White House attorney Emmett Flood sent a letter to Attorney General Bill Barr that rages at special counsel Robert Mueller for writing in his report that his investigation did not exonerate President Donald Trump.
The April 19, 2019 letter was sent to the Justice Department and was first obtained by Fox News and outlined concerns they had with the Mueller report. It also noted that Trump waving executive privilege for the report doesn't mean he's giving a "blanket waiver."
Flood attacked Mueller's team for the way they've handled the investigation into whether Trump obstructed justice, specifically that he didn't make a determination on the question.
“The Special Counsel and his staff failed in their duty to act as prosecutors and only as prosecutors,” Flood wrote, complaining that the report "suffers from an extraordinary legal defect" by failing to comply with the "requirements of governing law."
Muller cited the 1973 Office of Legal Counsel Memo saying that special counsels couldn't make the determination there. Mueller handed the decision to the attorney general, who had already decided the president was above the law. Thus, Mueller's report on obstruction outlined ten major points that a prosecutor could use to impeach the president in Congress.
“The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” the Mueller report said.
Flood also lamented that Mueller's report “is laden with factual information that has never been subjected to adversarial testing or independent analysis.”
“By way of justifying this departure, it has been suggested that the report was written with the intent of providing Congress some kind of ‘road map’ for congressional action,” Flood wrote. He said that if that’s the case, “it too serves as additional evidence of the [Special Counsel Office’s] refusal to follow applicable law.”
Trump has told all staff to fight subpoenas from Congress.
