White House lawyer Emmet Flood sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr in April complaining that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report made “political” statements, according to multiple reports.
The letter was sent one day after Mueller’s redacted report was released to the public.
In it, Flood described the Mueller report as suffering from “an extraordinary legal defect” and rebuked the special counsel for explicitly stating that his investigation did not “exonerate” President Trump on allegations of obstruction of justice.
“The SCO Report suffers from an extraordinary legal defect: It quite deliberately fails to comply with the requirements of governing law,” Flood wrote. “Lest the Report’s release be taken as a ‘precedent’ or perceived as somehow legitimately the defect, I write with both the President and future Presidents in mind to make the following points clear.”
Flood took issue with Mueller’s statements on obstruction, arguing that “making conclusive determinations of innocence is never the task of the federal prosecutor.”
In his report, Mueller wrote that his prosecutors could not “conclusively” determine that Trump did not commit a criminal offense and left the question of obstruction open.
“Prosecutors simply are not in the business of establishing innocence, any more than they are in the business of ‘exonerating’ investigated persons,” Flood wrote. “In the American justice system, innocence is presumed; there is never any need for prosecutors to ‘conclusively determine’ it” “Nor is there any place for such a determination.”
“Because they do not belong to our criminal justice vocabulary, the SCO’s inverted-proof-standard and ‘exoneration’ statements can be understood only as political statements, issuing from persons (federal prosecutors) who in our system of government are rightly expected never to be political in the performance of their duties,” Flood wrote, arguing that Mueller and his team therefore “failed in their duty to act as prosecutors.”
Flood also criticized the special counsel for including information on the obstruction inquiry in his exhaustive 448-page report, pointing to the special counsel regulations that require only that Mueller issue a confidential report to the attorney general at the conclusion of his investigation that explains his prosecution or declination decisions.
Flood in his letter noted that Trump was committed to transparency and therefore did not assert executive privilege to keep any details from the public report. However, he noted that Trump would have been well within his rights to do so.
Flood also said that Trump’s decision not to make a privilege claim over the report should not be taken as a waiver to permit disclosure of Mueller’s underlying investigative materials. The White House lawyer also wrote that Trump can still block advisers from testifying before Congress to answer questions about Mueller’s investigation.
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JUST IN: Trump admin sent letter to Barr complaining about "political" Mueller report https://t.co/QKKxTDvoNJ pic.twitter.com/vu1bXavzM0
— The Hill (@thehill) May 2, 2019
Read the full letter for yourself: https://t.co/rVXX6BVG0w
— Marshall Cohen (@MarshallCohen) May 2, 2019
Flood letter to Barr on Mue… by on Scribd
White House is about to launch a distraction effort to obscure Barr’s duplicitous performance. Don’t fall for it. Mueller acted fully consistent w/Special Counsel regs. If Trump thinks it was unfair to lay out the evidence on obstruction w/out a trial, that can easily be remedied
— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) May 2, 2019
WH complains Mueller created “road map” to impeachment. No, it laid out the facts. What would they have had them do? Force Congress to reinvestigate everything? Even for Trump, who blows thru taxpayer money left&right for his many golf trips, this makes no sense.
— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) May 2, 2019
This is a silly letter, and is best understood as an attempt to distract from Barr’s disastrous appearance yesterday, his now-revealed duplicitous acts for the last month, and his cowardly refusal to face questions by the House of Representatives, a coordinate branch of govt.
— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) May 2, 2019
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