Former FBI Director James Comey says it’s “confusing” that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his investigation apparently did not address possible obstruction of justice charges against President Trump.
Speaking Tuesday night in Charlotte NC, Comey said he has “great faith” in Mueller, noting that he has not seen the special counsel’s full report.
But based on Attorney General William Barr’s four-page letter summarizing the report, Comey said he wonders why Mueller “didn’t … decide these questions when “the entire rationale for a special counsel is to make sure the politicals aren’t making the key charging decisions.”
Comey also “pushed back” against Barr’s decision “not to pursue obstruction charges against the president, saying he found that part of Barr’s letter ‘really confusing,’” reports NBC News.
“The notion that obstruction cases are somehow undermined by the absence of proof of an underlying crime, that is not my experience in 40 years of doing this nor is it the Department of Justice’s tradition,” Comey said. “Obstruction crimes matter without regard to what you prove about the underlying crime.”
In his summary letter, Barr wrote that “that “to obtain and sustain an obstruction conviction, the government would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person, acting with corrupt intent, engaged in obstructive conduct,” adding that Mueller found no evidence that “Trump or anyone in his orbit coordinated with Russians,” NBC says.
Comey was fired from the FBI by Trump in May 2017, not long after opening the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, apparently because the president was feeling pressured. Mueller was later appointed special counsel to pursue the investigation.
In an op-ed piece last week in the New York Times, as well as in his speech last night, Comey said he doesn’t care about Mueller’s conclusions regarding the president.
“I’m not rooting for Mr. Mueller to demonstrate that he is a criminal,” Comey wrote in the op-ed. “I’m also not rooting for Mr. Mueller to ‘clear’ the president,” adding that he is “rooting for a demonstration to the world — and maybe most of all to our president and his enablers — that the United States has a justice system that works because there are people who believe in it and rise above personal interest and tribalism.”
Comey said he hopes as much of Mueller’s report as possible will be made public. The Justice Department promised yesterday that Barr will release more details of the report in “weeks, not months,” NBC says.
