DOJ Releases Memo Justifying Not Prosecuting Trump on Obstruction Charges

In May 2021, the Department of Justice released a heavily redacted memo that had been used by former Attorney General William Barr two years prior to justify his decision not to bring charges against then-president Trump for obstruction of justice.

On Friday, judges in the DC Circuit Court ordered that the memo be released in its entirety, and on Wednesday, it was.

The memo is nine pages long, and outlines the findings of Assistant Attorney General Steven Engel and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Edward O’Callaghan regarding whether the Mueller Report had sufficiently proven that Trump had obstructed justice in the 2016 election.

The pair wrote that the evidence in the report was not “sufficient to support a conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that the President violated the obstruction-of-justice statutes,” nor that he “sought to conceal evidence of criminal conduct” or “provide false evidence to investigators.”

They added that the Mueller report, which meticulously detailed ten “possible instances” of obstruction “identifies no actions that … constituted obstructive acts, done with a nexus to a pending proceeding, with the corrupt intent necessary to warrant prosecution under obstruction-of-justice statutes.”

Instead, Engel and O’Callaghan suggested that Trump’s actions “amounted to attempts to modify the process under which the Special Counsel investigation progressed, rather than efforts to impair or intentionally alter evidence … that would negatively impact the special counsel’s ability to obtain and develop evidence.”

As ABC News reports, the redacted memo released in 2021 had fully blacked out more than six of the nine pages, with the DOJ arguing that the contents should be kept from the public because it contained internal decision-making processes and advice.

That rationale was not well received by a district judge, who later ruled that the contents should be released because Barr had already made up his mind regarding whether or not Trump would be charged, thus there were no real deliberations taking place.