We begin today’s roundup with Rebecca Roiphe at The Daily Beast who explains why Robert Mueller declined to find that the president violated the law, despite the evidence, and why the report at its core is an impeachment referral:
Attorney General Bill Barr and Special Counsel to the President Emmet Flood have made it clear that they consider this a fundamental failure on Mueller’s part. Mueller will likely explain that given the unique position of the president in the American constitutional system, his choice was not only defensible but also necessary. [...] Flood and Barr are wrong, because they, unlike Mueller, fail to understand that the special counsel’s job is different from that of ordinary prosecutors in a fundamental way. As Mueller explained in his report, the Office of Legal Counsel within DOJ has concluded that a sitting president is immune from criminal prosecution, stating “under our constitutional plan… only the Congress by the formal process of impeachment, and not a court by any process should be accorded the power to interrupt the Presidency or oust an incumbent.” Mueller took this seriously and adapted the normal prosecutorial function to facilitate this constitutional requirement.
Hundreds of former federal prosecutors agree:
We are former federal prosecutors. We served under both Republican and Democratic administrations at different levels of the federal system: as line attorneys, supervisors, special prosecutors, United States Attorneys, and senior officials at the Department of Justice. The offices in which we served were small, medium, and large; urban, suburban, and rural; and located in all parts of our country.
Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.