Binary BS
by digby
Another sign of Barr’s Fox News brain rot from the hearing today. Patrick Leahy asked if the special counsel had explained his decision not to answer the obstruction question himself. Barr said that they’d had a conversation about it.
And then:
Barr: He also has a fuller explanation of that in the report that I’ll be making available hopefully next week.
Leahy: Did he express any expectation and interest in leaving the obstruction decision to Congress?
Barr: Not that—he didn’t say that to me, no.
Leahy: So he said the obstruction decision should be up to you?”
Barr: He didn’t say that either. But that’s generally how the Department of Justice works. Generally grand juries are to investigate crimes and a prosecutor’s role at the end of the day is binary. Are there charges or no charges, or is this a crime or not a crime.
That may be how it works usually but in this case the prosecutor declined to charge …. but also made it clear that he couldn’t exonerate. And we don’t have any clue about whether he said that because the DOJ guidelines don’t allow a president to be charged or whether it’s because the Attorney General believes that if the president does it it’s not illegal.
If it’s a “binary” choice Mueller would have said, “the investigation did not establish that the president committed obstruction of justice” as he said about the election conspiracy, instead of saying, “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
We are still operating in the dark here, but Barr’s point of view is pretty obvious at this point. He is going to protect the president and advance the right wingers’ counter-narrative.
The Democrats are going to have to get Mueller to testify.
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