Mueller Speaks

With little advance warning, Special Counsel Robert Mueller made a public statement yesterday morning that lasted about ten minutes about the Trump/Russia investigation. A complete transcript of his remarks can be found here.

He stated that this would be the only public comments he would make about the investigation. He then briefly reiterated the major elements of his report.

He said because of Department of Justice policy, he could not charge Donald Trump with a crime nor state that he had committed one. But then he said this: "If we had confidence that the president did not commit a crime, we would have said so."

He couldn't say if the President was guilty. But he could say if the President was innocent. Yet he refused to say that.

Mueller also reiterated that it is Congress's duty, not the Department of Justice, to investigate any possible crimes committed by the President. As well, he strongly reiterated -- twice -- that Russia clearly interfered in the 2016 election, notwithstanding Trump's repeated denials that they did. Mueller's interference conclusion, of course, was well documented by both the Mueller Report and corroborating statements from various national security officials within Trump's own administration.

At the end of the day, Mueller's statement yesterday was bad news for Trump. The special prosecutor spoke both explicitly and in subtext that his phase of the investigation is over but that shouldn't be the case for Congress. That's laid out in his report, and he underscored it yesterday again.