Opinion: Why didn’t Barr order Mueller to make the call on obstruction?
By Randall D. Eliason Randall D. Eliason Bio Follow May 2 at 1:59 PM During his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Attorney General William P. Barr said he was “surprised” that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III had declined to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment concerning whether President Trump had obstructed justice. Earlier news reports also suggested Barr and his staff had expressed some consternation over Mueller’s decision.
But Barr testified he believed it would have been inappropriate and contrary to the Justice Department’s mission to release Mueller’s report without an up-or-down decision on whether the president obstructed justice. Accordingly, he and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein made their own decision that the evidence presented by Mueller did not establish obstruction of justice.
Mueller reportedly first told Barr he did not intend to reach a decision on obstruction during a meeting on March 5, several weeks before the report was finished. At or following that meeting, Barr could have said to Mueller: “Bob, I understand what you’re saying. But in this case, the American people deserve to hear our legal conclusion.
The entire point of having a special counsel is to take prosecution decisions out of the hands of political appointees such as Barr and thus give those decisions more credibility. If Mueller himself had said the evidence did not establish obstruction, that conclusion would be more readily accepted by the public.
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