Trump’s Attorney General Nominee Criticized Russia Investigation – The New York Times

In the memo, Mr. Barr acknowledged that he might not have a full understanding of which aspects of Mr. Trump’s actions Mr. Mueller has been scrutinizing or why, saying, “I realize that I am in the dark about many facts, but I hope my views may be useful.”

Mr. Barr wrote his memo on June 8, shortly after The New York Times had obtained and published a January 2018 memo from Mr. Trump’s legal team to Mr. Mueller that essentially laid out arguments against any effort by the special counsel to subpoena the president, including by arguing that obstruction-of-justice laws did not apply to Mr. Trump.

At the time, legal experts noted that arguments by Mr. Trump’s lawyers were beside the point because they had erroneously focused on the wrong obstruction-of-justice statute, and flagged instead the one Mr. Barr addressed as the law that potentially covered the president’s actions.

In criticizing the notion that this law should be applied to Mr. Trump, Mr. Barr acknowledged that the two modern presidents subjected to impeachment proceedings, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, both were accused of obstruction of justice. But he distinguished their actions, saying that they centered on efforts to cover up the truth, such as by suborning perjury, rather than ordinary acts of executive authority.

Accepting the theory that such a discretionary action could be criminal if undertaken with a corrupt motive, he said, would open the door to submitting not only presidents but also Justice Department prosecutors to the risk of criminal grand jury investigations to look into whether they acted with an improper purpose.

“If embraced by the department, this theory would have potentially disastrous implications, not just for the presidency, but for the executive branch as a whole and for the department in particular,” he wrote, adding: “All that is needed is a claim that a supervisor is acting with an improper purpose and any act arguably constraining a case — such as removing a U.S. attorney — could be cast as a crime of obstruction.”

Mr. Barr addressed his memorandum to Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who was then overseeing Mr. Mueller’s investigation as the acting attorney general for that matter because Mr. Sessions was recused from it, and to Steven A. Engel, the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Known for advancing a broad view of presidential power, Mr. Barr previously led the Office of Legal Counsel and then served as attorney general in the first George Bush administration.