Analysis: Mueller's departing act was a public statement meant to influence the public debate in a manner inappropriate for a prosecutor
He invented an extraconstitutional legal standard for his obstruction investigation and acted, at the very least, in violation of the spirit of the special counsel regulations.His departing act was a public statement meant to influence the public debate in a manner inappropriate for a prosecutor, in part because the public report he wrote that was inappropriate for a prosecutor failed to achieve clarity despite its hundreds of pages.
As he put it in his news conference, in surely one of the more gobsmacking utterances ever made by someone from a Justice Department podium, “If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.” Naturally, Trump’s critics concluded from Mueller’s statement that if Trump hadn’t been found innocent, he must be guilty. The snarky headline on a New York magazine piece put it aptly enough, “Mueller: Trump is Not Not a Criminal.”
It is one of the those rules that has caused so much confusion over the obstruction portion of the Mueller report. The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel has said a sitting president can’t be charged with a crime. Mueller explained in his public statement that this ruling led his office to conclude it could “not reach a determination one way or the other about whether the president committed a crime.”
Here, Mueller is basically describing Volume 2 as an impeachment referral. But this isn’t a purpose contemplated by the special counsel regulations, which, again, were written to tether special counsels to Justice Department practice.
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