Attorney General William Barr said Thursday that Mueller identified 10 episodes of potential obstruction of justice in his report—but that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein “disagreed with some of the special counsel’s legal theories.” “The report recounts ten episodes involving the president and discusses potential legal theories for connecting those activities to the elements of an obstruction offense,” Barr said. The attorney general said he concluded that “the evidence developed by the Special Counsel is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
“Although the Deputy Attorney General and I disagreed with some of the Special Counsel’s legal theories and felt that some of the episodes examined did not amount to obstruction as a matter of law, we did not rely solely on that in making our decision,” he added. “Instead, we accepted the Special Counsel’s legal framework for purposes of our analysis and evaluated the evidence as presented by the Special Counsel in reaching our conclusion.” Barr’s comments came during a press conference about the contents of the long-awaited report, the culmination of Special Counsel Mueller’s nearly 22-month investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
