Mueller refutes...

Mueller refutes Trump’s ‘no collusion, no obstruction’ line

'The president was not exculpated,' he says.

By ANDREW DESIDERIO and KYLE CHENEY

Former special counsel Robert Mueller pushed back against President Donald Trump’s characterizations of his 22-month investigation, telling lawmakers on Wednesday that he did not evaluate “collusion” with the Russian government, and confirming that his report did not conclude that there was “no obstruction” of the probe.

“The president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed,” Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee, adding that Trump could theoretically be indicted after he leaves office.

“We did not address ‘collusion,’ which is not a legal term,” Mueller added. “Rather, we focused on whether the evidence was sufficient to charge any member of the campaign with taking part in a criminal conspiracy. It was not.”

Mueller also refuted Trump’s oft-repeated claims that the former special counsel had “conflicts of interest” — a belief that led Trump to try to fire Mueller, according to the report. When Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) said Mueller had no conflicts of interest, Mueller replied: “Correct.”

When Mueller walked into a Capitol Hill hearing room, he carried with him the power to hobble Trump’s presidency — and Democrats were straining to ensure that he did, while Republicans looked to wound his credibility. But Mueller was working hard to deprive either party of substantive political ammunition.

In his opening statement, Mueller foreshadowed a tightly scripted hearing on the findings contained in his 448-page report, which chronicled dozens of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, as well as 10 potential instances of obstruction of justice by Trump. Mueller himself has said he prefers to let the report be “my testimony” and didn’t even agree to testify until he was subpoenaed in June by two House committees.

“I do not intend to summarize or describe the results of our work in a different way in the course of my testimony today,” Mueller said. “As I said on May 29: the report is my testimony. And I will stay within that text.”

He later added: “I also will not comment on the actions of the attorney general or of Congress. I was appointed as a prosecutor, and I intend to adhere to that role and to the department’s standards that govern it.”

Underscoring the challenge for lawmakers, the Justice Department told Mueller on Monday that his testimony “must remain within the boundaries of your public report” because Trump made a broad assertion of executive privilege over the evidence underpinning the report.

Mueller said of those restrictions: “These are Justice Department privileges that I will respect.”

Still, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) hinted at impeachment in his opening statement.

“Director Mueller, we have a responsibility to address the evidence you have uncovered. You recognized as much when you said ‘the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing,’” Nadler said. “That process begins with the work of this committee.”

When questioned by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) about whether any of the president’s conduct outlined in volume two of the report is “impeachable,” Mueller declined to answer.

“Our mandate does not go to other ways of addressing conduct,” Mueller said.

Mueller decided at the last minute to tap a top deputy to sit alongside him during his appearance, a move that came despite the Justice Department's opposition to Mueller's deputies participating in the hearings, suggesting Mueller isn't necessarily planning to adhere to every directive coming from the administration.

Trump also denounced the decision in a tweet Wednesday morning, saying that he would never have consented to it.

"It was NEVER agreed that Robert Mueller could use one of his many Democrat Never Trumper lawyers to sit next to him and help him with his answers," he tweeted. "This was specifically NOT agreed to."

The president fired off at least six more tweets before the hearing even began, calling Mueller “highly conflicted” and venting over the scope of his investigation.

“So Democrats and others can illegally fabricate a crime, try pinning it on a very innocent President, and when he fights back against this illegal and treasonous attack on our Country, they call It Obstruction? Wrong! Why didn’t Robert Mueller investigate the investigators?” Trump wrote.

Still, Mueller’s adherence to the DOJ limitations is presenting an obstacle to Democrats seeking answers to questions about Mueller’s legal theories and the deliberative process surrounding his investigation. His refusal to answer those types of questions is also preventing Republicans from gleaning meaningful answers from Mueller about the composition of his investigative team, which some GOP lawmakers have said was biased against Trump from the beginning

Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) hammered Mueller about his legal theories, in particular his decision to not reach a prosecutorial decision on obstruction of justice.

“You didn’t follow the special counsel regulations,” Ratcliffe said, often tripping up Mueller.

Mueller arrived to the Rayburn House office building shortly before 8:00 a.m., flanked by a large security detail and a team of advisers. He didn’t respond to shouted questions on his way into a holding room.

Judiciary Committee staff also outfitted the room with a monitor facing Mueller’s chair, where he’ll come face to face with excerpts of his report — some of which Democrats intend to ask him to read aloud. A PowerPoint file titled “MuellerFinals” was visible on the screen.

A large line of Capitol Hill interns and staff was lined up outside the hearing room — including a group of six interns who said they began lining up at 6:00 p.m. Tuesday and slept in the building overnight to ensure they were first in line.

The hearing will present an even greater challenge for Democrats already girding to impeach Trump, who have been counting on Mueller’s appearance to energize their effort and inspire dozens of fence-sitting colleagues to join them even as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been steadfast in her resistance to the effort.

Mueller’s report on the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia included a 200-page volume chronicling Trump’s repeated efforts to thwart his investigation. He documented 10 episodes of potential obstruction of justice by Trump, describing in detail the president’s persistent efforts to derail Mueller’s work and constrain the scope of his probe.

But Mueller noted at the outset that he faced significant constraints on his ability to investigate Trump — chief among them a longstanding Justice Department policy that prohibits the criminal indictment of a sitting president.

Mueller said the existence of this policy led him to determine early on that he would not decide whether to formally allege that Trump committed a crime. Mueller also revealed that Trump refused to submit to an interview about obstruction allegations, but the special counsel’s team decided not to issue a subpoena to compel the president’s testimony.

Mueller’s report paints a damning portrait of Trump’s behavior in the weeks and months after the special counsel was appointed. In each of the 10 episodes he cataloged, Mueller pointed to the three elements of obstruction of justice charges and determined that Trump met all three in several instances. His analysis led hundreds of former prosecutors to issue a letter declaring that Trump would have been charged with obstruction were he not the president.

Mueller’s evidence focused primarily on his efforts to sideline the Russia investigation. For example, Trump asked his former White House Counsel Don McGahn to remove Mueller and then create a false record denying that it happened, the investigation found. Mueller’s team also found that Trump attempted to enlist his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to pressure former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to curb the investigation.

In both cases, Trump sought others’ assistance to carry out his wishes, and in both cases, his aides told Mueller they refused to comply with those directives.

Mueller also found that Trump’s actions toward several witnesses — including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former personal lawyer Michael Cohen — may have amounted to obstruction. He pointed to Trump’s public statements decrying treatment of Flynn and Manafort as unfair, while disparaging members of Cohen’s family and accusing his father-in-law of potential crimes.