The Mueller report’s mixed conclusion — describing President Trump’s efforts to obstruct justice without a making a recommendation on charges — made for a perplexing outcome and left legal experts divided.
The crime of “obstruction of justice” is familiar to many because it drove the impeachment proceedings of two presidents.
President Nixon resigned when he faced impeachment for obstructing justice by covering up the White House role in the break-in at the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee. And President Clinton was impeached in the House for allegedly lying and obstructing justice to hide his sexual relationship with a White House intern.
The report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III lifted part of the cloud over President Trump by concluding his campaign had not conspired with Russians to tilt the 2016 election.
But Mueller said he was unable to clear Trump of attempting to illegally interfere with the government’s Russia probe. Even so, the special counsel stopped short of charging Trump with obstruction of justice. His report offered at least three reasons for doing so.
First, Mueller said Justice Department policy forbids the “indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting president.” Because Mueller was acting as a special prosecutor within the Justice Department, he said he had to follow this policy. This suggests Mueller believed that no matter what the evidence showed, he did not have the authority to charge the president with a crime.
“It is quite clear that Mueller did not make a final prosecution decision because of the [Justice] Department’s policy that presidents cannot be criminally prosecuted,” said Noah Bookbinder, a former federal prosecutor and the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Second, unlike a case in which an official seeks to cover up a crime, “the evidence we obtained did not establish the president was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference,” Mueller said.
