WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Department officials who reviewed then-President Donald Trump’s actions during the investigation into Russia concluded that nothing he did, including firing the FBI director, reached the level of obstruction of the investigation. legal process and that there was no precedent for prosecution, according to a memo released Wednesday.
The nine-page memo, prepared for then-Attorney General William Barr by some senior Justice Department officials, offered a legal analysis of whether Trump criminalized an investigation into possible links between Russia and his 2016 presidential campaign. obstructed. Barr agreed with the conclusions of the March 24, 2019 memo and announced to Congress the same day that he had concluded that Trump’s conduct did not violate the law.
While that decision is well-documented, the newly released memo provides additional details about how two of the department’s most senior leaders came to their decision to unblock Trump, though special counsel Robert Mueller had emphatically refused to do so. It shows how the officials, Ed O’Callaghan and Steven Engel, were not convinced that any of Trump’s actions were intended to illegally derail the investigation.
The ministry released the memo on Wednesday after an appeals court ruling last week said the document had been wrongly withheld by a government watchdog group that had sued for it.
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