Legal exerts are reviewing a legal memo that served as the basis for Attorney General Bill Barr deciding to not charge then-President Donald Trump with obstruction of justice, and they are calling it “garbage,” “disingenuous,” a “total whitewash,” and “ass-covering.”
The memo, published Wednesday afternoon by The New York Times, is dated March 24, 2019.
“For the reasons stated below,”it reads in part, “we conclude that the evidence described in Volume II of the Report is not, in our judgment, sufficient to support a conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that the President violated the obstruction-of-justice statutes. In addition, we believe that certain of the conduct examined by the Special Counsel could not, as a matter of law, support an obstruction charge under the circumstances. Accordingly, were there no constitutional barrier, we would recommend, under the Principles of Federal Prosecution, that you decline to commence such a prosecution.”
Norm Eisen, a well-known Harvard-educated attorney, former U.S. Ambassador, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, and a CNN legal analyst calls the legal memo “garbage.”
“No wonder a series of judges have slammed Barr for dishonesty in connection with all this,” Eisen writes. “It’s garbage. Anyone else woulda been prosecuted. Barr should be disciplined.”
Attorney Andrew Weissman calls the memo “disingenuous” and a “total whitewash.”
He adds: “note no discussion of Barr telling Special Counsel Mueller that he should make the decision whether Trump obstructed justice. Why? Because new DOJ memo reveals they thought Mueller Report could be read to say he did obstruct! So Barr shd say the opposite.”
CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig calls the memo “ass-covering.”
“To recap,” he writes, detailing these bullet points:
“Mueller failed by refusing to state a conclusion,” “Barr publicly distorted Mueller’s findings,” “DOJ drafted this flimsy, ass-covering memo,” “Barr misled a federal court about this bogus memo,” “Garland appealed on Barr’s behalf, and lost.”
This is a breaking news and developing story.