Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Monday he believes that Special Counsel Robert Mueller intended to “punt” a decision on obstruction of justice charges against Donald Trump to Congress. Instead, Attorney General William Barr “came off the sidelines, caught the ball, and ran it into the end zone for a touchdown for Trump,” Bharara said. In addition, he had a sharply negative opinion before the Mueller report about obstruction charges against Trump, which he expressed in a memo to the Justice Department. “I don’t know that [Mueller’s report] is as favorable to the president as this letter makes out,” Bharara said. Bharara was fired by Trump in the summer of 2017, a day after he refused to return a phone call from the president.

Source: Huffington Post March 26, 2019 08:03 UTC