Whether Trump obstructed justice isn't the attorney general's call to make. It's Congress' Decision

Michael Conway Whether Trump obstructed justice isn't the attorney general's call to make. It's Congress' decision.


https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/whether-trump-obstructed-justice-isn-t-attorney-general-s-call-ncna986971



The Mueller report didn't draw a conclusion about any obstruction of justice. Barr needs to show the evidence on which he based his decision.

March 25, 2019, 10:36 AM CDT


By Michael Conway, Former counsel, U.S. House Judiciary Committee

Attorney General William Barr’s four-page summary of the “principal conclusions” of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’ still-secret report, released on Sunday, engages in sleight-of-hand when finding that President Donald Trump did not engage in criminal obstruction of justice.

Mueller made no such conclusion. Rather, Trump’s hand-picked attorney general, William Barr, in consultation with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, decided that the evidence found by Mueller was insufficient to convict Trump beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal trial.

Mueller apparently adhered to the principle of seeking “just the facts.” And facts matter: Neither Congress nor the public know the facts found by Mueller regarding obstruction of justice. A White House that famously promulgated a theory of “alternative facts” will find that the actual facts found by Mueller’s investigation matter.


Indeed, Barr’s letter acknowledges that Mueller “describe[d] the facts of his obstruction investigation without reaching any conclusion.” Thus, the validity of Barr’s conclusion that Trump should not be indicted for obstruction of justice can only be tested if the full Mueller report is made public. The House of Representatives could well reach a different conclusion based upon those facts in deciding whether Trump should be impeached for obstruction of justice.

The impeachment inquiry of President Richard Nixon adhered to the approach of investigating the facts and then allowing Congress to draw its own conclusions. A 410-4 vote by the House of Representatives in February 1974 authorizing the House Judiciary Committee to “investigate fully and completely whether sufficient grounds” existed to impeach President Nixon, after which an impeachment inquiry staff of the committee, on which I served, set to work. Under the leadership of John Doar, a distinguished former assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division in the 1960s, the inquiry staff provided 650 “statements of information” with 7,200 pages of supporting evidentiary material to the committee members in closed sessions......................................