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Of legal counsel. >> under long standing department policy, a president so that was the justice department policy. those are the principals that we cooperated and we determined that we would not reach a determination about whether or not the president committed a crime. that is the offices final position and we will not comment on any other conclusions or hypotheticals about the president. >> interestingly enough, bill barr referred to the olc memo as legal opinion. we reviewed legal opinions th...

Stands up at a podium before the american people and says anything with credibility. >> mike schmidt youve covered every twist and turn of the investigation, robert mueller unlike attorney general barr started with his conclusions on obstruction. what stood out to you today? >> well, the thing about muellers statement is that its really not that different from the report. if you closely read it and study it. but the interesting thing here is we saw the power of it being done by him live on telev...

Choose. >> neil: does that explain why you called back and the chairman called back donald trump jr. to clarify things in that regard? >> we always said that people that testified before, if there were inconsistencies or other i tens, we reserve the right to bring them back. im not going to talk about any specific witness, although i will say other members of the trump family have come back and testified. thats been publicly reported. >> neil: has there been consistencies? >> were going to go ah...

>> the opinion says that the constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrong doing. and beyond department policy, we were guided by principles of fairness. it would be unfair to potentially -- it would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of the actual charge. so that was justice department policy. those were the principles under which we operated. and from them we conclude...

Since then. what is it? >> reporter: yeah, we thought that this press conference today was the last we would hear from bob mueller, but someone from his office gave a handout and im going to read to you what it says. this would have been muellers answer to a question that was asked the day that we got the mueller report. there was a press conference called with william barr to go over his conclusions before we saw the report and a reporter said, did you not make -- did robert mueller not make a ...

Saying. >> laura jarrett is over at the justice department. you were there inside the room, laura, when the special counsel spoke out. what were you seeing? >> reporter: well, it was interesting, wolf, he was be himself. i had wondered whether members of his team, his core deputies would be there along with him, some of the faces that weve seen in court when he hasnt been there. and today, it was really just he be himself. there were some top-level officials from the justice department in the cr...

Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing. >> and what he just said there, that is more than just for justicin amash, the increasingly vocal congressman from michigan who responded the ball is in our court, congress. and any minute now well hear from the man whose committee can begin impeachment proceedings. house judiciary chairman jerry nadler. but right now lets focus on mr. mueller. la laira jarrett is there at...

>> robert de niro has written as opinion piece. in your news conference you said your investigation works speaks for itself. it may speak to lawyers and lawmakers who have the patience to read through the more than 400 pages of carefully chosen words and conclusions. with all due respect as good a read as it is, youre no stephen king. does he have a point? >> he definitely has a point. i think hes looking at what special counsel mueller said this morning and saying, look, yes, what you presented...

Really without any warning and -- well, he posted this first. again, no sort of warm-up, no setup here. he just jumped right in. "here are my principal conclusions. number 1, attorney general barr has deliberately misrepresented muellers report. 2, president trump has engaged in impeachable contact. 3, partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances. and number 4, few members of congress have read muellers report." "i offer these conclusions only after having read muellers redacted rep...

Representatives from both parties issuing definitive statements on the 448-page reports conclusions within just hours of its release. americas institutions depend on officials to uphold both the rules and spirit of our constitutional system even when to do so is personally inconvenient or yields a politically unfavorable outcome. our constitution is brilliant and awesome. it deserves a government to match it." so thats how he started it. that was last weekend. political backlash of course was in...