Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said Tuesday he is not denigrating Attorney General William Barr's intelligence or legal ability, but he thinks he is "not the best person" to make the call to decide whether to bring charges in connection with special counsel Robert Mueller's report.
"Bob Mueller spent a lot of time, 22 months, with his team of folks looking at a lot of issues including the issue of obstruction and a lot of people expected him to make the decision, is it a crime, is it not a crime," Bharara, now a senior legal analyst for CNN, commented on "New Day." "He chose not to do that."
Bharara said he has been curious after Barr released his summary about whether Mueller had language in his report about whether he would like Congress to look at the findings and decide what action would be appropriate to take, therefore bypassing the attorney general altogether.
"The attorney general sort of ran in and took the ball as we've been talking about for a couple of weeks," Bharara said. "I'd like to know what Bob Mueller's intent was."
If Barr took the ball and ran with it, "that's not a good look," he added. "I understand why he did it and understand there was a vacuum . . . I don't think it solves the problem for the president, I don't think it solves the problem for the country, and I don't think it settles the question given that he did it on a fairly fast basis, and given that he seemed to have been, you know, sort of predisposed to a particular position."
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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