it s an issue that had never really been seriously considered and decided one way or the other. before the justice department was confronted with it urgently during the nixon administration. thanks to this sort of odd a series of things happening all at once in the early 70s, the vice president spiro ag new going to prison, the president, richard nixon, being removed by office against his will by impeachment. thanks to those things coming together all at once in a big felonious mess because the american people in our infinite wisdom that it be a good idea to elect guys that cry me to the white house twice, thanks to that mess around nixon and add new the justice department in the early 70s bumbled our way into putting down, on paper, that it was policy of the justice department to not ever bring criminal charges against a sitting president of the united states. and that s an important sort of, a landmark moment for the nixon years right? it s never a good sign when your presi
president so we aren t going to bring charges against a sitting president, but we have, nevertheless, done this investigation. we ve collected all the facts we ve preserved the evidentiary record. if charges are warranted here because of trump s behavior, those criminal charges can be brought against him once he is no longer president, once he is no longer protected by the justice department rule that says you can t be criminally charged while serving as president of the united states. that s what mueller said when he turned in his report. that s what mueller s report said. mueller turned his report into this guy, to trump attorney general william barr, who received the report from mueller. right after he got the report, you might remember, william barr released a statement about it. in that statement, he said, i ve reviewed this report from robert mueller, and i as attorney general, have carefully reviewed all the evidence mueller and his team presented here, all the evidence they ve
it s over. the justice department look at all the evidence mueller turned up, and the justice department says, in its professional estimation trump should not be charged. barr made explicit even if there wasn t this rollout as you can t charge the sitting president, regardless of that just based on the evidence, trump still wouldn t face charges for anything here. that s how bill barr broke the neck of the mueller investigation in 2019. that s why even after trump left office, and he was just an ex president, and therefore no longer protected by the justice department policy that says you can t charge a sitting president, that s why there was no clamor to charge him then with any of the gasoline and stances of alleged obstruction of justice that were described in great detail in mueller s report. it s because barr said, he signed his name to it, he said we looked at everything here, regardless of that rule less as you can t charge him, trump, definitely, committed no crimes. he should
in the early 70s. that rule wasn t really tested at that time. that rule wasn t really tested until almost 50 years down the road, until our time in the history books. hurray for us. it was three years ago, 2019 when special counsel robert mueller completed the report of his investigation into russia interfering in our presidential election in 2016 to help the trump campaign. that s what s volume one of mueller s report was about. volume two of mueller s report was about obstruction of that investigation. it laid out in detail steps that trump took as president to try to block that lawful investigation into what russia did in 2016, and how they did it. when mueller turned in that two volume report to the justice department in 2019, he said, basically, you know, there is this long-standing written justice department policy that says we are not supposed to bring charges against a sitting