White House Wanted Mueller to Decide on Obstruction

The White House accused special counsel Robert Mueller’s team in a five-page letter “of playing politics with the investigation and wildly straying from their mission in a letter sent to Attorney General William Barr last month,” CNN reports.

“White House lawyer Emmet Flood raised several concerns with the substance and format of Mueller’s report, which did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and the Russians but did unearth substantial evidence of obstruction by Trump, but without saying if the President should be prosecuted.”

“Flood slammed Mueller’s approach to the obstruction investigation. Even though current Justice Department guidelines say a sitting president cannot be charged, Flood wrote that Mueller needed to ‘either ask the grand jury to return an indictment or decline to charge the case.'”

Wrote Flood: “The special counsel instead produced a prosecutorial curiosity — part ‘truth commission’ report and part law school exam paper.”