out now that this is over? no. mueller, i don t think, has ever wanted to speak out about anything. in the couple of years i spoke with him, he barely spoke to me. i can t imagine he will want to have to testify. he may have to. he is a private citizen. when he resigns his position. they might want to ask him, tell us about the conversations between yourself, your office and the doj around this obstruction of justice, no exoneration decision. because we may make a decision, the house, that while this does not rise to the level of a criminal offense, it could still be analyzed along abuse of office, abuse of power analyses and we wanted to explore with you what was at stake when you were discussing obstruction within your team and the doj. there s room for conversation here. good news for the president and accolades of the team, the
special counsel s investigation now say that there was considerable discussion about issuing a subpoena for president trump to be interviewed. ultimately, the decision was to not move forward with that. and we have cnn reporters and analysts covering every angle of this story this evening. this hour reports from the white house to capitol hill. let s get right to cnn s kaitlan collins starting oh of in washington. kaitlan, you have new information on the president s mood? ana, we are learning how the president learned of this. the president had been expressing restraint over the weekend, not sure what was going to happen today. but then the two white house lawyers briefed the president after bill barr s chief of staff called emmett flood and gave him the readout. we re told by hogan gidley, when
president trump is wrong. this report does not amount to a so-called total exoneration. special counsel mueller was clear that his report, quote, does not exonerate, close quote, the president. the special counsel spent 22 months on covering evidence of obstruction and other misconduct. attorney general barr, who auditioned for his role with an open memorandum, suggesting that the obstruction investigation was unconscionable, and that a president and that it was almost impossible for any president to commit obstruction of justice since he is the head of the executive branch, made a decision about that evidence in under 48 hours. his conclusions raise more questions than answer, given the fact that mueller uncovered evidence that in his own words does not exonerate the president. still a lot of questions about how democrats plan to
now, this is the attorney general saying that this is now our decision. the question we have to ask, was that a decision that mueller wanted to leave to the department of justice or was it something he was intending on congress to make the decision? and that s something there may be two audiences there. but again, until we get the full report, until we actually see what it is that he said, what his thought process was, we won t know exactly what the formulation was, and you know, what was intended there. again, the question coming down to, did he decide that he was not going to make this determination because of, you know again, a number of factors, we just don t know about. we ll have to really dig into those before we get to the bottom of what was actually going through the mind of the special counsel. shimon, this report does not recommend any further indictments. nor did the special counsel, we ve learned, obtained any sealed indictments that have yet to be made public. how sig
that were looking into this issue, weren t the trump campaign conspired with the government. their determination that did not happen is a good thing for the nation from a national security perspective. i will say, and it s important to note, the president before he boarded air force one, he described this investigation as one that began illegally, which is completely patently false. again, you go back and look at the origins of this investigation, you had the four key players, as was, you know has been reported. george papadopoulos, carter page, paul manafort and michael flynn, who had these strange connections to russians, and it was incumbent upon the fbi to determine whether there was a threat there. so the fact they re now saying there isn t a threat as it related to the trump campaign, again, is a good thing. the one question i have going back to what you just discussed with obstruction is one that the attorney general is going to have to answer and perhaps robert mueller himsel