Former Attorney General William Barr Drew Angerer/Getty Images
In Tuesday’s ruling, US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the unreleased OLC memo that Barr used to clear Trump of obstruction contradicted his claim that the decision to charge the president was under his purview because the special counsel Robert Mueller “did not resolve the question of whether the evidence would support a prosecution.”
“The letter asserted that the Special Counsel ‘did not draw a conclusion – one way or the other – as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction,’ and it went on to announce the Attorney General’s own opinion that ‘the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense,'” Jackson wrote.
However, the OLC’s memo “calls into question the accuracy of Attorney General Barr’s March 24 representation to Congress” and “raises serious questions about how the Department of Justice could make this series of representations to a court,” the ruling said.
Barr told reporters that Mueller’s decision was not influenced by long-standing Justice Department guidelines that say a sitting president cannot be indicted. He said that in fact, Mueller’s determination — or lack thereof — was prompted by the inconclusive nature of the evidence.
But in his report, Mueller did not cite the nature, or absence, of evidence as the reason he did not come to a decision on obstruction. He did, however, cite the OLC’s 1973 memo saying that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime.
Moreover, the special counsel’s team said that “if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.” The team continued: “Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.”
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Article URL : https://www.businessinsider.com/judge-orders-doj-turn-over-mueller-barr-obstruction-memo-trump-2021-5