Trump lawyer whines about Mueller's 'gratuitous' comment on president committing crimes

A member of President Donald Trump's legal team is already complaining about special counsel Robert Mueller's public statement about the results of his two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

An unnamed Trump legal team member on Wednesday complained to CNN reporter Jim Acosta about Mueller's statement, particularly the section in which Mueller directly stated that he could not confidently say that the president did not commit a crime.

"Trump legal team source was clearly frustrated with Mueller's comment 'If we had had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,'" Acosta wrote on Twitter. "The source slammed that remark as 'gratuitous.'"

Mueller stated on Wednesday that longstanding Department of Justice rules prevented him from criminally charging any sitting president with obstructing justice. However, he also said that he would have explicitly cleared Trump of obstruction if he felt he could confidently say the president did not commit any crimes.

While the special counsel's words were nearly identical to the words he used in his final report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, they were given added weight because he spoke them live on camera after maintaining total silence over the past two years during the investigation.