Former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker Wednesday said he wants to know why former special counsel Robert Mueller didn't make any "prosecution or declination decisions."
"Why, in Part 2, did he just punt and really kind of make it someone else's problem to deal with?" Whitaker said on Fox News "Fox and Friends," noting that he didn't see any evidence of a "chargeable" offense of obstruction of justice in Mueller's report.
Whitaker also commented that he was "surprised" when he saw legal experts claim in television interviews that President Donald Trump should have been charged with obstruction.
"Special counsel regulations are there because of the serious conflicts having all these political appointees, supervising the litigation with the special counsel and they're supposed to make prosecution decisions and that's what they do," said Whitaker. "What he did here is to not make those prosecution decisions, but recited the facts of the investigation."
Meanwhile, the report shows there was "clearly no collusion," said Whitaker. "Let me be clear, in the report on his face in part one states that the president was not part of the conspiracy with the Russians."
And if there is no underlying crime, it's "hard to have obstruction," said Whitaker. "The unfortunate thing is the political noise and what's going on and all the experts on both sides of the former U.S. Attorney and my former colleagues and they say definitively X, Y, or Z but it's just not the case."
Mueller also likely won't want to answer questions concerning the origins of the FBI's investigation into Trump, said Whitaker.
He also added that he thinks the House Judiciary Committee's decision to grant Mueller's request to allow attorney Aaron Zebley, his top aide in the Russia meddling investigation, to sit at the table with him during his testimony was an "interesting dynamic."
"I wish when I did my Judiciary Committee hearing I would have had a wingman to help me with the answers," said Whitaker.
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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