Attorney General William Barr said Thursday special counsel Robert Mueller could have made a determination on whether President Trump obstructed justice despite Justice Department policy stating a sitting president cannot be indicted.
“I personally felt he could’ve reached a decision,” Mr. Barr said on “CBS This Morning.” “The opinion says you cannot indict a president while he’s in office, but he could have reached a decision. But he had his reasons for not doing it, which he explained and I’m not going to, you know, argue about those reasons.
“But when he didn’t make a decision, the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I felt it was necessary for us as the heads of the Department to reach that decision,” he said.
Mr. Barr said he couldn’t speculate whether Mr. Mueller was suggesting Congress needed to carry on the investigation, but added that the Justice Department “doesn’t use our powers of investigating crimes as an adjunct to Congress.”
Mr. Mueller, in a statement to reporters Wednesday at the DOJ headquarters in Washington, said department policy precludes charging or prosecuting a president for federal crimes, so he didn’t make a determination on whether crimes were committed.
But, Mr. Mueller added, “if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”
• Bailey Vogt can be reached at bvogt@washingtontimes.com.
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