After taking a look at Attorney General William Barr's letter summarizing his interpretation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, conservative lawyer George Conway has a few takeaways, which he details in a Washington Post op-ed published Tuesday night.
The husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and one of President Trump's most vocal critics, Conway said the question of whether Trump obstructed justice has always been "dicey." It's not surprising, he writes, that in the summary, Barr quoted Mueller as saying it raised "'difficult issues' of law and fact concerning whether the president's actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction."
Looking at facts, "obstruction turns on what's in a defendant's mind — often a difficult thing to determine, and especially difficult with a mind as twisted as Trump's," Conway said. What's amazing is Mueller saying his report "does not conclude that the president committed a crime" but "it also does not exonerate him." This is "a stunning thing for a prosecutor to say," Conway writes. If the report does not exonerate Trump, "there must be something pretty damning in it about him, even if it might not suffice to prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt."
Barr said in his letter that Mueller "ultimately determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment" about obstruction, and Conway reasons that it's "hard to escape the conclusion that Mueller wrote his report to allow the American people and Congress to decide what to make of the facts. And that is what should — must — happen now." One thing Conway says he's certain of is "if the charge were unfitness for office, the verdict would already be in: Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." Read his entire op-ed at The Washington Post.