Michael Zeldin, a CNN legal analyst, has served as a federal prosecutor in the Criminal Division of the US Department of Justice and was a special counsel to then-Assistant Attorney General Robert Mueller. (CNN) US Attorney General William Barr's March 24 letter to Congress summarizing the principal conclusions reached by special counsel Robert Mueller appears to have gone well beyond what the special counsel regulations authorize. In his four-page letter, Barr explained that the special counsel's decision to describe the facts without reaching any legal conclusion left it to the Attorney General to determine whether the President's conduct constituted a crime. This independence is especially important, where, as here, the attorney general appears to have had a predetermined point of view on whether Trump's actions could amount to obstruction of justice. (Barr, as a private citizen, wrote a memorandum to Justice Department officials in June 2018, saying that Mueller's obstruction inquiry was " fatally misconceived .")

Source: CNN April 02, 2019 16:07 UTC