Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that President Donald Trump only escaped obstruction of justice charges because of the Justice Department rule barring the indictment of a sitting president.
Speaking at a Time Magazine event, the former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate was questioned about the final report of special counsel Robert Mueller.
"I think there’s enough there that any other person who had engaged in those acts would certainly have been indicted," Clinton said of the report’s findings related to obstruction of justice, Politico reported.
"But because of the rule in the Justice Department that you can’t indict a sitting president, the whole matter of obstruction was very directly sent to the Congress."
Mueller didn’t take a stance on whether the president obstructed justice, citing a Watergate-era policy in the Justice Department not to indict a sitting president. Such action would leave the president with no legal recourse to clear his name or protections normally afforded to criminal defendants, according to the report.
But in his report, Mueller detailed 10 incidents in which Trump tried to interfere with the Russia probe.
“Fairness concerns counseled against potentially reaching that judgment when no charges can be brought,” the report says.
Clinton also called for the release of an unredacted version of the Mueller report to allow lawmakers the information necessary to move forward with a thorough investigation of the president's behavior.
"I'm really of the mind that the Mueller report is part of the beginning...because there's still so much more that we should know and that we should act upon,” she said.
"And we're a long way from knowing because we need to get the full report -- the unredacted version."
She added the report “is long” but that “it’s something that every American who cares about holding our adversaries accountable… should go through.”
Clinton added that she approves of the way Speaker Nancy Pelosi addressed the prospect of impeaching the president, saying such a drastic move should not be fueled by "partisan political purposes," and emphasizing the need for a "careful" approach.
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