the narrative that had been advanced by the president, by the attorney general that there was total exoneration, that the only thing left to investigate were the organi gorigins of the investigation. there was a stark repudiation of his attorney general and president. second, in terms of content, i thought it was interesting what did he choose to highlight? he held up the report and could not charge a president under legal counsel guidance, congress is the only branch of government that can bring charges now against a sitting president. he noted that if he was confidence that the president had not committed crimes, he would have clearly said so, which is a very odd phrase. lawyerly polite way of saying i think there is misconduct and wrongdoing by the president and if i wasn t confident to that, i would have let you know and he opened the door, i think, for congress to do it s job holding
office. the appointment order directed the office to investigate russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. this included investigating any links or coordination between the russian government and individuals associated with the trump campaign. now i have not spoken publicly during our investigation. i m speaking out today because our investigation is complete. the attorney general has made the report on our investigation largely public. we are formally closing the special counsel s office and as well i m resigning from the department of justice to return to private life. i ll make a few remarks about the results of our work but beyond these few remarks, it is important that the office s written work speak for itself. let me begin where the appointment order begins and
he s not the end of the breed but he might be. matt, as a viewer, the scene today was as kind of spare as the speaker in that auditorium we all know very well, you know it differently from those of us again in the cheap seats where the guests sit. what did you make of it as a communications event? it was a very effective event but came a month, or a month and a half too late. try to imagine what would happen if the first thing the public would have heard about the report is this press conference bob mueller gave today rather than allowing bill barr to frame first. it would be an entirely different exercise. cynthia s point of him not operating in television land, this is the way he operated as the fbi director. i can t tell you how many times i tried to convince them to stand up and do press conferences. he never wanted to lend his
make that preferred to make the entire report public all at once and we appreciate that the attorney general made the report largely public and i certainly did not question the attorney general s good faith in that decision. now i hope and expect this to be the only time i will speak to you in this manner. i am making that decision myself, no one has told me whether i can or should testify or speak further about this matter. there has been discussion about an appearance before congress, any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report. it contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made. we chose those words carefully and the work speaks for itself and the report is my testimony. i would not provide information beyond that which is already public in aneny appearance befo
what does your reporting tell you as to how this went down and is everybody getting along over there at d.o.j. tonight do you think? i think the justice department has done a lot to try to say that the special counsel and bill barr are doing just fine. they put out a joint statement saying that, you know, mueller and barr are not actually that far apart in terms of what they think the report says. clearly, bill barr chose to weigh in on something mueller said nobody should weigh in except for a process outside of the system. so that is it makes that statement look odd in that light but certainly the justice department is trying to show the two men are still unified. interestingly, though, it is clear that robert mueller wanted to step in and dispel a lot of myths, most importantly, the myth that he was working without a frame work or his decision not to prosecute or to prosecute was somehow mysterious, which is how bill barr portrayed it.