This is why Mueller is tiptoeing around whether Trump committed a crime

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has carefully avoided saying whether he thinks President Trump committed criminal obstruction of justice but also pointedly underscored that he isn't exonerating him. Because a longstanding Justice Department policy says "a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he's in office," charging Trump "with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider," Mueller said Wednesday. At the same time, he added, "if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so." He did not say so.

This awkward dance of double-negatives has exasperated both Trump's supporters and critics, but Mueller and his team are also "frustrated by what they perceive as a lack of public understanding about this point — that Justice Department policy and fairness prohibit the special counsel from reaching a decision, even secretly, on whether the president committed a crime," The Washington Post reports.

Attorney General William Barr was either among those who misunderstood Mueller's reasoning, or he chose to publicly massage it. New York's Jonathan Chait opts for the latter explanation. Mueller evidently believes he "can't explicitly say" whether he would have charged Trump or "explicitly tell Congress to impeach" him, though "he's heavily hinting at both points," Chait says. "And Barr, who has been using Mueller's restraint to mislead the country about what Mueller concluded, has been exposed as the liar he is."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up