Special counsel Robert Mueller said Attorney General William Barr acted in “good faith” with his handling of the special investigation report.
“We conducted an independent criminal investigation and reported the results to the attorney general — as required by department regulations. The attorney general then concluded that it was appropriate to provide our report to Congress and to the American people,” Mueller said in a press conference Wednesday.
“At one point in time, I requested that certain portions of the report be released. The attorney general preferred to make the entire report public all at once. We appreciate that the attorney general made the report largely public, and I certainly do not question the attorney general’s good faith in that decision,” Mueller said.
The “good faith” comment follows Democrats accusing Barr of a “cover-up” in regards to his handling of the report. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., even accused the attorney general of committing a crime by lying to Congress.
Mueller sent a letter to Barr this month complaining that his initial summary letter of the report “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the investigation.
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Barr dismissed the letter as “a bit snitty.”
Mueller called the press conference to announce his resignation as the special counsel and to clarify certain points of the report.
The Mueller report was the culmination of a 22-month investigation into whether the Russian government had interfered in the 2016 election. The report concluded there was no criminal conspiracy between President Trump’s campaign and the Russian government, but it also did not exonerate Trump of possible obstruction of justice charges.
[Opinion: Robert Mueller said William Barr acted in ‘good faith’ and Democrats and the media will ignore it]
