In a sit-down interview with CBS’s “This Morning,” Attorney General William Barr discussed FBI special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his findings in his probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Barr told CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford that the Department of Justice determined “many of the instances” Mueller found “would not amount to obstruction” as a matter of law.
“[W]e didn’t agree with … a lot of the legal analysis in the report. It did not reflect the views of the Department. It was the views of a particular lawyer or lawyers, and so we applied what we thought was the right law,” he explained.
“The bottom line was that Bob Mueller identified some episodes,” Barr added. “He did not reach a conclusion. He provided both sides of the issue, and his conclusion was he wasn’t exonerating the president, but he wasn’t finding a crime either.”
Barr went on to say it is up to Mueller if he wants to testify before Congress, but he did say he does not think the line Mueller drew about sticking to his report is “the proper line.”
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