit a crime. Reading from a written statement on Wednesday, Mueller defended the probe into allegations of obstruction by Trump, saying his team’s investigation was “of paramount importance” and that anyone who tries to obstruct an investigation “strikes at the core of the government’s effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable.”Īt the same time, Mueller struggled to explain why his team had not made a traditional prosecutorial decision, claiming that it didn’t have an option to charge the president with a crime even if it had found sufficient evidence. Initially tasked with probing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Mueller later focused on obstruction. President Donald Trump gives a thumbs up as he walks toward Marine One while departing from the White House in Washington on May 16, 2019. The statement was about the possibility of charging President Donald Trump with obstruction after Mueller’s team found that no conspiracy or cooperation between Trump’s campaign and Russian actors occurred. “There is no conflict between these statements,” they added. 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,” said Kerri Kupec, spokeswoman for the Department of Justice and Peter Carr, spokesman for the special counsel’s Office, in the joint statement. “The Attorney General has previously stated that the Special Counsel repeatedly affirmed that he was not saying that, but for the OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) opinion, he would have found the President obstructed justice. The Department of Justice and the special counsel’s office released a joint statement on May 29 hours after special counsel Robert Mueller spoke for the first time since submitting his report to Attorney General William Barr. Special counsel Robert Mueller speaks on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election, at the Department of Justice in Washington on May 29, 2019.

Barr oplc joint statement