Despite the fact that virtually no one has yet to see the full Mueller report, President Donald Trump’s aides have taken to the cable circuit to defend and interpret Attorney General William Barr’s summary of the probe.
On Monday night, that role fell to Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow on MSNBC’s “The Beat” with Ari Melber. The MSNBC host grilled Sekulow on Trump allies’ dubious claim that Trump was fully exonerated by special counsel Robert Mueller.
“While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him. So what does non-exonerate mean to you?” Melber asked Sekulow.
“They didn’t make a determination. That’s all it means,” Sekulow said. “They did not find that the President committed a crime.”
Melber then asked if there’s a chance that special counsel Robert Mueller punted the obstruction question because of the Department of Justice policy that a sitting President cannot be indicted, and asked if Congress should have then tackled the obstruction question instead of Barr.
Sekulow pushed back hard, saying that it’s up to Trump’s Justice Department to make a determination.
More light will likely be shed on this issue when the full report is released, and people can determine Mueller’s rationale for not coming to a conclusion on the obstruction question. As it is, Barr only included a partial quote from the report on that issue in his four-page summary.
Melber and Sekulow tussle over the non-exoneration quote in Barr’s summary pic.twitter.com/5nsn8KsplA
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) March 26, 2019
