ATTORNEY GENERAL/ROBERT MUELLER/RUSSIA INVESTIGATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “For nearly a month, the American public has been under the impression, thanks to a four-page ‘summary’ by Attorney General William Barr, that Robert Mueller could not decide whether President Donald Trump had obstructed justice because of ‘difficult questions of law and fact.’ Barr suggested that the special counsel, after 22 months of investigation, simply couldn’t make up his mind and left it to his boss to decide. Now that we have seen almost the entire report of more than 400 pages, we know Barr intentionally misled the American people about Mueller’s findings and his legal reasoning. As a former federal prosecutor, when I look at Mueller’s work, I don’t see a murky set of facts. I see a case meticulously laid out by a prosecutor who knew he was not allowed to bring it. Mueller’s report detailed extraordinary efforts by Trump to abuse his power as president to undermine Mueller’s investigation. The case is so detailed that it is hard to escape the conclusion that Mueller could have indicted and convicted Trump for obstruction of justice—if he were permitted to do so. And the reason he is not permitted to do so is very clear: Department of Justice policy prohibits the indictment of a sitting president.”
-Renato Mariotti, “The Obstruction Case Against Trump that Barr Tried to Hide,” Politico, April 19, 2019