Slate - "MUELLER MUST TESTIFY!!!"
Attorney General William Barr’s obfuscating, querulous, and disingenuous congressional testimony on Wednesday was the kind of performance we’ve come to expect from him. Barr criticized special counsel Robert Mueller for declining to issue a definitive conclusion on whether President Donald Trump committed obstruction. He waved away sections in Mueller’s report that clearly describe Trump’s obstructive acts. And he implied that Mueller’s letter to Barr, in which the special counsel questioned the attorney general’s summary of his report, meant something entirely different from what it actually says.
As usual, Barr seemed to view his job on Wednesday as shaping a narrative that is maximally beneficial to both himself and the president. To do so, he once again threw Mueller under the bus. This strategy has been effective so far because of Mueller’s reticence to issue any public comment beyond his report. But if Barr’s testimony proved anything, it is that Congress must ask Mueller to testify—immediately.
Early in his testimony, Barr declared that he was “surprised” when he learned that the special counsel was “not going to reach a decision on obstruction.” He claimed that he is “not really sure” why the special counsel did not reach a conclusion, and that Mueller “shouldn’t have investigated” potential obstructive acts if he felt he couldn’t render a prosecutorial decision. But contrary to Barr’s assertion, it is actually no mystery at all why Mueller did not declare if Trump committed obstruction. The special counsel laid out his reasoning in his final report. He explained that he accepted the Office of Legal Counsel’s “legal conclusion” that a sitting president cannot be indicted, which curtailed his ability to exercise traditional “prosecutorial discretion.” Moreover, he recognized that, “apart from” OLC’s view, a “federal criminal accusation” would both burden the president’s “capacity to govern” and “preempt constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct.” Put simply: Mueller thought it would be futile to accuse Trump of obstruction if he can’t be indicted, so the special counsel instead laid out the facts and left Congress to decide whether “constitutional processes”—that is, impeachment—are appropriate.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/mueller-must-testify-to-explain-william-barr-dispute.amp