FactChecking Trump’s Response to Mueller

In an impromptu press conference and on Twitter, President Donald Trump responded to special counsel Robert Mueller’s remarks about the Russia investigation with several false and questionable claims:

• Trump suggested that he could not be impeached because he hasn’t been charged with a crime. “I can’t imagine the courts allowing it,” he added. But constitutional scholars tell us a statutory crime is not a necessary predicate to impeachment, and impeachment is not reviewable by the courts.
• Trump claimed that he could not be charged with obstruction of justice because he was not guilty of an underlying crime. But Mueller, in his report, and again in his public statement, explained that it is possible to be guilty of obstruction even if one has been cleared of the underlying crime that gave rise to an investigation.
• Trump said that, unlike him, President Bill Clinton was found “guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty” by a “special prosecutor.” Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who investigated Clinton, did tell Congress that there was evidence to impeach Clinton. But that was an authority given to independent counsels — not special counsels, such as Mueller.
• Trump repeated his claim that Mueller was “totally conflicted” — a charge that even one of Trump’s own advisers told him was “ridiculous.”
• Trump claimed, “Russia did not help me get elected.” The Mueller report, however, says the Russians carried out a social media campaign and targeted cyberattacks against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party committees to damage Clinton and help Trump.

Mueller spoke publicly on May 29 for the first time about the special counsel’s investigation. The former FBI director reiterated the key findings of his report, which was issued on April 18, and elaborated a bit on why he did not make a determination on whether Trump had obstructed the federal investigation.

The Mueller report said investigators “found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations.” However, the report said it could not make a “traditional prosecutorial judgment,” because the department’s Office of Legal Counsel had issued an opinion that states an “indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President” would be unconstitutional. 

“Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions