insistence that it would have been wrong for him to make a determination on whether president trump committed a crime. i want to bring in our justice reporter laura jarrett and chief legal analyst job. laura, barr seemed to blame mueller for not making a decision on whether the president obstructed justice. tell our viewers what he said. well, wolf, once again, the attorney general essentially accusing mueller of falling down on the job, not reaching a decision on the question of obstruction of justice. listen to his curious answer to cbs earlier today. he could have reached a conclusion. the opinion says you cannot indict a president while he s in office, but he could have reached a decision as to whether it was criminal activity, but he had his reasons for not doing it, which he explained, and i m not going to, you know, argue about those reasons, but when he didn t make a decision, the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein and i felt it was necessary for us as the heads of the
he can t imagine the courts allowing him to that s what he said. to be impeached. it s not the courts. it s the house of representatives that begins an impeachment inquiry. so the president gets things wrong all the time. he s just flailing away. the main thing is, one, he d like to distract everybody from what s going on regarding him. and protecting himself. that is what he does. the attorney general, william barr, says robert mueller could have made a decision on whether the president is guilty of criminal obstruction even if he couldn t indict him, according to the justice department guidelines. do you think that s true? what barr said was that mueller had his reasons for not coming to a conclusion on obstruction. he said i m not going to argue with those reasons. that s what i heard. which means that those reasons that mueller had for not weighing in as to whether or not there was obstruction are valid reasons. mueller did explain the olc memo
i d rather not. we re back with our correspondents and analysts. bianna, let me play for you the attorney general william barr now today responding to what mueller said yesterday. barr telling cbs news mueller could have reached a final decision on criminal obstruction. listen to this. he could have reached a conclusion. the opinion says you cannot indict a president while he s in office, but he could have reached a decision as to whether it was criminal activity, but he had his reasons for not doing it, which he explained, and i m not going to, you know, argue about those reasons. but when he didn t make a decision the deputy attorney
accusation. if mueller would have said the president of the united states committed a crime but the olc, the office of legal counsel, guidance is you can t indict a sitting president of the united states, mueller himself yesterday said it would have been totally unfair to the president because he couldn t defend himself in a court of law. right. and we would have seen exactly the reverse criticism of how unfair it was for mueller to level this charge. that said, ken starr, who was operating under the independent counsel law, did accuse the president of committing a crime. so the idea that the olc memo means that mueller could not even reach that conclusion, i don t think that s necessarily clear on its face. i actually think robert mueller could have and as a matter of opinion should have actually reached that decision, but that s said, i think it does show to the extent to which the attorney general would have been playing both either side, no matter what mueller would have done
well, i mean, he seemed to suggest yesterday that there was another venue for this and that was congress. well, i m not sure what he was suggesting but, you know, the department of justice doesn t use our powers of investigating crimes as an adjunct to congress. so a couple of points to keep in mind here. as mueller explained yesterday, it s not that he couldn t reach a decision on obstruction of justice, it s that he wouldn t do that because of prudential concerns, because of fairness. as he explained in the report, it s not okay for a prosecutor to unload a whole bunch of derogatory information about someone but if they re not going to be charged in court and have an opportunity to defend themselves, then that s not legitimate. and, of course, the longstanding justice department guidelines involving not indicting a sitting president for mueller really constrained his hands. and more to the point, it s curious for barr to suggest that mueller could have done this. if mueller had