Trump tweets false claim that Robert Mueller had ‘insufficient evidence’ to charge him with a crime

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

• President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the former special counsel Robert Mueller found "insufficient evidence" to charge him with a crime in a Wednesday tweet shortly after Mueller made a public statement. 
• "Nothing changes from the Mueller Report. There was insufficient evidence and therefore, in our Country, a person is innocent," Trump tweeted. "The case is closed! Thank you."
• Contradicting Trump’s claim, Mueller explicitly said that his team was precluded from charging the president with a crime because of longstanding Justice Department policy.
• Further, Mueller did not exonerate Trump of criminal wrongdoing. "If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so," he said. 
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the former special counsel Robert Mueller found "insufficient evidence" to charge him with a crime in the course of a two year-long investigation into Russia interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

"Nothing changes from the Mueller Report. There was insufficient evidence and therefore, in our Country, a person is innocent," Trump tweeted shortly after Mueller’s first public, in-person statement concerning his investigation. "The case is closed! Thank you."

Both in his 448-page report and his Wednesday statement, Mueller repeatedly said that his team was precluded from accusing or charging the president with a crime because of longstanding Justice Department policy.

Mueller also quoted directly from his final report and said that, "As set forth in the report after that investigation, if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so."

"We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime," he added.

Read more: Mueller says he’s resigning from the Justice Department and officially closing the Russia investigation

 

NOW WATCH: White House photographer Pete Souza reveals what it was like to be in the Situation Room during the raid on Osama bin Laden

See Also:

• Justin Amash says ‘a lot of’ Republican lawmakers agree with him that Trump should be impeached but won’t say it publicly
• Hillary Clinton was reportedly ‘ecstatic’ when Trump fired Comey and had to be talked out of publicly celebrating the move
• The Republican congressman who called for Trump’s impeachment just skewered Attorney General Barr for trying to ‘sell the president’s false narrative’ about the Mueller report

SEE ALSO: MUELLER: ‘If we had concluded the president of the United States had not committed a crime, we would have said so’

Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Eliza Relman)