An internal memo from March 2019 released today laying out the Department of Justice’s legal rationale for not prosecuting Donald Trump following the release of the Mueller report on Russian involvement in the 2016 elections concludes that the report did not present enough evidence to support charges against Trump, but the memo undermines claims then-Attorney General Bill Barr made under oath to a Congressonal hearing.
Released Wednesday afternoon, the memo specifically notes that Special Counsel Robert Mueller abstained from making a determination to charge Trump even though the entire second half of the report outlined ten ways in which Trump intentionally obstructed the investigation. The memo’s authors–Steven Engel, the Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, and Edward O’Callaghan, the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General–state explicitly that Mueller refused to make a determination about charges, deferring to the OLC’s opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted.
“[T]he Special Counsel reached no conclusion as to whether the President had violated any criminal law or whether, if so, such conduct warranted prosecution,” the memo reads. “The Special Counsel considered evaluating such conduct under the Justice Manual standards governing prosecutions and declinations, but determined not to apply that approach for several reasons. The Special Counsel recognized that the Office of Legal Counsel (“OLC”) had determined that “a sitting President is constitutionally immune from indictment and criminal prosecution.” … Although the OLC opinion permitted the investigation of a sitting President, the Special Counsel concluded that it would be unfair to reach any charging decision, because the President would not then be afforded any opportunity to clear his name before an impartial adjudicator.”
In a March 2019 letter to the leaders of the House Judiciary Committee, Barr essentially contended that Mueller declined to bring charges on the fact that Mueller’s investigation could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump was involved in collusion with Russia during the campaign, therefore there was no basis on which to bring obstruction charges.
“In cataloguing the President’s actions, many of which took place in public view, the report identifies no actions that, in our judgment, constitute obstructive conduct, had a nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding, and were done with corrupt intent, each of which, under the Department’s principles of federal prosecution guiding charging decisions, would need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to establish an obstruction-of-justice offense,” Barr wrote, ignoring the evidence presented in Mueller’s report, which wouldn’t be released publicly for another two weeks.
The DOJ lawyers go to some great lengths to justify not charging Trump, saying that Mueller cites no precedent for bringing charges against Trump–likely because no president had previously attempted to leverage a relationship with an adversarial foreign government to win an election. (Trump would try to do the same thing again, when he attempted to use the threat of pulling US aid to Ukraine to get the Ukrainian president to assist in his reelection campaign.)
Barr’s mischaracterization of Mueller’s report caused media outlets to report that Mueller did not find information linking Trump’s campaign to Russia’s interference in the election and that Mueller concluded that Trump should not be prosecuted. Even the American Bar Association ran with Barr’s misinformation.