Rep. Joe Kennedy On The Redacted Mueller Report

April 18, 2019

Updated April 19, 2019

The release of the 400-page redacted Mueller report was not nearly the rosy picture of exoneration that Attorney General William Barr painted in his morning press conference, Congressman Joe Kennedy III told Jim Braude on Greater Boston on Thursday.

“Not a good day for our country, not a good day for our President, not a good day for this administration,” the Massachusetts Democrat said, summarizing his reaction to the report.

Kennedy listed the Special Counsel’s major findings: “An adversary of the United States – the Russian government – tried, and succeeded, at interfering with our election; Officials from a Trump campaign believed that they would benefit from that interference; the President of the United States instructed senior members of his staff, on multiple occasions, to try to interfere with this investigation; and the Special Counsel left the overall determination as to whether the President obstructed justice unanswered, but said that there’s certainly credible evidence to believe that he did.”

The 4^th congressional district representative pointed to Barr’s four-page summary of the report, released in March, which claimed that because the Special Counsel hadn’t issued a conclusion on the obstruction question, it was his choice to make. Kennedy said that Congress also has the authority to weigh in.

“The Attorney General seems to have gone to an effort to circumvent, or to cut short, that review process,” he said.

But Kennedy stopped short of declaring, as House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler said earlier Thursday, that the report confirms President Trump committed obstruction of justice.

“From the parts that I have reviewed, the Special Counsel made it very clear that there were instances that certainly could lead you to that conclusion,” he said.

On the question of impeachment, Kennedy similarly refrained from making a commitment while also not ruling it out.

“Robert Mueller needs to come before the American public and testify,” he said. “I expect that that will happen.”

Kennedy added that he thought it was “certainly a chance” that the President committed impeachable offenses,” particularly because Mueller was explicit that he “could have exonerated the President in the course of the report, and he chose not to.”

At any rate, Kennedy said, it was at least worth continuing to discuss the matter, pending the outcomes of further investigation.

“There’s some challenges you choose to dive in on, there’s some that you have to fight,” he concluded. “And the reality is that if – upon review of this information, and the testimony from the Supreme Counsel, and additional information that I hope will be forthcoming from the Attorney General in terms of additional redactions that are made public, at least to members of Congress – if it means that there has to be additional proceedings, then it means that you have to do that.”