it s 4:00 in the east. big day of news today. on capitol hill today a brutal collision between reality and delusion, a republican effort to whitewash the ex-president s ties for russia culminating in a veteran prosecutor under oath seemingly unwilling to acknowledge basic facts in service of republican conspiracy theories. just a few weeks after releasing a 300-page report after an investigation that went on for four years, cost the taxpayers $6.5 million, a report the washington post described this way as, quote, landing with a thud resulting in no new charges and none of the widespread abuses trump and his allies have alleged for years now. special counsel john durham testified today before the house judiciary committee. now, despite all those facts durham described his findings sobering and it was left to it democrats on the committee to point out the truth of his own investigation, an investigation that trump and his hand picked attorney general bill barr setup to inves
and how hours later, in fact, the russians did try to hack servers affiliated with hillary clinton and he either feigned ignorance or didn t know. he seemed also either unaware or unwilling to confirm very basic things. i think i even began asking him about the central conclusion mueller made that russia intervened in a systemic way to disparage hillary clinton, to promote donald trump. and even the most general conclusions he seemed to acknowledge again for me confirming the bias. and as a special counsel you don t want someone going in with the kind of bias he displayed today. i mean what s amazing is that mueller indicted a whole bunch of russians, and apart from whatever you think about whether a fuller preliminary investigation should have been opened into the trump campaign for certainly not turning away
mueller didn t find any evidence of an underlying crime. mueller said very clearly based on the office of legal counsel s office memo we would not go down that road. we were not going to do that because we couldn t accuse the president of a crime because he wouldn t be able to defend himself. those are two different things. absolutely. barr lied. he said the olc opinion was not relevant in mueller decision but it was. it wasn t true. in addition, barr has also suggested there was no evidence with regard to any involvement of the trump campaign with b he said there can t be conclusion because there was no underlying crime. he also said there wasn t evidence of any underlying crime. what mueller said today, which is very important, is that the evidence was insufficient to charge a conspiracy not that
doers accountable. let me say a word about the report. the report has two parts. addressing the two main issues we were asked to investigate. the first volume of the report details numerous efforts emanating from russia to influence the election. this volume including a discussion of the trump s campaign response to this activity as well as our conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy. in the second volume, the report describes the results and analysis of our obstruction of justice investigation involving the president. the order appointing the special counsel authorized us to investigate actions that could obstruct the investigation. we conducted that investigation and we kept the office of
public conversation happening. thanks very much. as you get more reaction please let us know. we ll bring you right back. mueller s words have been at odds with attorney general william barr from when the attorney general released his own four page principled conclusions until today. in those conclusions, bar made the decision to clear the president of obstruction. this is really important. despite the special counsel s inconclusive results. in conclusive and conclusive are two different things. five days after that conclusion mueller wrote a report saying the summary letter to the department sent to congress didn t fully captured context, nature and substance of this office s work and conclusions. wow. i wonder if everybody in america saw that part. just hours after today s press conference, mueller s office provided this hand out that