Mueller: 'If We Had Confidence That the President Did Not Commit a Crime, We Would Have Said So'
Special Counsel Robert Mueller spoke publicly Wednesday for the first time since he was appointed two years ago to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election and any Trump campaign coordination with Russia. I am speaking out today because our investigation is complete, he began. The attorney general has made the report on our investigation largely public. We are formally closing the special counsels office and as well Im resigning from the Department of Justice to return to private life.
Muellers remarks, which lasted 10 minutes, reiterated the key conclusions of the special counsels report, including he and his team could not determine whether President Trump committed a crime. If we had confidence that the president did not commit a crime, we would have said so, he said.
As he did in his report, Mueller explained that his office was bound by Justice Department regulations that prohibit a sitting president from indictment: Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider.
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Mueller added that it would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of the actual charge. Between longstanding Justice Department policy and the belief that it would unfair to indict a president, Mueller said he and his team concluded that we would not reach a determination one way or the other about whether the president committed a crime. That is the offices final position and we will not comment on any other conclusions or hypotheticals about the president.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mueller-if-we-had-confidence-that-the-president-did-not-commit-a-crime-we-would-have-said-so-841450/