ATTORNEY GENERAL/ROBERT MUELLER/RUSSIA INVESTIGATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Attorney General William P. Barr stood at the Justice Department lectern six weeks ago and put the best possible spin on the Mueller report for his boss, declaring that the special counsel had amassed insufficient evidence to accuse President Trump of a crime. Robert S. Mueller III delivered a starkly different presentation on Wednesday [5-29-19] from the same lectern, saying that charging a sitting president was never an option, no matter the evidence. Instead, his investigators asked another question: Could they clear the president? On potential obstruction of justice, the answer was no. ‘If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime,’ Mr. Mueller said, ‘we would have said so.’ The power of Mr. Mueller’s brief appearance came from his attempts to cut through a lengthy and dense report to give his own voice and imprimatur to a damning set of findings both about Mr. Trump and the Russian sabotage campaign. His carefully chosen phrases stood in sharp contrast to Mr. Barr’s portrayal of the investigation as vindicating Mr. Trump from accusations of the crime of obstruction.”
–Mark Mazzetti and Charlie Savage, “Standing Where Barr Cleared Trump on Obstruction, Mueller Makes a Different Case,” The New York times online, May 29, 2019