Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi accuse Attorney General William Barr of ‘deliberately distorting’ the Mueller report

REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi issued a joint statement on Thursday accusing Attorney General William Barr of "deliberately distorting" the Mueller report.
• The statement said "special Counsel Mueller’s report paints a disturbing picture of a president who has been weaving a web of deceit, lies and improper behavior and acting as if the law doesn’t apply to him."
• The special counsel team said they did not find sufficient evidence to bring a charge of conspiracy against anyone involved in the Trump campaign for illegally coordinating with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
• The report also said that Mueller’s team did not make a "traditional prosecutorial judgment" as to whether Trump obstructed the Mueller probe itself and other federal investigations involving him.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a joint statement on Thursday accusing Attorney General William Barr of "deliberately distorting" special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report.

"Special Counsel Mueller’s report paints a disturbing picture of a president who has been weaving a web of deceit, lies and improper behavior and acting as if the law doesn’t apply to him," the Democratic leaders said. "But if you hadn’t read the report and listened only to Mr. Barr, you wouldn’t have known any of that because Mr. Barr has been so misleading."

In the 448-page report, released Thursday, the special counsel team said they did not find sufficient evidence to bring a charge of conspiracy against anyone involved in the Trump campaign for illegally coordinating with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

The report also said that while Mueller’s team did not make a "traditional prosecutorial judgment" as to whether Trump obstructed the Mueller probe itself and other federal investigations involving him, they could not "exonerate" him of allegations of obstruction of justice.

Read more: Mueller outlines key Trump-Russia contacts and potential instances of obstruction of justice in final report

Mueller’s report detailed 11 separate instances they examined for possible obstruction of justice — but said that by not executing his wishes, Trump’s own aides and advisers stopped him from possibly committing more clear-cut obstruction. 

Several Democratic leaders accused Barr of intentionally misrepresenting the report’s findings in a Thursday morning press conference, during which he said that Mueller’s team had found "no collusion" on the part of the Trump campaign— despite the fact the Mueller report clearly said they investigated conspiracy and not collusion, which is not a technical legal term. 

Here’s Schumer and Pelosi’s full statement: 

"What we’ve learned today is that Attorney General Barr deliberately distorted significant portions of Special Counsel Mueller’s report.

Special Counsel Mueller’s report paints a disturbing picture of a president who has been weaving a web of deceit, lies and improper behavior and acting as if the law doesn’t apply to him. But if you hadn’t read the report and listened only to Mr. Barr, you wouldn’t have known any of that because Mr. Barr has been so misleading. 

There are at least four significant ways that Mr. Barr has misled the public on the contents of the Mueller report:

1. Attorney General Barr led us to believe that the Office of Legal Counsel opinion did not play a significant role in Special Counsel Mueller’s refusal to make a decision on obstruction. In fact, the report shows the opinion played a major role, and probably the decisive, role in Special Counsel Mueller’s decision not to reach a conclusion.
2. Attorney General Barr presented a conclusion that the president did not obstruct justice but Special Counsel Mueller’s report cites several instances of presidential action that appear to undercut that finding.
3. Third, the special counsel’s own words directly and dramatically undercut Attorney General Barr’s claim that the president fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation.  As the report shows, the president in fact did the opposite – from firing the FBI Director, to pressuring senior officials to lie, to refusing to testify, to attempting to fire the special counsel himself.
4. Lastly, the special counsel’s report confirms that members of the Trump campaign were aware of Russian attempts to interfere with the election, but instead of reporting this to the federal authorities, like any patriotic American would have done, the Trump campaign and President Trump himself openly encouraged it for the purposes of winning a presidential election. That Attorney General Barr omitted this from all of his public statements regarding the report should shake any patriotic American to the core."

NOW WATCH: Paul Manafort faces over 7 years in prison for conspiracy and obstruction. Here’s what you need to know about Trump’s former campaign chairman.

See Also:

• Ivanka Trump attended a meeting in which Donald Trump Jr. first mentioned the upcoming June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, Rick Gates testified
• Trump’s written responses to Mueller’s questions were evidently chock full of ‘I don’t remember’
• Trump calls the Mueller probe ‘a hoax’ in his first public comments since the release of the investigation’s redacted report

SEE ALSO: Mueller says Trump was unsuccessful in influencing the Russia investigation — but mostly because his aides didn’t follow orders

Source: Business Insider – gpanetta@businessinsider.com (Grace Panetta)