Trump Attorney Sekulow: ‘If They Had an Obstruction Case to Make, They Would’ve Made It’

Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox News @ Night,” Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow argued that if special counsel Robert Mueller indeed had an obstruction case to make against President Donald Trump, he would have done so in the report.

Sekulow argued that Mueller’s statement that the report was not an exoneration from obstruction of justice charges was because it wasn’t the duty of a prosecutor to exonerate.

Partial transcript as follows:

BREAM: OK. So listen, they outlined, step by step, a number of different things involving Michael Flynn and others, and say all of this, essentially, lays out a potential roadmap for obstruction, but then the special counsel said, but I’m not going to decide it. But there was plenty of evidence he laid out in not making, making a case?

SEKULOW: Yes, not making, making a case — because believe me, if they had an obstruction case to make, they would’ve made it. They did not. So they set forth facts. And you remember in the initial letter that the attorney general sent out, when they said that line, difficult questions of law and fact? Well, that was directly out of the Mueller report.

So it said there were different questions of law and fact, but as a government lawyer myself in my early career, when you have a difficult question of law and fact, do you know what you don’t do? Bring the case. And that’s what happened here.

For every fact that they say, well, he did this. They also say, well, but he also did this, or it could have been that. So that tells you very clearly there was no obstruction case to be made.

So when people said that they did not decide the obstruction case, sure they did. Because if there was a — you either decline or you recommend, and they declined here, because —

BREAM: Well, they did make a decision.

SEKULOW: Well, he did. He said there was no finding of a violation of law.

BREAM: But also said he wouldn’t exonerate him on that.

SEKULOW: Prosecutors don’t exonerate.

BREAM: Well, he specifically said he wasn’t going to, in this case.

SEKULOW: A jury doesn’t exonerate. All the jury says he’s not guilty.

BREAM: Guilty or — yes, so they’re not —

SEKULOW: So this whole idea of him exonerated, I’ve never understood that in practicing law for 40 years.

BREAM: Well, why do you think he used that language then? I mean, is he – – so many Democrats on the Hill claim he is now tipping to Congress his signal, these are breadcrumbs that he’s left us, that he wants us to pick it up from here.

SEKULOW: Yes. Well, first of all, that’s not his job. His job is to produce a covenantal report to the attorney general under the regulations. The attorney general authorized a release of a pretty much, as everybody is now saying, report that is really not redacted except very limited material.

So when you look at the obstruction, volume two as I call it, of the report, there’s, I think two pages, three pages very little redacted. So he then made the recommendation to the attorney general. The attorney general decided to release it. The president decided not to claim executive privilege, that’s why we let all these documents go out in the first place. Just let it all go in.

And the end result was, now, you have Steny Hoyer, and now Adam Schiff both saying, impeachment — ideas of even talking about impeachment is fruitless. There’s no bipartisan consensus. I think would that —

BREAM: It would be bad for the country is basically what they said. You have to have bipartisan buy-in.

SEKULOW: Look — and there’s not. So you could say — whatever Bob Mueller says in here, it’s interesting but almost irrelevant.

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