Noah Feldman, Columnist

Mueller’s Testimony Was Just as Confusing as His Report

The special counsel couldn’t defend to Democrats or Republicans why he didn’t charge Trump with obstruction of justice, but didn’t clear him either.

July 24, 2019 at 4:48 PM UTC

By Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Sticking to the facts.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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Questions to former special counsel Robert Mueller from both sides of the aisle in his House Judiciary Committee testimony made one thing clear: The path Mueller took in the section of his report on President Donald Trump’s obstruction of justice was indefensible — from both sides.

The most important issue in Wednesday’s hearing was the way Mueller refused to address Trump’s possible guilt based on the legal theory that because the Department of Justice couldn’t indict a sitting president, it would be unfair to conclude that the president had committed a crime. Yet Mueller couldn’t manage a coherent response to either Democratic or Republican criticisms arising from that prosecutorial decision.