Listen to “McCarthy: Mueller ‘Derelict’ for Leaving Question on Obstruction” on Spreaker.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of the Trump campaign conspiring with Russia to influence the 2016 campaign but is apparently more ambiguous about whether the president obstructed justice during the investigation.
According to the letter Attorney General William Barr sent to Congress, Mueller ultimately made no recommendation on whether to there was a prosecutable case on obstruction.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy says Mueller probably realized quite early in his investigation that there was no evidence of Trump and his team colluding with Russians, but McCarthy believes Mueller dropped the ball on obstruction.
“That was his only job,” said McCarthy. “Really, if you think about it, his only job was to do what he refrained from doing, which is to draw a traditional prosecutorial conclusion about whether there is enough evidence to indict or not.”
“Mueller was derelict in not drawing a conclusion on the obstruction aspect of the investigation,” he added.
He also shed light on what the job of a prosecutor is.
“Prosecutors never exonerate anyone. What prosecutors do is they make a decision about whether to charge or to decline to charge, based on whether there’s enough evidence and whether a case meets – in this case – Justice Department standards,” said McCarthy.
McCarthy also believes the Mueller probe was launched on the faulty theory that Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017 because he must have something to hide and not because he wanted to exercise powers granted to him in the Constitution.
In addition, McCarthy says the prosecution has delivered it’s report and now the defense ought to get a turn, meaning there ought to be a robust investigation of the former Obama administration officials at the FBI, Justice Department, CIA and elsewhere that pushed the idea Russia and the Trump campaign were in cahoots.
Listen to the full podcast with a legal analyst who actually had this story right from the beginning, as McCarthy elaborates on what should come next, whether Trump critics will find any success continuing the probe in Congress or in the courts, and the damage the media did in pushing the Trump-Russia narrative.
