If special counsel Robert Mueller wanted something flagged from his report, he could have been "a little clearer," Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., said Wednesday.
"Mr. Mueller frankly deserves a lot of credit for releasing as much of the report as he has," Rep. Cole told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "He caused a great deal of consternation up here. If my friends on the other side want to proceed, they are free to do that."
However, Mueller's "complaining after the fact, when you knew who you were turning the report over and knew what the likely determination was going to be, strikes me as trying to have it both ways," Cole added.
Mueller sent Attorney General William Barr a letter in March, after the AG issued his four-page summary of the report, to complain the document "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance" of the document outlining the results of the months-long investigation.
Barr is testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and is scheduled for House Judiciary on Thursday, and Cole said he is concerned about transparency on a "variety of fronts."
"To me, if the special counsel had a concern [President Donald Trump] should have been indicted, he should have said very clearly, 'I would have indicted him,' other than we have a Justice Department policy that prevents it," Cole said.
He added he thinks the policy is troublesome because he does not understand how the Justice Department reached its conclusion.
"I'm not an attorney, but it seems to me we're a country of laws or we're not, and we're all subject to the law," Cole said. "That includes the president."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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